WASHINGTON — The Mystics will begin their postseason play as the heavy favorites to win the WNBA championship.
They will face the Las Vegas Aces in their best-of-five semifinal series.
The Mystics have been the best team in the league all season long, and the team has the league’s best player.
Elena Delle Donne has been the WNBA’s most valuable player this season, becoming the first player in WNBA history to join the 50-40-90 club. Delle Donne made more than 50% of her shots from the field, more than 40% of her shots from beyond the three-point line, and more than 90% of her free throws. It’s a feat that’s only been achieved by eight players in NBA history.
For the Mystics star, her unselfish nature is perhaps her greatest trait.
“I feel like now I’m a player that makes other people around me better,” says Delle Donne. “I feel like earlier in my career I was just like such a scorer that I wasn’t finding ways to find others, and to free other people up. So, I think that’s been a huge change in my game.”
While Elena Delle Donne has a selfless spirit, she is still able to appreciate her historic season shooting the basketball.
“It’s one of those things where I’m like wow, I’ll go down in history for that one,” says the Mystics’ star. “It’s really cool."
When Delle Donne was a little girl, nobody could have expected her to become one of the best basketball players in the world.
“My mom’s always like, ‘If I had to pick one of my kids, it wasn’t you [Elena] that I thought would be here,’” says Elena Delle Donne. “She’s like ‘No offense.’ But I really grew up and learned a lot.”
What’s impressive is Delle Donne put up historic numbers while playing with a broken nose for much of the season.
One of the lasting images of the Mystics’ season to this point, is Elena Delle Donne playing games while wearing a protective mask.
And while it’s been more than two months since she broke her nose, the Mystics’ star says her mask isn’t going anywhere.
“Towards the end of the season, when obviously my nose is healing up, my teammates were like, ‘Don’t even think about not wearing that,’” says Delle Donne.
At the end of the day though, after all the individual achievements, the historic regular season, and playing with a mask that makes her seem like a super hero, the only thing that matters is winning a championship.
“That hunger is why this team is where we are today,” says Elena Delle Donne. “It’s why we are number one, we have home court advantage. It’s because we left last season with a horrible taste in our mouths, being swept by Seattle, feeling that they were just better than us. That’s not a good feeling. So, I think we all just kind of soaked that up and took it as motivation.”
If the regular season is any indication, that motivation will lead to a WNBA title.