At the conclusion of this season, Tamika Catchings will not be the only WNBA great to hang her jersey up.
New York Liberty forward Swin Cash announced in a post on The Players’ Tribune that she will indeed retire at the end of the season.
According to the Associated Press, she said she began pondering the thought of retirement as she began receiving more opportunities in broadcasting as her career was drawing to a close.
Cash said she originally planned to announce her retirement at the end of the season to minimize any distractions it could cause, but the Liberty’s director of player development, Teresa Witherspoon, convinced to her to change the announcement date.
If I would have had it my way, I didn’t want to cause any distractions and just done it at the end of the season
she said according to the AP.
In the post on The Players’ Tribune, she described basketball as “her first love” and said the game has allowed her to venture to many places and see many people she says she “never would have met if [Cash] never dribbled a ball.”
She also mentioned how playing the game saved her from a cancer scare.
Cash, towards the end of the post thanked the fans of the WNBA as well as her fellow family members, teammates, and mentors whom she has come in contact with throughout her career and her life.
Since the initial post by Cash, a tribute posting to her is also on The Players’ Tribune co-written by Sue Bird, Bill Laimbeer, Tanisha Wright, and Tamika Catchings.
In an interview with CBS Sports Network’s “We Need to Talk,” she advised players that are just now coming into the WNBA to begin preparing for retirement as soon as possible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ooo2BR7Jfk
I tell players all the time, the one thing that I did, really coming into the game, was I started planning for what my retirement was going to be then. You never can totally prepare for it, but I always knew that life after basketball was going to be a longer career.
She played her collegiate basketball at UConn, where she played under Geno Auriemma and won a pair of national championships while with the Huskies (2000 and 2002). In 2002, she scored 20 points in the national championship game, an 82-70 victory over Oklahoma, and was named that year’s tournament’s Most Outstanding Player.
Cash is also in the top 15 for points and assists as well as in the top 10 for rebounds, free throws, and games played.
As a professional, Cash won three WNBA championships—two with the Detroit Shock and one as a member of the Seattle Storm.
Cash also is a two-time Olympic gold medal winner as the U.S. Women’s National Team claimed the top spot at the 2004 Olympics in Athens and the 2012 Games in London.
There will be 26 opportunities left to see Swin Cash on a WNBA court this season, but there are a cavalcade of memories she has brought to the league and to women’s basketball as a whole. As impactful as her career was on the court, we look forward into how she will remain involved with the game once she steps off of it for the final time.
Can someone say…future Hall of Famer?
By: Akiem Bailum (@AkiemBailum on Twitter, Instagram)
