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The 2018 W.N.B.A. most valuable player’s return from a torn Achilles’ tendon was stalled by the coronavirus pandemic. Now she’s just trying to cope with being stuck inside.
Published May 9, 2020Updated April 27, 2022
Along with the rest of the world, athletes have had their careers upended by the coronavirus pandemic. They are giving The New York Times an intimate look at their journeys in periodic installments through the rest of the year.
Over the last decade Breanna Stewart has dominated her sport as few ever have. She won four national titles in four seasons at the University of Connecticut — and won Most Outstanding Player in the Final Four each year — earned Olympic gold and was the W.N.B.A.’s Rookie of the Year in 2016. She led the Seattle Storm to a championship in 2018, winning the Most Valuable Player Award along the way.
That dominance has not been a golden parachute, though. As a pro, the slender, 6-foot-4 Stewart has followed other elite female basketball players who play nearly year-round, in foreign leagues in China and Europe to maximize their earnings. While playing for a Russian team in the 2019 EuroLeague championship game, Stewart ruptured her right Achilles’ tendon. After months of difficult post-surgery rehab and doubt, she was finally feeling like herself and readying for her first full season back in the W.N.B.A., which had been scheduled to start on May 15. Then the world changed.
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Kurt Streeter writes the Sports of The Times column. He has been a sports feature writer at The Times since 2017 and previously worked at ESPN and The Los Angeles Times. See his work here.
A version of this article appears in print on May 10, 2020, Section
A
, Page
38
of the New York edition
with the headline:
A Star’s Comeback Will Now Take A Little Longer. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
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