UNCASVILLE, Conn. (AP) — Elena Delle Donne swore she would never pick up a basketball again after quitting the sport before her freshman year of college. She was burned out and missed her family. She regained that love a year later and it carried her to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, where she’ll be inducted Saturday as part of the Class of 2026.“I just needed to step away and find who Elena was outside of the game and realize, you know, I can have other passions and all these other things, and not everything is on a win or a loss in the game of basketball,” Delle Donne said. “I needed that and I needed to step away to come back and find the passion again that the little girl had who was out in the backyard shooting hoops.”Home has always been the center of Delle Donne’s world. After first enrolling at UConn, she quickly returned to her home state to play at Delaware. That allowed her to reconnect with her sister Lizzie, who is blind and deaf. They communicate through physical touch.
“When you are a sibling of someone with special needs, it’s hard to understand certain feelings that you’re going to experience in big moments in life,” Delle Donne said. “For me, when I had to say goodbye to Lizzie and go to Connecticut, it was a pain that I couldn’t describe, and just couldn’t do.”Delle Donne laughed when describing how her sister has no idea how good she was at basketball.
