In No Offseason, The Athletic follows the paths of women’s basketball players after their WNBA seasons’ end and their travels begin. From Turkey, Israel, Italy, Czech Republic, Mexico and even here in the U.S., our reporters tell the stories of these players as they chase their dreams and try to shape the future of the WNBA.
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SAN LUIS POTOSÍ, Mexico — At Gate E1 inside George Bush Intercontinental Airport, men in black worn leather jackets, dusty boots and 10-gallon hats waited to board their flight on a recent Sunday morning. They held thermoses and had backpacks over their shoulders.
Old women with their hair pulled back in tight braids sat in seats at the same gate, wrapped in rebozos, or Mexican shawls. There was also a young married couple from Canada recording themselves on a cell phone held by a tripod, relaying their excitement to travel for a frisbee golf match to their dozens of followers on Instagram.
Without any fanfare or interruption, Ariel Atkins, a two-time All-Star, 2019 WNBA champion for the Washington Mystics and Olympic gold medalist, made her way to E1 and took a seat in the corner. So did Danielle Robinson, a three-time WNBA All-Star who was once considered the league’s “fastest player.”
Already seated and waiting for them was Taj McWilliams-Franklin, now a WNBA official who was perhaps the league’s ultimate journeywoman. She played 14 years for seven teams, retiring at age 41 in 2012 with two championships and six All-Star games to her name.
They were headed to Mexico to run a basketball camp.
There was a slight delay to their flight to San Luis Potosí (mechanics had to change a tire and check the engine), but the two-hour trek to this rocky, dusty city-state in the heart of Mexico was uneventful. Another slight hiccup awaited them when they landed; only one agent was waiting at customs to check passports, which meant an hour of standing in a long, fluorescent corridor.
Once they cleared customs and collected their bags, they piled into vans arranged for them by NBA security. They pulled out of San Luis Potosí’s airport on a single, two-lane road with cacti, dead grass and rocks on either side. There were small, weathered huts with trash in the yards and dogs roaming free along the road. A boy with his face covered by a bandana rode by them on horseback through a cloud of dust kicked up by men playing soccer on a wide swath of dried dirt while women in lawn chairs watched.
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The locals call it “futbol llanero.”
As is almost always the case on such trips, the views from the van windows improved as they made their way through San Luis Potosí, the oldest Spanish settlement in Mexico that dates to 1592 and is nestled between a range of 108 mountains. From a distance they could see the tops of the gleaming domes of the Baroque-style Catholic churches that have stood for centuries in “El Centro,” the city’s downtown of cobblestone side streets, outdoor cafés and shops.
They could see the rooftops of thousands of houses, auto shops and bars with “Corona” and “Tecate” beer signs hanging from the facades in the barrios. They arrived at their plush hotel, the Hilton Towers, up on the side of a mountain, and within a few hours were at a welcome dinner behind 10-foot walls at La Loma Centro Deportivo — eating chicken and steak fajitas with rice, tortilla chips and guacamole.
Atkins, Robinson and McWilliams-Franklin had all been on dozens — if not hundreds — of trips that began like this as professionals in the women’s hoops game. A foreign country. A few bumps at the airport. A drive past a strange landscape on the way to the hotel.
Some trips have more bumps. For instance, at this time last year, Atkins was playing for BC Prometey in Kamianske, Ukraine. She and her teammates fled to Bulgaria to avoid Russia’s invasion.
Robinson wasn’t in danger last winter, but playing for OGM Ormanspor in Turkey caused her to miss the first three games of the 2022 WNBA season with the Indiana Fever.
McWilliams-Franklin doesn’t have any stories like that, but she does have four worn-out, dog-eared passports with all of their pages filled with stamps after 22 winters and springs playing in Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Russia, South Korea, Spain and Turkey.
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The reason they, or virtually any American women’s player, go overseas during the WNBA offseason is the same — “I’ve taken money from them to help feed my family, to give us a great lifestyle in the United States,” McWilliams-Franklin says.
Which means there was great irony in this trip to San Luis Potosí. For, after years of traveling abroad to chase the best opportunity to earn money playing basketball, these three WNBA stars of the past and present were in Central Mexico, for free, so that 29 teenage girls from Latin American countries might one day get the chance to play in the United States.
“Yeah, it does sound really crazy,” Atkins says, “but I think the pipeline of youth sports in America is completely different than the pipeline of sports in other countries. And the WNBA is one of the best, if not the best, leagues in the world, so for a lot of people, it is their dream.
“And it’s like, I don’t get to tell somebody to not have a dream.”
Alanna Monte De Oca walked into the Real Inn, next to the La Loma club in San Luis Potosí, and waiting for her was a Nike backpack with her name on it.
Monte De Oca is a 14-year-old girl from a dangerous street in Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic. Fear of gunfire, she says, keeps her inside most of the time. She goes to school, to basketball practice, and to visit her sister, who lives on the same street. So already, a cozy hotel room, next door to a state-of-the-art athletic complex in the Mexican mountains was a slice of luxury to her.
When she unzipped the bag and pulled out two pairs of Nike shorts, two Nike basketball jerseys, Nike spandex, a water bottle and two pairs of Nike sneakers, she almost couldn’t believe it. She tried on one of the uniforms and a pair of shoes, and she sent pictures back to her coach in the Dominican Republic. He couldn’t believe it either.
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“I am very, very happy to be here,” she says to The Athletic through an interpreter.
Monte De Oca joined other teenagers from the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, Bolivia, Paraguay, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil and Mexico. Many, if not all, play for their country’s national teams within their respective age groups. At least one is attending prep school in the U.S. The Argentinians and Brazilians have access to more established basketball ecosystems — better, readily available training, sufficient school and club teams — than girls like Monte De Oca, a forward whose opportunities in the DR are more limited.
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On their first night together in San Luis Potosí, all the girls left the Real Inn, walked through the back gates of the sports complex and by two Olympic-sized pools. American swimming icon Michael Phelps is said to have trained there privately.
They climbed a flight of stairs, past a glass-encased room with “NBA Academy Latin America” plastered on the front wall, overlooking the lobby. They filed into a dining room, where they ate fajitas and guacamole with not only Atkins, Robinson and McWilliams-Franklin, but Jordin Canada of the L.A. Sparks, Phoenix Mercury assistant coach Cinnamon Lister, former Atlanta Dream player Carla Cortijo and Carol Callan, past managing director for the U.S. women’s national team and current president of FIBA Americas. A full complement of NBA support staff from Mexico and the United States, as well as Spanish-speaking coaches from Mexico took up the remaining chairs.
“Three of the girls came up to me right away and said they are going to be in the W one day,” McWilliams-Franklin says. “Realistically, like, how many do I think will be in the W? Maybe one out of the (29). It’s not really if they’re going to be there, but to have that goal. They can break down so many walls.”
For the next four mornings, Monte De Oca and her new friends were split into four teams and run through countless drills and lessons by the WNBA players, such as how to catch and shoot, shoot off the dribble, handle the ball under pressure, come off screens, set screens and roll to the rim.
Atkins, Robinson and Canada don’t speak a lick of Spanish, but they coached the girls hard anyway, passionately encouraging maximum effort and patiently explaining how to correct mistakes. Spanish-speaking coaches translated for them.
Each day, the camp ended with a series of five-minute games, with referees and shot clocks, with the teams coached by either Atkins, Robinson, Canada or Cortijo. By week’s end, the adults were pleading with officials and clock operators for favoritism, calling players by their first names and reveling in facial expressions of understanding coming from the girls.
Giving back to the game. 🤘@TexasWBB All-American Ariel Atkins embracing role at NBA Academy Women's Program.
🔗https://t.co/FzlBkehDsD pic.twitter.com/Bx0tTflP3h
— Texas Women's Basketball (@TexasWBB) January 26, 2023
“I can definitely tell the difference from the first two games that we had on the first day versus now,” says Canada, who flew into San Luis Potosí a day early. “I’m talking to them about defense, and communicating, and taking good shots, and running the plays and they’re able to grow in that. I can tell the difference when they’re in transition defense, they’re talking, they’re communicating, they’re taking better shots.
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“I told them this is a great opportunity for them to not only get to know other people from all over Latin America, but just to have the experience to play with girls that you know you never played with before and just have fun, because you build relationships this way. You build friendships this way.”
In the evenings on the first two days, the girls reconvened for panel discussions led by Callan, and by the WNBA players. Day 3, a Wednesday, was a two-hour tour of the churches, museums and fountains of “El Centro,” with 20 minutes at the end to explore the street vendors selling everything from mini skulls on necklace chains to wolf whistles.
The final night, a closing reception and dinner at the exclusive La Loma golf club, cut into the side of a mountain, with a sprawling banquet facility overlooking a Jack Nicklaus-designed course of 18 challenging holes with undulating greens and narrow fairways and treacherous bunkers that wind through cacti, luxury condos and apartments, and an actual snake pit in between the second and third holes.
“It’s been great for me, because I’ve always wanted to see more of the world and meet more people (like the WNBA stars),” Monte De Oca says. “I wish more girls had the opportunity to come to these kinds of camps so they could develop and do something good with their lives.
“It’s a miracle to be here.”
Since 2017, the NBA has operated four, year-round academies in Senegal, Australia, India and San Luis Potosí … for boys. The top teenagers from those regions (mostly) are identified by the NBA’s expansive network of global scouts, and flown, fed, clothed (by Nike), schooled in an American education curriculum and taught to speak English, counseled, and otherwise coached in basketball around the clock. At no cost to the child’s family.
Dozens of graduates have gone on to play at NCAA DI schools; a handful are currently in the G League; and three, Josh Giddey, Dyson Daniels and Benn Mathurin, are in the NBA.
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The NBA doesn’t have these year-round satellite schools for girls yet. Instead, since 2018, the league has run week-long camps in the U.S. and abroad, also free of charge to the girls and their families. Many are at the locations where the NBA hosts year-round academies for boys.
More than 40 girls from the NBA Academy’s camps have gone on to DI schools in the U.S., and one, Han Xu of China, was drafted by the New York Liberty of the WNBA in 2019. “It is a pipeline, and it is something else,” says Chris Ebersole, vice president of international basketball operations for the NBA. “The way we go about all the investments that we do on the basketball development side, the goal is really just to build this very comprehensive and predictable pathway for players all over, no matter where you’re from, no matter where you’re born. You should have a pathway to get there. If your talent, and your work, and all your characteristics merit it, you’re reaching that level. And so for us, it’s making sure that infrastructure in that pathway exists.”
There are two graduates of the NBA’s girls program starring at UConn right now, reigning Big East Sixth Woman of the Year Aaliyah Edwards, of Canada, and Nika Mühl, of Croatia, the conference’s defensive player of the year and current DI leader in assists.
At some point, perhaps very soon, there will be more than one Academy graduate playing in the WNBA. Whereas there are 30 NBA teams, 450 roster spots, and annual revenues in the billions, there are just 12 teams and no more than 144 players on the women’s side, with significantly smaller revenues — to the point that many players compete overseas to increase their earnings.
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It’s a pipeline pouring into a much smaller and more crowded pool.
“I played in Europe for 22 years, so for me it’s part of the legacy of our league — to pay it back,” says McWilliams-Franklin, the WNBA’s player relations and development director, about building a foreign pipeline into the WNBA.
“It’s not just about the people around me, but how can I make it better for everyone,” she says. “Because basketball is global. It’s the return on investment. I went to Germany as a 21-year-old single mother, and was able to play and have money to raise my daughter. How can I pay that back? Coming here to this and helping these kids (eventually make it to the U.S.) if that’s their dream. Or to build the game of basketball in their country, like they did for us by welcoming us.”
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Atkins, Robinson and Canada are a part of the growing trend within the WNBA of players remaining in the U.S. during the league’s long offseason. This winter, according to the Associated Press, 67 of the league’s 144 players signed to go overseas — down from 73 last winter and 90 women five years ago.
The Russian detainment of WNBA superstar Brittney Griner last winter, just as Russia was invading Ukraine, was a double-whammy deterrent to players considering another plane flight across the Atlantic. Before that, it was COVID-19.
Also, opportunities to make money are expanding at home.
Atkins, 26, who will make $175,000 this season for the Mystics, is one of 10 WNBA players under a marketing agreement with the league — as outlined by the player union’s collective bargaining contract. This year, no player can earn more than $250,000 through her marketing deal, and in exchange has to fulfill any number of obligations to promote the WNBA.
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Heading to San Luis Potosí for this camp counts, but Atkins says she’d already built an interest in working with foreign children by seeing them overseas, and noticing they didn’t have the same kinds of skills camps that are readily available in America.
“When you go overseas, you see kids dribbling in the gym, but you don’t really know how to ask like, hey, can I work with kids?” she says. “And I’ve asked multiple times, but they’re just like, oh, yeah, you want to do that? OK. But there’s not really much behind the ‘OK,’ so, for me, just having the opportunity to do something like this is me getting into my basketball community in a different type of way.”
Atkins says she hasn’t ruled out a return to European basketball in the future, but she’s enjoyed the freedom to do what she likes this offseason. She attended her sister’s wedding — something she says may have been tricky had she been committed overseas. She’s delved into real estate, and launched her own clothing line — a talent she devotes hours to each day. She also works nearly daily with trainers on her game.
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She says her salary in Ukraine was comparable to what she earns with the Mystics — maybe $20,000 more. The money she’s earning from her WNBA marketing deal is enough. “This year it was about covering my mortgage and having enough money to do some of the things that I want to do on my own and build a base for myself outside of going overseas,” Atkins says.
Neither Robinson nor Canada would rule out a return to Europe in following years, nor was either paid for her time in San Luis Potosí.
Robinson, who rehabbed her surgically repaired shoulder this offseason, noticed another small group of WNBA stars worked an Academy camp in Senegal in December, and she called McWilliams-Franklin to ask if she could work in Mexico.
“My end goal once I retire is hopefully to be a GM, and I know a lot of that runs through coaching and knowing that side of it, and so this was an opportunity for me,” Robinson says. “I’m not overseas, I’m not playing, I’m rehabbing my shoulder and just working out, so I had time. And to be a part of this with young girls who are coming up, who are going to be playing in the WNBA someday, it was just a no-brainer.”
Canada purchased an offseason home in Las Vegas and has been busy moving there and decorating. She’s devoted more time to charities in Los Angeles (Ronald McDonald House and Wag and Walks), and spent time in an L.A. recording studio working on an R&B song that is not yet finished. Canada, who will play this spring in Athletes Unlimited’s pro league, called her time at the Mexican-based academy “a full-circle moment” to be able to coach young girls from other countries.
The San Luis Potosí camp for girls was the NBA’s second in two months. In both cases, none of the WNBA players in attendance (Dallas Wings All-Star Arike Ogunbowale and the Connecticut Sun’s Jasmine Thomas worked the December camp in Senegal) were committed to playing overseas.
McWilliams-Franklin predicted that as more WNBA players stay in America over the winter, more will sign up to work Academy events. They will get to continue to travel to foreign countries — on the NBA’s dime — and experience cities and cultures they otherwise might never see. In shorter, safer, less disruptive doses than a full season playing in Europe.
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As the sun set over El Centro in San Luis Potosí, on the second to last night of camp, the young girls asked the WNBA stars to pose with them in pictures. They turned their cell phones inward and made funny faces in selfies, in front of historic churches and elaborate water fountains. They gazed together silently at the sophisticated, gothic facades inside the churches, or at the gory, blood-stained statues of Jesus Christ that are prevalent in Mexico and Spain.
As they piled back into the vans to return to the hotels in the mountains, they couldn’t hide their smiles. The WNBA players, that is.
“Like some of them, they’d never been to Mexico and didn’t know anything about, and they love it,” McWilliams says. “They love what they’re doing, and they would have never had the opportunity if they weren’t playing.”
The “No Offseason” series is part of a partnership with Google Pixel. The Athletic maintains full editorial independence. Partners have no control over or input into the reporting or editing process and do not review stories before publication.
(Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic; Photo (from left) of Jordin Canada, Ariel Atkins, Taj McWilliams-Franklin, Cinnamon Lister, Danielle Robinson, Carla Cortijo: Joe Vardon / The Athletic)
