NEW YORK – As Ryan Howard waited for the 2022 WNBA draft to begin, her stomach began to hurt. She said the same to her mother, RJ Avery, who asked her daughter to hold her hand and begin to breathe deeply. Avery repeated “Enter and Exit”.
The exercise did little to calm Howard’s nerves.
At 7:12 p.m. ET, surrounded by Avery, her brother Rashawn, and Kentucky coach Kyra Elsie, Howard learned she would be the first pick in the draft, which belongs in a dream. She approached the stage and posed for a photo with WNBA Commissioner Kathy Engelbert. Then I started rocking, and I did that, Howard says, “so you can’t see how much I’m actually shaking.”
Her first audition as a WNBA player came minutes later when she descended 32 stairs with a three-inch heel to start a post-draft circuit that consisted of countless interviews, photo shoots, and even a game of Pop-a-Shot. (I scored 83 points. On this particular quest, Night #1 won’t end.)
‘Still surreal,’ Howard said 100 minutes after hearing her name call ‘I still can’t believe it’–she sat long for the first time since her pick. ‘Can you add a sexy sigh there, a dramatic pause?’ Sigh. shock. gratitude. Really a little bit of everything.”
As a child, Howard wrote in an article that she had a goal of one day playing in the WNBA. However, she never dreamed of being the first choice. While with the Wildcats, the star who is part of a generation that could change women’s basketball took the program to three NCAA championships and helped the school claim its first SEC championship in 40 years.
“I stepped into it [rebuilding] “Challenge,” she says. “Given that it’s now the next level, I think I can take on that challenge as well.”
A rule in Howard’s first league was that if a player scored about 12 points, he would have to sit out for the rest of the match, regardless of how much time was left on the clock. Avery says that after the fifth time such a policy was imposed on the No. 1 pick in the future, Howard began to get to know its consequences better and, in turn, moved away from it. On at least one occasion, Avery Howard, who was only 7 years old, remembers forcing the ball to steal, pushing the ball up and sending it to a teammate next to the basket.
“Are you fine?” Avery remembers asking her afterwards.
“If I have to shoot, I might have to sit down and just want to be on the field,” she recalls her daughter’s response.
Through that experience, Howard learned other lessons, too. “I think that’s where she derives her teamwork from,” Avery says.
Had such a restriction been placed on Howard in college, there would have been many instances where she would have come off the bench. In her first season with the Wildcats, she averaged 16.4 points per game and took home first national honors of the year. As a sophomore, she raised her tally to 23.4 points per competition, making her eventual debut for the AP All-American. While her scoring has fallen slightly – to 20.7 and 20.5 points respectively – in each of the past two years, she has remained among the sport’s most dynamic attacking players. Howard’s resilience on this end is central to why the dream entered it.
“What impresses us the most is her size and her ability to score the ball,” says coach Tanisha Wright. “She makes it look so easy. But the potential of who could be in our league is so amazing, so special.”
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In December 2019, Wright was an assistant coach at UNC-Charlotte when she was assigned to go out with the scouts for a pre-season match against Howard and the Wildcats. Wright remembers telling her players that Howard would one day be the first pick in the WNBA Draft. “In that moment, they’re listening to you, but you don’t quite understand it until you’re playing against such talent,” Wright says.
Howard scored 29 points and had seven rebounds in her team’s 86-39 victory. “That’s crazy,” Howard said when she learned of her coach’s prophecy.
Wright hopes the team’s new founding star can make an immediate impact. Atlanta has won just 23 games over the past three seasons and is looking to return to post-season for the first time in four years, with largely new leadership.
In September, months after Larry Gotzdiner, Susan Abeer, former player Renee Montgomery and others took control of the organization, Atlanta appointed Morgan Shaw Parker, a former chief executive of Arthur M. Blanc Sports and Entertainment (AMBSE) as the team’s president and chief operating officer. . Then, a few weeks later, he brought in Wright from the Aces as his next coach and Dan Badover, a two-time CEO, as general manager. Howard will also join the retooling roster, the roster that replaced No. 4 of 2020 with Shenedy Carter’s pick for 19th All-Star Erica Wheeler in an off-season deal that saw the top scorer leave last year, Courtney Williams, via free agency.
“We have to have a footprint in the city of Atlanta. We have to be connected in the city of Atlanta, and I think it will take on that challenge,” Wright says of Howard.
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But before Howard even thought about moving to her new city, she enjoyed the euphoria that comes with nights like Monday. As she encountered other attendees at the Spring Studios lifts, she was greeted with an outpouring of congratulations. When Ole Miss’s Shakira saw Austin shortly after selecting Austin third for the Mystics, the two hugged. “Shakira, I love you,” Howard told her former SEC opponent.
When Howard, phoneless, was told that Michigan star Nas Helmon was headed for a dream after taking No. 15, Howard said, “Yeah, I love it.” She told Howard Helmon in the run-up to the draft that she wanted the two to play together. When the two paths intersected 10 minutes after Howard learned of the choice, they engaged in a happy hug. Even Suns star and fellow Kentucky producer Devin Booker left a surprise voicemail congratulatory for choosing Dream’s top pick.
Monday marked the first in-person WNBA draft since 2019. In recent days, the 12 invitees have participated in a number of orientation meetings for incoming freshmen as well as in lighter off-field programs, such as a bus tour that brought them to various parts of New York. Howard late Sunday afternoon fired three-pointers and shorts into a crowd playing at Stanton Street Stadium in lower Manhattan. Hours later, she went bowling with some in her immediate circle. Avery makes sure to add, “I kicked her ass.”
Avery says she always knew Howard would be in a position to hear her name in the draft, though she never imagined her daughter would go first. Rashawn expressed a sense of pride in following the draft as he pondered his sister’s bill.
While the Dream Protector was lounging on the night of the draft, for a very brief time, she also began to think about how much change would be in such a short period of time. Expressing her passion for starting the next chapter, she talked about setting records and winning this year’s Novice award. And of course winning the championship with her newest team.
“It hasn’t sunk yet,” Howard says. “Maybe at training camp.”
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