Can Breanna Stewart transform the WNBA?
— -- This story appears in ESPN The Magazine's May 23 WNBA Issue. Subscribe today! For more WNBA20 content, visit our WNBA20 page.
BREANNA STEWART HAS spent the past several hours in stiletto heels, and her hair has been teased so many times that it must be self-conscious. So it's a relief when her day ends, finally, at an after-hours dinner at Bobby Flay's Bar Americain, just outside the melodic jangle of the Mohegan Sun casino floor. Stewart's parents have spent much of this April night waiting for the photo shoots to end. They woke early this morning and drove 300 miles from upstate New York to Uncasville, Connecticut, to see her get drafted into the WNBA, and somewhere around 10 p.m., after scanning the steak tartare and duck confit on the menu, they settle in to exhale.
For a family that temporarily kept her awards on the floor of the basement this spring so the dog wouldn't gnaw on them, all this rock-star attention has taken them aback. Stewie, who used to put her head down and say "Ummm" during interviews, had a handler whisking her around earlier in the evening. Meanwhile, a crowd lined up outside the arena hours before the draft, all to watch the inevitable: Stewart holding up a jersey from the Seattle Storm, the team that drew the No. 1 pick in the draft lottery seven months earlier.
The night is big, and the Stewarts know it. Her dad, Brian, who normally wears shorts regardless of the temperature, has thrown on a pair of slacks. Just before the show started, UConn coach Geno Auriemma took a seat next to Breanna at a round orange table. Auriemma insisted on being here, even though he had been so ill that he had to skip the national championship parade a few days earlier in Hartford. (By the end of the week, he'll be hospitalized for three days with flulike symptoms.) When Stewart's name was called, he embraced her, germs be damned, and whispered, "Does it feel good? Do you deserve it?"
"Yes," she answered.
Auriemma is long gone by the time Stewart arrives at Bobby Flay's, and she takes a seat near her soon-to-be agent. Before she can catch up with her family, Stewart learns that Good Morning America wants her in New York by 6 a.m. It's a 2½-hour drive, and she's got to go. She asks her dad for a credit card so she can get a hotel room and dashes out the door.
For one night, Breanna Stewart is the toast of the sports world. And if history is any indicator, it is all downhill from here.
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