The WNBA is booming, thanks in no small part to a sublime player who has bridged the generational gap from hoops pioneers to next-gen stars.
Breanna Stewart adored her father-in-law, Josep Xargay, a basketball superfan who rooted for two players with everything he had. He hardly ever missed a game, not even during his daughter Marta’s stints with the Spanish national team as it traveled all over the world and won an Olympic silver medal.
That week, between the semis and the finals, video calls were dominated by reminiscing. Josep oozed pride, in both of them and what they’d built. In Stewie, he saw someone who had transformed Marta’s life, made her happier, a mom,fought for others. When Stewart won her second MVP award last season, he cried. Not just for her. For all of them.
She’s 29 now, which means, as she collects a dizzying tally of accomplishments, there are still two young children to care for and another game upcoming. She sounds groggy. But she’s still marveling at the year that was, all that life-ing—awards, Finals run, MVP, a second child, staggering grief, overwhelming joy and the one shot she most wishes she had taken but did not.That’s never been her default. Even if it were, now’s really not the time.
“Stewie has done some incredible, big, iconic things,” says her agent, Lindsay Kagawa Colas. “But for so much of that, she has been carrying an unseen load, with so much grace. She’s also a human being.” Stewart has been a winner at every level of her career, including four championships at UConn. / Chris Keane/Sports Illustrated
Tough, sad, hopeless, determined but unable to fulfill that determination. Stewie felt all those things. Life continued life-ing. “I just went crazy,” she says. Stewie’s superpower is authenticity. It permeates her every interaction. It’s clear not just in her signature Puma shoes, the first in the WNBA in more than 10 years, the aptly named Stewie 1’s. It’s clear in her input into their design. The flourishes drip with meaning: red carnation blooms , cherry blossoms ; a golden trumpet tree .
The WNBA also is, inarguably, more popular than ever. This season’s rookie class, headlined by Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese, seized on—and heightened—momentum. They all owe Stewart, now in her eighth WNBA season, and other stars from her generation. They’re not the OGs, who toiled with little resources. Nor the newcomers, enjoying two decades of hard-earned progress. “She’s the bridge between them,” Colas says, “and a powerful vehicle into the future.”.
Rivalries don’t hurt, either. Especially when Stewie says that women’s sports will follow the same trajectory as men’s did—more media coverage, new stadiums, bigger TV deals and everything else. They’ll be major, in every sense—and soon. As for what she was proud of, Stewie focused on families and loved ones and support. Marta taught her that moments matter, even when they’re not triumphs, that real humans show up for their loved ones, and not because they want to. Because they must.
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