What she brought was new, thrilling, alarming. “She didn’t want to be put into one box,” says Holly Warlick, Tennessee’s head coach. Parker was also one of the first to float between all five positions before doing so was en vogue. Parker went on to defeat future NBA players JR Smith, Rudy Gay and Josh Smith. Long before social media exploded over Olivia Nelson-Ododa’s dunking at the 2018 McDonald’s Dunk Contest in March, Parker was the first woman to win the contest, back in ’04, covering her eyes with her left arm and throwing down a right-handed jam. “I’d rather be the hunter and not the hunted.” I’m still going to continue to play and do what I do.” She smiles, in a way ballplayers do when they ’re at the top of the key, crossing the ball left and right, looking their defenders in the eye, knowing they're about to give them buckets. “It gets overlooked, you know? And it’s fine. “I feel like I’ve been playing this type of basketball for a long time,” Parker says. As women’s hoops has evolved into its most dynamic style yet, it’s easy to admire the building and forget about the architects. And yet she seems to have been forgotten in a game that is trending younger and quicker. Ten years into the league and she is arguably the most undervalued great of our time: two WNBA MVPs, one Finals MVP, two Olympic gold medals, one WNBA championship and trips to the Finals the last two seasons.
Parker is a pioneer, but she certainly isn’t past-tense. The woman who helped create the blueprint for 6’4” girls to pop threes, dazzle the ball between their legs and loop passes behind their backs. The woman who almost two years after Pat Summitt’s death is still sometimes overcome with grief before taking the court. The woman who gets lost in books and has an encyclopedic knowledge of the Kennedy family.