By: Scott Mammoser
Even Los Angeles Sparks coach Brian Agler chronicled the fact he’s “never been around somebody that has been critiqued so hard.”
With her team drowning in foul trouble, Candace Parker carried the Sparks with 28 points and 12 rebounds in a 77-76 Game Five win at the Minnesota Lynx Thursday, and a season that began with her controversial omission from the Olympic roster concluded with a WNBA Finals MVP and first championship for the 6-foot-4 30-year-old.
A two-time national champion at Tennessee, Parker became emotional at the on-court trophy presentation and in the press conference in remembrance of her late coach Pat Summitt, who passed away in June. She also brought up sitting in the Target Center following last season’s first round playoff loss to the Lynx, 91-80 in Game Three.
“This series really was about rebounding, and I heard that for four years at Tennessee,” Parker said. “I had to keep Sylvia (Fowles) off the boards, and I had to do that not just for myself but for my team, as well.”
League MVP Nneka Ogwumike, whose numbers in the postseason were nearly identical to Parker’s despite scoring four more points per game during the regular season, was held without a shot in the first quarter and hit the bench with her third foul in the early second quarter. Midway through the third, Ogwumike had four fouls and fellow starters Kristi Toliver and Essence Carson had five and four, while Parker had zero to compliment 19 points and eight rebounds.
“I had a moment with Magic Johnson after the game, where I was like, ‘You did this five times?’” Parker joked. “The journey is difficult, but once you get here and you feel this feeling, it’s like you want to do it again. I remember last year being here in that locker room and things being a lot different and Coach telling us that if we just stayed with the process and believed in each other and got time on the court and practiced and did it the right way, that we would be where we wanted to be. It’s very ironic that we’re here in Game Five, in the same locker room spraying champagne. I can’t believe it.”
The achievement was reminiscent of the NBA Finals this past June, with a Cavaliers team defeating the defending champions in a decisive game on their home court and LeBron James falling to the court as if the weight of the world were lifted off his shoulders. This time it was Parker, who becomes the 11th women’ basketball player to collect championships at the NCAA, Olympic and WNBA levels, and joins Tamika Catchings as the second Lady Vol to do so. Selected first overall in 2008 to much high expectations and named WNBA MVP and Rookie of the Year, she missed the beginning of her second season to give birth to her daughter, and seven-year-old Lailaa was at the trophy ceremony.
Her third and fourth years were riddled with injuries and paved the way for Ogwumike to be taken with the first pick in the 2012 Draft. Ogwumike proved to be the perfect frontcourt partner this season, herself left off the roster that won the gold medal in Rio.
“I’ve not been around anybody that I’m more happy for than Candace tonight, for what she’s gone through this season,” Agler said. “It’s been unbelievable. She stayed on the high road, fought through everything, stayed with it, was persistent, and sort of like- she went through what our team went through, the ups and downs.”
A two-time MVP and having now cemented her legacy on a one-way track to the Hall of Fame, the only thing she hasn’t won is the FIBA World Championship, taking bronze in 2006 and missing the 2010 and 2014 teams. We’re only two years away from the next edition in Spain, and any doubts directed at her before this season should now be erased. She was anointed as the potential savior of the league when she beat the boys in the McDonald’s High School All-American dunk contest in 2004, but Candace Parker is now, officially, one of the game’s all-time greats.
