Their Claims to Fame: the WBHOF Class of 2024 (Part 2)
The Women's Basketball Hall of Fame recently announced its Class of 2024. After diving in to the basketball careers of Seimone Augustus and Rita Easterling last time out, this time will be all about Taj McWilliams-Franklin and Maya Moore.
Taj McWilliams-Franklin
In the midst of the Minnesota Lynx run to the franchise's first title in 2011, Roman Augustoviz encapsulated the role "Mama Taj" played during her second title-winning season in the WNBA. It's not loaded with statistics; instead, it's made clear the person Taj McWilliams-Franklin is and how that affected the start of a dynasty.
After a year at Georgia Southern University, McWilliams finished her college career helping lead St. Edward's to multiple NAIA Division I Tournament runs, including an Elite Eight finish as a sophomore and a run to the Final Four in 1992 as a junior NAIA All-American (Second Team) averaging 21 points and 11 rebounds per game.
In her senior year, McWilliams was named a NAIA Division Champion Player of the Year and led St. Edward's back to the Elite Eight, falling to the eventual champions.
McWilliams started her stateside professional career in the ABL with the Richmond/Philadelphia Rage. Alongside Dawn Staley and Adrienne Goodson, McWilliams was an All-ABL selection in the league's first year, finishing as a runner-up to the Columbus Quest.
Between the folding of the ABL and her move to the WNBA, McWilliams was part of the 1998 U.S.A. team that won gold at the FIBA World Championship.
Her WNBA career began with a lengthy and successful run with the Orlando Miracle, staying with them post-relocation as the Connecticut Sun, where they made the WNBA Finals in 2004 and 2005. During that time, McWilliams was a four-time All Star and a starter for the unofficial All Star team that took on Team USA ahead of the 2004 Olympics.
The rest of her WNBA career played out in short stints with five different franchises. Most notably, she was traded twice in 2008, first in the offseason from Los Angeles to Washington, then over the Olympic break to the Detroit Shock, where she helped filled a void left by the injured Cheryl Ford.
It was there Taj (now McWilliams-Franklin) first linked up with Cheryl Reeve, where the two won the Shock's third and final title.
Three years later, it was McWilliams-Franklin that Reeve, now head coach of the Minnesota Lynx, targeted in free agency to help lead a hungry but somewhat young team. In her age-40 season, she started all but one game, playing just under 30 minutes on average, putting up 8.3 points and 6.0 rebounds per game on the way to the Lynx's first championship.
She finished out her WNBA playing career the following year, helping the Lynx back to the Finals.
In total, she was a six-time WNBA All Star, twice All-Defense, and the 2005 Kim Perrot Sportsmanship Award honoree. She is still top-25 all-time in games played as well as total points, rebounds, steals, and blocks.
Since then, McWilliams-Franklin has served in several coaching capacities across both college basketball and the WNBA, and has recently served as the WNBA's Player Relations and Development Director.
Even more on Taj McWilliams-Franklin from Dorothy Gentry: https://www.wnba.com/news/the-timeless-impact-of-taj-mcwilliams-franklin
Maya Moore
Where "Mama Taj" was the veteran figure for a young title team, Maya Moore was the rookie phenom, the missing piece for a Lynx team on the upswing.
If there's a more recent analog to Cynthia Cooper's championship-and-MVP-packed four years to start the WNBA, it might just be Maya Moore's run from 2009 to 2018: two NCAA championships at UConn (2009 and 2010) including 90 consecutive wins, two FIBA World Championship gold medals (2010, 2014), two Olympic gold medals (2012, 2016), four WNBA championships with the Minnesota Lynx (2011, 2013, 2015, 2017), twice a consensus college player of the year (2009, 2011) and three times the Wade Trophy winner (2009, 2010, 2011), 2011 WNBA Rookie of the Year, 2013 WNBA Finals MVP, 2014 WNBA regular season MVP, and three times the WNBA All Star Game MVP (2015, 2017, 2018).
After enumerating the accolades (and those are mostly just stateside), it's honestly difficult to think of what else there is to say. Her basketball career was as far from unheralded as possible, even when her humble nature may have preferred it. How many players would pass on basking in being All Star captain?
Maya's game was smooth, making even the highest-pressure moments look trivial:
She'd break up a pass on one end and run the floor to make good on a transition assist in ways you wouldn't be able to get out of your head:
She'd give you 11 minutes of highlights...
...but ultimately remind you that basketball is what she did, not who she is.
She and her teammates spoke out on racial injustice and police brutality shortly after Philando Castile and Alton Sterling were fatally shot by police in 2016.
Ultimately, her WNBA career came to a close when she stepped away to pursue her non-basketball dreams and ultimately to help work toward the release of family friend (and now Moore's husband) Jonathan Irons, as Kurt Streeter detailed for years.
Moore's legacy in basketball is complicated only by the fact that her basketball legacy wasn't her only priority. Basketball fans will probably never stop wondering aloud how many more accomplishments Maya could have added to her résumé.
Many times on the top team, many times the top player -- what else was there to do on the court? What remains means so much more: an accomplished life off the court (and at least a couple Hall of Fame speeches, guaranteed).
Stay tuned for the next edition, where we'll continue down the list of 2024 Women's Basketball Hall of Famers.
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