It is no secret that the WNBA draft is top heavy. Due to the staying power of many of the league’s stars, new spots are hard to find, and they are typically filled with highly-touted first round prospects.

With 12 teams and 12 roster spots apiece, there are just 144 spaces open. Between injuries and other transactions, that number can grow a bit in any given year. In 2019, for example, 157 different players saw the court.

Only the best of the college game and international prospects are able to last.

In 2019, eight third round draft picks played a total of 1,537 minutes, or 1.9% of all player minutes for the season. For comparison, 11 first overall picks played a total of 7,552 minutes. That figure does not include Angel McCoughtry, Breanna Stewart, or Sue Bird, all former first overall selections whose injuries kept them off the court (or Maya Moore, who skipped the season to focus on freeing a prisoner she believes was wrongfully convicted).

Even among second round picks, there were only 37 active players in 2019, for just 17.7% of the league’s total minutes. To say the least, in the WNBA, draft steals are few and far between.

To honor those who beat the odds, I’ve gone back over the past five draft classes to find the best hidden gem from each.

First, some ground rules. A “steal” was defined as a draft pick in the later two rounds who vastly exceeded outside expectations, or, where necessary, a first round pick who has done the same. Extra credit was awarded to contributions to championship-caliber teams.

2015: NATASHA CLOUD

Two All-Stars have come out of the 2015 draft class, the first overall pick Jewell Lloyd and fourth pick Elizabeth Williams. The steal of the draft, however, was Natasha Cloud, taken 15th overall by the Washington Mystics.

Before trading for Elena Delle Donne, the Mystics had historically built through the draft. The longest tenured player, Emma Meesseman, was the 19th pick in the 2013 WNBA Draft. In this, Cloud fits right in. The 5-foot-9 guard was the first player from St. Joseph’s to make a regular season lineup for a WNBA team since Susan Moran in 2002.

During the Mystics 2019 title run, Cloud averaged nine points, 5.6 assists and 2.5 rebounds as the starting point guard. Against New York on June 7, she poured in a career-best 26 points. In the playoffs, she turned it up and improved both her field goal shooting and 3-point shooting by five points to 44.2% and 37.8%, respectively. She also upped her scoring to 13.1 points per game and assists to 6.1 per game during the championship run. Consistently, her playoff numbers exceed those from the regular season.

Five seasons and 150 games later, Cloud’s 6.2 win shares are tied for fourth in her class. In 2019, she set the Mystics single-season assist record with 194. She was also awarded the Dawn Staley Community Leadership Award.

2016: TEMI FAGBENLE

It is difficult to imagine a draft being more top heavy than Breanna Stewart as the first overall pick. That was the situation in 2016, when Stewart and then two other UConn teammates were picked one after another.

While no one drafted outside of the top 10 has played four seasons, Temi Fagbenle has put together three consecutive strong seasons. The eleventh pick of the third round by the Minnesota Lynx, Fagbenle decided to take a year off from basketball to finish up her master’s degree at USC after coming over as a graduate transfer from Harvard.

“Then and now, I knew it was the best decision for me,” she said while fighting for a spot at the Lynx preseason camp. “Basketball has a shelf life and I thought if I can finish my education right now, just take a year off and that’s just a short period of time in the grand scheme of things. I got it done and continued to play basketball and that was great. I’m able to do this now, so hopefully I can make the most out of this situation.”

So far, Fagbenle has. As a 24 year old rookie, she not only made the roster, but won a championship in her first season. In total, she has played in 69 regular season games, averaging 9.3 minutes, 3.1 points and 1.9 rebounds while shooting 51.1% from the field.

2017: BRITTNEY SYKES

The 2017 draft in New York City was a tough one. Just 11 players from the draft were active two years later in 2019. Only one player drafted after the first round made it to year three, Indiana Fever’s Erica McCall, selected 17th overall from Stanford. No one has become an All-Star.

Still, Brittney Sykes surprised a lot of people. Not even invited to the draft, many thought that she would be the second player taken from Syracuse after Alexis Peterson. Instead, the Atlanta Dream took Sykes seventh overall, making her the highest drafted player from Syracuse ever. Soon after, she was the Rookie of the Month in July.

At 11.3 points per game in her career, she has been the leading scorer in her class, even ahead of Kelsey Plum, the NCAA all-time leading scorer taken first overall. She also shares the WNBA record for most points in a quarter — 22 — with Diana Taurasi, who set the initial record in 2006. Russell scored 22 in the third quarter against Phoenix on July 7, 2019.

In the off-season, Sykes came over to the Los Angeles Sparks, where she has a shot at the starting small forward position according to head coach Derek Fisher. For her career, she has started in 57 of 97 regular season games, including the final 24 games of the 2019 season, as well as all five postseason games with Atlanta in 2018.

2018: MERCEDES RUSSELL

Mercedes Russell was the tenth pick of the second round by the New York Liberty, and the 22nd overall selection. In 2019, Russell’s 1.3 defensive win shares were 22nd in the entire league. The path there was a little less than linear.

In just two regular season games with the Liberty in 2018, Russell averaged 2.5 points and 1.5 rebounds in 16.2 minutes. Then she was cut and signed by the Seattle Storm. During the 2018 championship season, she was a relative afterthought, averaging 4.6 minutes, 1.6 points and 1.4 rebounds off the bench.

That changed in 2019, when the injury bug bit the Storm hard. Russell appeared in all 34 regular season games and started 30. In 25.6 minutes per contest, Russell contributed 7.5 points and 6.1 rebounds per game while shooting 51.7% from the field. Those numbers put Russell in the top 50 in the entire league in player efficiency rating.

On June 14, she notched her first career double-double with 15 points and 11 rebounds at Washington and then on July 3 scored a career-high 19 against New York. Seattle lasted just two games in the 2019 playoffs, but Russell started both and averaged 11.5 points and 8.5 rebounds shooting 76.9% from the field.

The 6-foot-6 center from Tennessee had her NCAA title aspirations cut short, but soon after became a WNBA champion. In a class with three All-Stars, Russell was the biggest steal.

2019: NATISHA HIEDEMAN

There has been just one season during which to evaluate the 2019 class, but early signs point to Natisha Hiedeman as the steal of the draft. The sixth pick of the second round by the Minnesota Lynx, Hiedeman became the first Marquette women’s basketball player to earn an in-season contract in the WNBA. But it wasn’t with the Lynx.

The Lynx had already secured Napheesa Collier from UConn, who won Rookie of the Year and was named an All-Star, and Notre Dame’s Jessica Shepard by the time Hiedeman was selected. So the Lynx traded Hiedeman’s draft rights to the Connecticut Sun. With nine returning players from 2018, and Bria Holmes returning from pregnancy, spots were limited. The Sun’s own draft picks, Kristine Anigwe at nine and Bridget Carleton at 21, made the roster ahead of Hiedeman, who was the team’s last cut.

From there, Hiedeman signed with the Atlanta Dream as a EuroBasket replacement for Alex Bentley. By the time Bentley returned, Hiedeman had yet to make an appearance, and was once again waived to make space. Without a team once again, the Sun called her back after Layshia Clarendon suffered a season-ending ankle injury.

“I’d just been back and forth, back and forth,” Hiedeman said. “But, being cut actually helped me a lot because it just helped me accept failure and want to work harder to get to where I want to be.”

Debuting in the second quarter of a game against the Dream, Hiedeman scored 10 points before halftime to re-introduce herself to her team.

FORRRR THREEE!

Hiedeman has 10 this quarter! pic.twitter.com/zvIR1Lw0bb

— Connecticut Sun (@ConnecticutSun) July 10, 2019

On the season, Hiedeman appeared in 20 regular season games, collecting 3.7 points, 1.5 rebounds and 1.9 assists per game for a team that reached the WNBA Finals. Her player efficiency rating was fourth-highest in her draft class and 45th-best in the league, and the 1.9 win shares per 48 minutes is sixth in the class. 45th-best PER.

In seven games in the WNBA Playoffs, Hiedeman shot a combined 60% from the field, 66.7% from beyond the arc and 100% from the line. Twice in the playoffs she scored eight points in nine minutes, first against Los Angeles in the semifinals and later in the fourth game of the WNBA Finals.

2020: ALMOST CERTAIN TO SURPRISE

Teams had to trim their rosters this week to get under the salary cap. That meant a lot of rookie players were cut without ever getting a chance to train in front of their coaches. Once again, the WNBA is proving to be one of the toughest professional leagues to crack.
Still, as the players above show, there’s always hidden gems. And while it might take a few years to determine who will be the steal of this year’s draft, don’t be surprised if it’s someone you never saw coming.

After an illustrious career for both club and country, Gotham FC and U.S. Women’s National Team defender Kelley O’Hara announced today via Kelley on the Street that she will be retiring from professional soccer at the end of this year, making the 2024 NWSL season her last.

"I have always said I would play under two conditions: that I still love playing soccer, and if my body would let me do it the way I wanted to," O’Hara told Just Women’s Sports in the lead-up to her retirement announcement. "I realized a while back that I was always going to love it, so it was the physical piece that was going to be the deciding factor."

The 35-year-old will retire as a two-time World Cup champion, an Olympic gold medalist, and at least a two-time NWSL champion, depending on where Gotham finishes this season. Her legacy as a player is hard to fully encapsulate, and will forever run through some of the biggest snapshots in USWNT and NWSL history. 

In 2012, O’Hara played every minute of the USWNT’s Olympic gold medal run, after having recently converted into a defender. Her soaring goal off the bench in the 2015 World Cup semifinal is the stuff of legend. And her return from lingering injury to play in every knockout match of the national team’s 2019 World Cup win cemented a storybook international career. 

It was O’Hara who scored the overtime goal in 2021 to earn the Washington Spirit their first-ever NWSL championship, and O’Hara who returned to help see Gotham earn a title in 2023 after years spent in the trenches with the club’s previous iteration, Sky Blue. Her 15-year career spanned two professional women’s soccer leagues in the U.S. (she earned her first professional title in 2010 with WPS’s FC Gold Pride), as well as sweeping changes to the sport both on and off the pitch.

On the field, O’Hara has always been known for a motor that never quits, making the right flank her domain in attacking possession and defensive transition. In recent years, she’s also been celebrated for a competitive fire that raises the level of her teammates, whether she’s in the starting XI or supporting from the bench.

But injuries take a toll, a reality not always seen by the fans watching from home. "I've never taken anything for granted, and I feel like I've never coasted either," O’Hara said of her late-career success in the NWSL despite battling injuries. "I've always been like, 'I gotta put my best foot forward every single day I step on this field' — which is honestly probably half the reason why I'm having to retire now as opposed to getting a couple more years out of it. I've just grinded hard."

Recently, O’Hara has been sidelined at Gotham with ankle and knee injuries, and the situation motivated her to really prioritize listening to her body. "To get injured and come back, and get injured and come back, and just keep doing it, it really takes a toll on you.

"People don't see the doubt that's associated with injury,” she continued. "As athletes we feel a certain way, we perform a certain way, our body feels a certain way, we're very in tune with our bodies. And there's always so much doubt surrounding injury. It’s like, 'Can I feel the way I felt before?' The reality is sometimes you don't."

O’Hara didn’t arrive at the decision to move on from her playing career lightly. But once she began seriously considering making 2024 her final year during the last NWSL offseason, it felt right. "Once I was like, 'Alright, you know what, this will be my last year,' I have had a lot of peace with it," she said. "Truly the only thing I felt was gratitude for everything that my career has been, all the things I've been able to do and the people I've been able to do it with."

She said she’ll miss daily interactions with her teammates and all the amazing memories they’ve created, though she feels lucky to have formed relationships that go beyond sharing a locker room. "You're basically getting to hang out and just shoot the shit with your best friends every day," she reflected. "Which is so unheard of, and I just feel very lucky to do it for so long."

The Stanford graduate also mentioned that the NWSL’s suspension of regular season play in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic made her realize how much playing allowed her the space to simply be creative every day. The tactical elements of soccer provided O’Hara an outlet for problem solving and made use of her naturally competitive edge.

She’s now gearing up to channel her on-field intensity into her post-playing career full time, which is a new chapter she’s excited to begin. "I don't know if the world's ready for it, like the fact that I'm not going to be putting all of my energy into football all the time," she said with a laugh. 

O’Hara said she would like to stay connected to the game in some fashion, whether it be as an owner, coach, or member of a front office. She’s also interested in the growing media space surrounding women’s sports, having provided on-camera analysis for broadcasters like CBS Sports in addition to starting a production company with her fiancée.

"I just feel like I have a lot of passions, and things that excite me," she says. "And I do want to stay as close as I can to the game, because I feel a responsibility — and I'm not sure in what capacity — to continue to grow it."

A sense of responsibility to grow the game has been a consistent refrain for the USWNT and NWSL players of O’Hara’s era, who ushered in a new age of equal pay for the national team and collectively bargained protections for those in the league. The landscape for new players looks different than it did 14 years ago, in large part due to this pivotal generation.

"I feel an immense sense of pride around that, because I don't know if any of us knew that was gonna happen," she said. "We kind of, as things unfolded, took the next step towards changing what women's football looks like in this country and around the world.

"I'm really grateful to have been part of this era with the players that I was [with], not backing down and pushing and knowing that was the right thing to do."

Whatever the future holds, O’Hara is going ahead full throttle. It’s a piece of advice she’d also give to the next generation of professionals looking to make their own impact.

"Whatever you do in life, do it because you love it, and the chips will fall in place," she said. "If you love something, you're willing to do what it takes. You're willing to make the sacrifices, you're willing to handle the roller coaster.

"To me, it's simple. Don't do it for any other reason but that, and I think you'll be alright."

The Phoenix Mercury center spoke with Robin Roberts about her 10-month incarceration, reflecting on her poor living conditions and shaky mental state ahead of her May 7th memoir.

"The mattress had a huge blood stain on it. I had no soap, no toilet paper," Griner told the ABC News anchor in last night’s 20/20 special. "That was the moment where I just felt less than a human." 

She also detailed some of her lowest moments during that time, saying with tears in her eyes that she went so far as to consider taking her own life on more than one occasion. However, the thought of Russian officials not releasing her body back to her family made her reconsider.

"I just didn't think I could get through what I needed to get through," said Griner.

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In February 2022, Griner was arrested and charged with drug possession and smuggling by a Russian court after Sheremetyevo International Airport police found vape cartridges containing hashish oil in her luggage. The cartridges were prescribed by Griner’s doctor for chronic pain back in Arizona, where medical marijuana is legal. In the interview, the two-time Olympic gold medalist said she had a "mental lapse" while packing, and never intended to bring the cannabis products with her when she returned to play for UMMC Ekaterinburg.

"It's just so easy to have a mental lapse," Griner said. "Granted, my mental lapse was on a more grand scale. But it doesn't take away from how that can happen." 

She was later sentenced to nine years behind bars after her Russian attorneys advised her to plead guilty the following July. Griner was then sent to a remote penal colony where she was forced to spend her days cutting cloth to make military uniforms. From there, it only got worse.

"Honestly, it just had to happen," she said when asked about her decision to cut off her signature long locks. "We had spiders above my bed making nests.

"My dreads started to freeze," she added. "They would just stay wet and cold and I was getting sick. You've gotta do what you've gotta do to survive."

Shortly after Griner’s initial arrest, the U.S. State Department classified her case as wrongfully detained, escalating its urgency within the government and calling even more attention to the situation. On December 8th, she was freed in a prisoner exchange negotiated by the Biden administration.

While she told Roberts she was "thrilled" when she got the news, she was also very upset about having to leave fellow wrongful detainee Paul Whelan behind. She also continues to carry guilt about her arrest, saying "At the end of the day, it's my fault. And I let everybody down."

Griner’s memoir, Coming Home, hits shelves on May 7th.

"Coming Home begins in a land where my roots developed and is the diary of my heartaches and regrets," Griner told ABC News in an exclusive statement. "But, ultimately, the book is also a story of how my family, my faith, and the support of millions who rallied for my rescue helped me endure a nightmare."

Longtime USWNT fixture Carli Lloyd took to Instagram Wednesday morning to announce that she’s pregnant with her first child. 

"Baby Hollins coming in October 2024!" she wrote. The caption framed a collaged image of baby clothes, an ultrasound photo, and syringes indicating what she described as a "rollercoaster" fertility journey.

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In a Women’s Health story published in tandem with Lloyd’s post, the Fox Sports analyst and correspondent opened up about her struggles with infertility and the lengthy IVF treatments she kept hidden from the public eye.

"Soccer taught me how to work hard, persevere, be resilient, and never give up. I would do whatever it took to prepare, and usually when I prepared, I got results," Lloyd told Women’s Health’s Amanda Lucci. "But I found out that I didn’t know much about this world. I was very naive to think that we wouldn’t have any issues getting pregnant. And so it began."

Lloyd went on to discuss her road to pregnancy in great detail, sharing the highs and lows of the process and expressing gratitude for the care and support her family and medical team provided along the way. She rounded out the piece with a nod toward others navigating the same challenges, encouraging people to share their own pregnancy journeys, painful as they may be.

"My story is currently a happy one, but I know there are other women who are facing challenges in their pregnancy journey. I see you and I understand your pain," she said. "My hope is that more and more women will speak up about this topic, because their stories helped me. I also wish for more resources, funding, and education around fertility treatments. There is much to be done, and I hope I can play a role in helping."

The 41-year-old New Jersey native retired from professional soccer in 2021, closing out her decorated career with 316 international appearances, the second-most in USWNT history, in addition to 134 international goals. A legend on the field, Lloyd walked away from the game with two World Cups, two Olympic gold medals, and two FIFA Player of the Year awards.

On Tuesday, FIFPRO announced the launch of Project ACL, a three-year research initiative designed to address a steep uptick in ACL injuries across women's professional football.

Project ACL is a joint venture between FIFPRO, England’s Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA), Nike, and Leeds Beckett University. While the central case study will focus on England’s top-flight Women's Super League, the findings will be distributed around the world.

ACL tears are between two- and six-times more likely to occur in women footballers than men, according to The Guardian. And with both domestic and international programming on the rise for the women’s game, we’ve seen some of the sport's biggest names moved to the season-ending injury list with ACL-related knocks.

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Soccer superstars like Vivianne Miedema, Beth Mead, Catarina Macario, Marta, and England captain Leah Williamson have all struggled with their ACLs in recent years, though all have since returned to the field. In January, Chelsea and Australia forward Sam Kerr was herself sidelined with the injury, kicking off a year of similar cases across women’s professional leagues. And just yesterday, the Spirit announced defender Anna Heilferty would miss the rest of the NWSL season with a torn ACL. The news comes less than two weeks after Bay FC captain Alex Loera went down with the same injury. 

Project ACL will closely study players in the WSL, monitoring travel, training, and recovery practices to look for trends that could be used to prevent the injury in the future. Availability of sports science and medical resources within individual clubs will be taken into account throughout the process.

ACL injuries in women's football have long outpaced the same injury in the men's game, but resources for specialized prevention and treatment still lag behind. Investment in achieving a deeper, more specialized understanding of the problem should hopefully alleviate the issue both on and off the field.