“Blaming Basketball”: Amid Elle Delle Donne Retirement News, WNBA Stars’ Concerns Over Family Struggles Resurfaces

After an illustrious career spanning 11 seasons, two-time WNBA MVP and seven-time All-Star Elena Delle Donne announced her retirement. Elena Delle Donne's retirement announcement came in after she sat out the entirety of the previous season dealing with injuries and illness which plagued most of her career. However, when she was healthy, Delle Donne was a force to be reckoned with. She was an important veteran presence for the Washington Mystics roster and led the team to win the WNBA championship in 2019.

Elena Delle Donne's retirement announcement was through a social media post on Friday. In the caption to that post, the 35-year-old star reference a quote from her favorite childhood books that reads, “How did it get so late so soon?”

Soon after this announcement, the Washington Mystics embraced the decision and further added that Delle Donne would be a special advisor to the Mystics' ownership group, Monumental Sports. While Delle Donne has done and dusted a career all worth legendary, she once had concerns regarding carrying forward a career in basketball. She opened up about these concerns three years ago in an appearance on Just Women's Sports podcast.

Elena Delle Donne was unsure about carrying forward in basketball

As a high schooler, Elena Delle Donne was turning heads around as a player. She had started gaining national recognition and led her school to three straight Delaware State Championship titles during her tenure. Delle Donne was ranked number one overall high school recruit by Scout.com and was selected as a McDonald's All-American as well. Evidently so, she started attracting offers from some of the top universities, including UConn and Tennessee trying to recruit her to their ranks.

In an appearance on Just Women's Podcast, Elena Delle Donne told host Kelly O'Hara that she had started feeling overwhelmed from the attention she was receiving from playing basketball. On the other hand, while she was receiving offers from Division-I, her mom kept a basket full of piled up offer letters which she didn't bother looking at.

Though Elle did end up choosing Connecticut's summer program for the starters, she came back home just two days after attending. The reason for the same being she did not want to be away from home, especially from her older sister who is ‘severely handicapped’ with blindness, deafness, autism, and cerebral palsy. Speaking about this, Elle said,

Delle Donne had realized her family weighed in more than pursuing a career in basketball. She was extremely attached to her sister, which was one of the reasons why she ‘ran away’ from UConn in the middle of her second night, without telling anyone except a friend.

A few weeks after running away from Connecticut, Delle Donne decided she would not accept the scholarship from UConn due to burnout. She decided to enroll at the University of Delaware, joining the school's volleyball team as a walk-on. She later joined the Blue Hens' basketball team as well as a redshirt freshman.

Delle Donne had led her college basketball team to several March Madness appearances and was one of the highly touted prospects entering the 2013 WNBA draft. She was selected as a second overall pick by the Chicago Sky, thus laying ground to a lasting WNBA legacy.

Despite all the obstacles and roadblocks on her way, Delle Donne still made a mark with her presence in the WNBA. As she retires, Delle Donne's career achievements include being a 7x All-Star, 2x league MVP, 2013 Rookie of the Year, and having 50-40-90 splits during her championship winning season.

This speaks greatly about her resilience as a player and her willingness to overcome anything that would pave her way to cement a lasting legacy for young athletes wishing to rise up the ranks and play professional basketball in the WNBA.