WASHINGTON — When the final buzzer sounded, and the Washington Mystics officially became the 2019 WNBA champions, players hugged one another and cried happy tears. Then, they sought out their family members.
Elena Delle Donne, the 2019 MVP, ran to her wife, Amanda Delle Donne, who was sitting courtside and kissed her on the top of the head. Coach Mike Thibault embraced his son, Mystics associate head coach Eric Thibault, and then found his wife, Nancy, who had spent most of the game letting the refs know what she thought about their incessant whistles.
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Tianna Hawkins fought through the confetti to find her four-year-old son, Emmanuel, who was watching the game with her twin sister and the rest of her family. Five years ago, she was playing overseas in China when she found out she was pregnant. She was terrified; she didn’t know what that meant for her basketball career. Today, she can’t imagine the moment without him.
“I mean, now, this is for him. This isn’t for me now, it’s for him,” Hawkins said in a humid, sticky, champagne-soaked locker room about 30 minutes after the game.
“I’m so happy we won the championship. It gets no better than this.”
On Thursday night, in front of a raucous sold-out crowd, the Mystics defeated the Connecticut Sun 89-78 in Game 5 of the WNBA Finals to win the first championship in franchise history. The celebration was, as guard Aerial Powers said, “turn’t up.”
Shatori Walker-Kimbrough, who weighs all of 140 pounds, picked up everyone in her sight, then joined Natasha Cloud on the scorer’s table to dance to Meek Mill. Kristi Toliver walked around the locker room carrying two champagne bottles, because, “I got two championships, I get to have double bottles.”
Assistant coach Marianne Stanley, a women’s basketball legend and former Mystics head coach who won her first WNBA title on Thursday as well, poured multiple almost-empty bottles of champagne into one bottle, hoping to make enough for “just one more toast.” Powers pulled out a bottle of Ciroc she had brought to the game, filled every silence with screams, and chest-bumped everyone Mystics-related person in her path. Toliver, Delle Donne, and Cloud got kicked out of the press conference room for talking too much while Thibault and Emma Meesseman were giving their presser.
It was a nail-biting game that was tied halfway through the fourth quarter, a brutal five-game series against a never-say-die Sun squad. It was a season filled with adversity, from Meesseman taking leaving for a month to play in Eurobasket, to Toliver suffering a knee contusion and missing the last 11 games of the regular season, to Delle Donne suffering from three herniated discs in her back in the Finals. (Cloud revealed that it was three, not one, in the post-finals press conference.) This win gave Thibault, the winningest coach in WNBA history, his first WNBA championship, and two-time WNBA MVP Delle Donne her first as well. It deserves a celebration for the ages.
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But as fun as it was to watch the dancing and the debauchery, there was a sentimental sweetness running through the celebration that underscored just how meaningful this moment was to everyone involved, from the players to the coaches to the long-suffering Mystics fans, many of whom have stuck by this team for 21 years.
This victory was about LaToya Sanders, who ran to hug her mother before the trophy ceremony began. Her mother told her that earlier that day, she had stopped by Sanders’ father’s gravesite to say a prayer and talk to him. He got Sanders into basketball, and was her biggest fan; he died in 2012, and after that, she took a few summers away from the WNBA so she could spend time with her family.
On Thursday night, she had a piece of him with her.
“I have my good-luck charm with me, it was in my bra the whole game. My dad’s military card. I just needed an extra something, it was do or die,” she told The Athletic in the locker room. “So I pulled out my good-luck charm. Last year, we qualified for the finals on his birthday.
“I wish he was here, but I did this for him.”
This victory was about Meesseman’s mother, who was in town from Belgium, having to sweet-talk her way through the ropes to watch the on-court celebration, where she held up her iPhone from the back of the crowd and proudly shot video of her daughter being crowned WNBA Finals MVP. Six years ago, she helped her 19-year-old pack a bag for Mystics training camp. They packed enough clothes for three weeks, thinking Meesseman would surely be cut from the team.
This victory was about Delle Donne, who played through immense pain in these finals but managed 21 points, nine rebounds, two assists, two blocks, and one steal in the biggest game of her WNBA career.
She said she was inspired to keep going because of her sister Lizzie, who is blind, deaf, and autistic.
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“The reason I can battle through injury is like she’s been dealt the worst cards possible with her disabilities, and every day she gets up, she smiles, she laughs, she loves. So she’s always just been my inspiration. I was talking to her all game long, like trying to have them miss free throws. Like come on, Liz, give me a little something,” Delle Donne said in the press conference. “She doesn’t know it. She doesn’t even know I’m a basketball player. But she’s been my biggest motivator, and she’s brought me here and she’s brought me to this moment. So once again, I’ve got to give all credit to her.”
This victory was about Aerial Powers, who was traded to the Mystics from the Dallas Wings at the trade deadline last year and has provided a huge spark and aggressiveness coming from the bench.
After the game, she was asked if she had a message for Dallas.
“Where’s the camera?” she asked, before looking straight into the lens. “Thank you, Dallas. I appreciate you, (Wings general manager Greg Bibb) for trading me. Because this is the best experience and I don’t think I would have gotten it with y’all.
“I’ve never been on a team like this. They’re a family, they really are. When I got here, everyone accepted me. Elena, KT, they sat me down and accepted me with open arms, and they were captains, and ever since then, all of our personalities go together. Some are quiet, some are loud. I’m a loud one. We all match, we all love one another. And it really shows.”
This was the atmosphere that Thibault set out to create when he first got to Washington, one that valued family and high-character individuals, on and off the court. It’s why he starts each training camp with a team dinner and encourages team activities throughout the season. It’s that atmosphere that has kept Meesseman coming back year after year, that prompted Sanders to return to the league after years away, that convinced Delle Donne that this was the team she wanted to join when she was looking to move to the east coast three years ago. It’s what attracted Toliver in free agency, what has brought out the best in Cloud and Ariel Atkins and Walker-Kimbrough and Hawkins. It’s taken a while to get all of the pieces in place, but that family atmosphere, that genuine love and respect that everyone raves about, that’s the glue that holds it all together.
On Thursday night, after the trophy was handed out, the ropes came down and the fans and families and players and coaches all mingled on the court at the Entertainment Sports Arena, all celebrating together. Everyone, it seemed, felt right at home.
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“It’s hard to even put it to words, but to win this with such a great group of people, I think that’s what makes this so special,” Delle Donne said. “We wanted to win this for the person next to us. It wasn’t about winning it for ourselves, and to get this done and to get this for somebody like Toya (LaToya Sanders), who’s an absolute anchor for this team, that’s what means the most, and that’s what we’re going to take away, and that’s what we’ll remember forever. We’re going to remember this season because we were around such incredible people, and we absolutely adore being together.
“So I’m kind of sad, like the season is about to be over, I’m going to miss everybody, but my goodness, we sure ended this on a high note.”
(Photo: Ned Dishman / NBAE via Getty Images)