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CP3. Champion at last.



It just feels right that Candace Parker is now a WNBA Champion. 

The 1st overall pick of the 2008 draft entered the league with expectations never bestowed upon a rookie coming out of any college. Only fitting as Parker was a talent the league had never seen before. There had never been a player with the size coupled with the athleticism. At Tennessee she was listed as a center, guard, and forward. A transcendent talent that won at every level. Two-time National Player of the Year. Naismith Awards, repeat championships for the Lady Vols. Olympic Gold Medals. Titles in Russia with her club Ekaterinburg. 

For Parker, the year 2016 was up and down. For reasons still unknown, she was not selected to the USA Basketball roster for the Rio Olympics. For whatever reason – none of them possibly good, the greatest forward in basketball wasn’t playing for a team whom she was a leader for the past two Olympic games. A month into season, Parker’s college coach at Tennessee Pat Summitt passed away. Quite possibly the most important coach in collegiate history, for 38 years Summitt cemented a path for women’s basketball when there wasn’t one. For just as long, she was the hallmark of human kindness. Parker dedicated the season to Summitt, her Adidas kicks often in Tennessee orange. When the WNBA took its Olympic break, the Los Angeles Sparks had the best record in the league. With that brought new expectations to win its first title since 2002. For Parker, expectations for a title were never new. She met and surpassed those everywhere else. But in the WNBA, it never materialized. Often the case in basketball, you’re judged by winning at least a championship.

As unfair as that is, Parker felt every year the increasing pressure to win a title in the WNBA. Performing in the same arena as Kobe Bryant and the Lakers adds to that pressure. In a league struggling for viewership and attendance, the Sparks play in Los Angeles – a city with an endless list of things to do. And when you’re the rarity of being the college phenom who’s actually as good as advertised, it adds to the pressure. In year 8 for Candace Parker, the clock only ticks louder.

The only way you could possibly add to that that pressure is the WNBA’s equivalent of a game 7 with the highest of stakes; A game on the road vs the greatest dynasty in modern day basketball.

The elephant in the room however was, she couldn’t lose. The 2016 Sparks had it all. They had the coach in Brian Agler that added the defense needed to win a championship. They had the best defender in the league in Alana Beard. They had the league MVP in Nneka Ogwumike who is secretly the best player on the team. They had the three-point-sniper in Kristi Toliver. They had the “others” – Jantel Lavender, Chelsea Gray, Ana Dabovic. They had the experience.  They had the pieces to compete and win a series against the Lynx. 

This was the best team Candace Parker had every played on. This was her time. She couldn’t lose. Another loss equaled another offseason in Russia with all the time in the world to think. To think about her legacy. To think about how we think about her legacy. Another season ending in a loss after a season dedicated to Pat Summitt – Thursday’s game 5 loss might have been something a player never recovers from.

We’ll never know.

The game was close to the very end. Never easy. A snapshot of not only Parker’s, but the careers of Beard, Toliver, and specifically Essence Carson - who spent an equally long 8 years in basketball’s purgatory – New York City. The emotion came fast, and was intense. Tears, screams, long embraces. Nneka Ogwumike told ESPN’s Holly Rowe the team wanted it for Candace Parker. They understood the journey, the heartbreak, and for them as a collective, the recent unsureness of having a franchise to comeback to after the offseason. 

After eight years of finishing the WNBA season empty, now a champion, Candace Parker -eyes full of tears gathered together only a few but perfectly appropriate words. The season she had dedicated to her, to basketball knowledge and life lessons she learned from her. For Candace Parker, this one was for Pat.

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