DeWanna Bonner looked great for a player of any age as the 35-year-old drained 41 points Thursday for the Connecticut Sun.

And after Bonner set the franchise single-game scoring record, teammate DiJonai Carrington made sure everyone knew it. In a tweet highlighting Bonner’s accomplishment, Carrington made a pointed reference to Sun draftee Alexis Morris’ tweets calling on WNBA veterans to “hang it up.”

Stunningly efficient shooting — 16-of-23 from the field, and 5-of-7 from 3-point range — helped Bonner achieve the scoring record in 32 minutes in the Sun’s 90-84 win against the previously undefeated Las Vegas Aces.

“To score 41 points here, I just love the organization so much,” Bonner said of scoring 41 points in front of a home crowd at Mohegan Sun Arena. “It’s changed my life.

“That locker room is probably one of the closest teams that I’ve been on in a very long time. When we come to work every day, we actually enjoy being around each other.”

The love from her teammates poured in after the win, in postgame interviews and on social media.

“Hang it up???” Carrington tweeted. “Yeaaaahhh aightttttt.”

Carrington’s post calls back to a series of tweets from Morris, a 2023 second-round draft pick of the Sun who was cut from the team before the start of the season.

The 5-9 guard, who helped lead LSU to the 2023 NCAA championship, criticized WNBA veterans for remaining in the league too long and taking up roster spots in the since-deleted posts. She argued that if roster spots cannot be made available to the rookies, then teams should “cut the vets.” Just 15 of this year’s 36 draftees made opening day rosters.

“The vets gotta know when to cut the net, and pass the torch bro,” she wrote. “If you knocking at 35, hang it up and I mean WIRED HANGER ‘Hang it up.’”

Morris later apologized for her tweets, writing in an Instagram caption: “To the veterans of the WNBA, please accept my sincerest apologies. I never thought joining the W family would be easy, but now I understand just how hard it is to do that.

“My energy would have been better served directed toward league executives who have a say in expansion and other logistics. I look forward to celebrating your individual and collective careers and giving you all the flowers you deserve.”

UNCASVILLE, Conn. — Curt Miller is a film nerd. During his endless film sessions, the Sun coach noticed something about Aces guard Chelsea Gray: Most of her shots against his team were contested. She was making them, but the Sun players always had a hand up.

So, how do you stop someone who seemingly can’t be stopped?

You put a player with a 7-foot-4 wingspan on her to make those shots even harder.

Enter DeWanna Bonner, who hasn’t given much thought to her own length.

“I just learned that tonight, literally,” Bonner said with a laugh after Connecticut beat Las Vegas 105-76 to force Game 4 of the WNBA Finals. “Holly Rowe (of ESPN) walked up to me and said so. She said she Googled it. I’ve never measured it, but if Holly says it, it’s probably true.”

The exact number doesn’t matter. What does matter is the way Bonner’s long limbs overwhelm ball handlers and shot-makers like Gray.

“(Gray) has an incredible release point and incredible knack for scoring while contested,” Miller said. “So we decided to put a little bit more length on her.”

Before Thursday’s contest, Gray was averaging 23.3 points per game on 68.8 percent shooting, recording 21 points in each of the first two WNBA Finals contests.

In Game 3, she had just 11 points on seven shots.

The Sun sent different players at Gray throughout the contest, but Bonner spent the most time on the Aces’ point guard.

Gray scored her first bucket with 7:46 left in the first quarter. After that, she made three 3-pointers in the second quarter, but none of them came when she was matched up against Bonner.

“I’m just trying to stay locked in and limit her touches as much as I can, not give her too much room,” Bonner said. “Try to use my length more than anything. I’m a 6-4 guard for a reason, so I just try to use my length, use my speed because … she’s been playing incredible basketball. However I can limit her touches or try to limit her from seeing the basket, getting a clean look at the basket, is what I’m trying to do before she even gets to her spot.”

Miller’s decision to lean on Bonner for a difficult defensive assignment is one that her former college coach, Nell Fortner, knows well.

Fortner was at the helm when Bonner played at Auburn from 2005-09. Any time an opposing player had Fortner stumped, she turned to Bonner.

“We had her guarding people’s point guards,” said Fortner, now the head coach at Georgia Tech. “That is very long and very lengthy on the ball. She’s able to stay up with you laterally — that is unheard of. Defensively, I could put her on anyone.”

Over the first two games of the series against Las Vegas, Bonner struggled. She had just five total points on 11.1 percent shooting, a stark contrast to the 13.9 points per game she averaged in the first two rounds against Dallas and Chicago.

Her two lowest point totals in those rounds were nine against Dallas and two against Chicago — both losses for the Sun.

Bonner’s ability to score is clearly critical to the Sun’s success, and on Thursday she used her defense as a means of jumpstarting her offense.

“We challenged her this game, and she took those challenges head on,” Miller said. “She played with energy and played with offensive efficiency. It just gives the rest of our crew so much confidence.”

Bonner says she didn’t do anything differently going into the game other than sleeping in her own bed, something the self-described homebody was looking forward to after the stint in Vegas.

Instead, she just stayed the course, focused on defense and let her offense come naturally.

Bonner finished with 18 points, six rebounds and five assists, kickstarting a Connecticut attack that had six players finish the game in double figures. Jonquel Jones led the way with 20 points, while Alyssa Thomas recorded the first triple-double in WNBA Finals history with 16 points, 15 rebounds and 11 assists. Natisha Hiedneman added 14 points, Courtney Williams had 11, and DiJonai Carrington came off the bench to add 12.

According to Miller, everything Connecticut does starts with the 35-year-old guard.

“She’s such a veteran, respected presence in our locker room,” Miller said. “There’s no secret that she has championship pedigree and has played on some great teams. And so we have a group that really looks up to her.”

Bonner’s experience in the league, including two WNBA championships with the Mercury, has certainly helped her hone her leadership skills, but she showed that ability even before she got to the pros.

“That was something that we saw her grow into at Auburn,” Fortner said. “By her senior year, we won that SEC championship. She was very competitive, focused and everybody followed her.”

After following her to a Game 3 victory, the Sun are hoping to follow Bonner a little further, all the way to the franchise’s first WNBA title.

Eden Laase is a Staff Writer at Just Women’s Sports. Follow her on Twitter @eden_laase.

LAS VEGAS — When DeWanna Bonner got to Auburn in 2005, coach Nell Fortner knew exactly what she was getting.

Bonner was an exceptional talent with a tall, lanky frame, meaning she could play any position on offense and guard anyone on defense.

Bonner averaged 21 points and nine rebounds as a high school senior and was named a McDonald’s All-American. Her skills were already polished when she arrived at Auburn as an 18-year-old freshman, and she was bursting with potential. Not just as a college player, but as a WNBA prospect as well.

Everyone knew it.

Almost everyone.

That was the one thing that surprised Fortner about Bonner.

“I don’t think she had a clue as to how good she was, or how good she was going to be,” Fortner says.

One day at practice, the coaching staff pulled Bonner aside to have a conversation about her future.

“They told me I could be in the WNBA,” she recalls, “and I was like, ‘Me? What do you mean?’”

That was 17 years ago. Since then, Bonner has carved out a dream career for herself. At 35, she’s worked her way up from winning three Sixth Player of the Year awards to being a four-time All-Star. Now, she plays a key role for a Connecticut Sun team that’s fighting for its first WNBA championship.

Her talent is undeniable.

To everyone except Bonner.

“I still don’t think I’ve made it to that point,” she says. “Like to this day I’m like, ‘I should be better.’”

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(Cooper Neill/NBAE via Getty Images)

LaShelle Bonner has one of those laughs you can get lost in. She’s 52, but has a soft and sweet giggle like a cartoon princess.

It’s a Tuesday afternoon in Birmingham, Ala., and LaShelle is between patients. She’s an in-home care nurse, a profession she’s held for 30 years. When she’s done with her workday, LaShelle will go home and turn on the TV to watch her daughter, DeWanna, and the Sun take on the Las Vegas Aces in Game 2 of the WNBA Finals.

She and her husband will watch the game together, but separately.

She watches upstairs and he watches downstairs.

“He says I don’t know how to act,” LaShelle says with that sweet laugh. “I get too intense. I can’t help it.”

LaShelle has always had that intensity when it comes to cheering on her daughter, on the basketball court and in life.

DeWanna’s father, Greg McCall, has been in California since she was young, so for a lot of her childhood in Birmingham, it was just DeWanna and her mom.

Eventually, she’d spend summers with her dad in California, learning about basketball and training with McCall, who currently coaches at California State, Bakersfield.

But as a kid, DeWanna didn’t gravitate to the sport her dad played. She wanted to participate in every athletic activity possible.

“Every time I turned around she wanted to play something else,” LaShelle says. “Baseball, basketball, volleyball.”

LaShelle worked two jobs, and her mom, Shirley Sanders, helped out so that DeWanna could do everything she wanted.

But LaShelle didn’t mind the extra work it took because DeWanna made being a mom easy.

“She was always an active girl, but she was never any trouble,” LaShelle says. “She’s always been humble and sweet.”

DeWanna was a breeze to raise, but life wasn’t always easy for the two of them. The Bonners lived in the projects of Birmingham where DeWanna and her mom shared one bedroom.There wasn’t money for anything extra, and sometimes there wasn’t enough for the necessities, either.

“I remember one time asking to go to the movies, but we couldn‘t afford it,” DeWanna says. “And the next day we were trying to figure out how we were going to eat.”

DeWanna doesn’t talk much about her upbringing. Not because she’s embarrassed, but because she’s done so well for herself that people don’t realize what life was like for her as a kid. She went to college at Auburn and studied psychology. Now, she splits her time between the WNBA and various overseas teams. There’s enough glamor in DeWanna’s life now that people rarely ask about her childhood.

“It’s the same cliché story a lot of people probably have but don’t speak on,” DeWanna says. “I embrace it, but I don’t speak about it much, because once I got to Auburn, people kind of forgot about where I started because I went to this amazing university.”

But DeWanna doesn’t forget.

Birmingham, the projects, her mother, her grandmother, all those things made her who she is today.

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Bonner won championships with the Phoenix Mercury in 2009 and 2014. (Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE via Getty Images)

DeWanna has traveled the world. She went from Auburn to Phoenix when she was drafted No. 5 by the Mercury in 2009. She’s also played in the Czech Republic, Spain, Russia and, of course, Connecticut.

LaShelle, meanwhile, has lived her whole life in Birmingham and isn’t planning to leave.

“Unless my child can convince me otherwise,” she says.

But the two share a multitude of similarities, starting — but not ending — with their laughs. When DeWanna laughs, you can hear LaShelle’s sing-songy giggle.

“DeWanna is just an old maid like me,” LaShelle says. “We like the same type of old music, we like to sit out and just be to ourselves. We’re not too big on a crowd.”

When they’re together, DeWanna and LaShelle listen to Blues and talk about life. Sometimes, they like to go bowling, even though DeWanna always wins.

LaShelle cherishes those moments the two spend together back in Birmingham. She also tries to go to games whenever she can, and even if she’s watching on TV, LaShelle is radiating pride for her daughter.

“I’m a very proud mom,” she says. “From our background and where we come from, to now, very, very proud.”

DeWanna talks about her story being cliché, the tale of someone coming from nothing, but that’s not all it is.

Rather, for the longtime WNBA vet, it’s a story about never letting good be good enough.

LaShelle could have been content with DeWanna simply getting by, but instead she worked two CNA jobs so her daughter could play every sport in the book. And she always showed up for her, whether it was watching DeWanna as a cheerleader, waving her pom poms at the boys’ basketball games, or when she was older, driving two hours to Auburn for her college games.

Once, LaShelle was in the hospital with a blood clot and couldn’t make the trip to Auburn. Her doctor was going to discharge his patient, but then thought better of it.

“He didn’t trust me,” she says with a laugh. “He said, ‘I know you’re going to travel down there to that game, so I’m going to keep you one more day.’”

That’s where DeWanna got her tenacity and her intense work ethic.

It’s how she was able to work her way from a talented sixth player with the Mercury in her early WNBA years to playing the second-most minutes on the Sun roster and averaging 13.5 points, 4.7 rebounds, 2.8 assists and 1.2 steals per game in 2022.

In the semifinals, Bonner helped the Sun get past a Chicago Sky squad that upset them in last year’s playoffs, with 15 points, nine rebounds and five assists in Game 5.

She’s also not afraid to go after loose balls or get into the occasional tussle with an opposing player. And after 13 years as a professional basketball player, DeWanna still looks for growth in every opportunity.

“I want to win, I want to do whatever it takes,” she says. “Losing sucks. Well, no, let me not say losing sucks, because you learn so much from losing, but I’m the ultimate competitor. I want my teammates to know I’m there, and I want to win the game.”

Her toughness, she says, comes from LaShelle. Though LaShelle prefers the word “strong.”

“I don’t know why she thinks she’s tough,” LaShelle says with a laugh. “You ask her for the shirt off her back and she gone give it to you.

“But she has the patience. She can manage anything. She can play ball and still tend to her kids. She’s a strong woman.”

Bonner has twin daughters, born in 2017, and though they are kindergarteners now, she still refers to them as “my babies.”

They take up most of her free time, which is fine with DeWanna since she prefers to stay in anyway.

“I love just being in my house,” she says. “We are on the road so much, airplanes, traveling, that when I get home I just want to enjoy my house.”

DeWanna loves grilling in the backyard, and watching movies during her down time. Her favorite is “The Holiday” — year-round, even though it’s a Christmas movie. But usually, she watches whatever Disney film her girls pick. One graviates to princesses, and the other to things like the “Incredible Hulk,” but she finds a way to cater to both.

For DeWanna, there is nothing more important than family, and her teammates fall into that category.

When the Sun had their backs against the wall in two elimination games against the Sky, she took matters into her own hands, calling a “players only meeting.”

“DB is a champion,” teammate Natisha Hiedeman told reporters this week. “She’s been there. She knows what it takes. Her speeches have been on point lately, so we’ve been feeding off of that. She’s leading the way, and we’re following.”

It’s easy to follow DeWanna, Fortner says. The current Georgia Tech coach saw her develop into a leader during her days at Auburn.

“At her core, she’s just a good person,” Fortner says. “Her mother raised a fine, young woman. When you’re on a team, character matters, and to me, that is where it starts for DeWanna Bonner.

“It’s not about her, and that is easy to respect as a teammate.”

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(Michael Reaves/Getty Images)

DeWanna wasn’t always the confident player she is today. At 35, she’s had years to grow into herself. But when she was a kid in Birmingham, her lanky frame wasn’t seen as a positive.

That’s another cliché part of her story, DeWanna says, being the girl who was bullied for looking different.

Kids in middle school didn’t see her wingspan as a strength for defending, or her length as an advantage for finishing around the rim. To them, she was just tall and skinny, and that made her a target.

LaShelle remembers one day when the bullying was particularly bad, she had a heart-to-heart with her daughter.

“I told her, “You are this size and this height for a reason,’” LaShelle says.

And as she worked her way from shooting on the hoops outside her home in Birmingham, to AAU to Auburn and the WNBA, to now, playing for her third WNBA championship (the first two came with Phoenix in 2009 and 2014), DeWanna realized her mom was right.

“I learned to embrace it,” she said. “This is me. Like, I’m awesome, I’m amazing. And that paid off because now, here I am.”

Eden Laase is a Staff Writer at Just Women’s Sports. Follow her on Twitter @eden_laase.

The Connecticut Sun are rolling into the second half of the WNBA season on a high note.

While Jonquel Jones continues to make her case for league MVP, DeWanna Bonner has also been having a season of her own.

That includes last night’s game, in which Bonner dropped a double-double to lead the Sun past the Minnesota Lynx 82-71.

Bonner scored 31 points and added 11 rebounds in her effort, setting a new season-high for points in a game.

Jones added 20 points and seven rebounds despite being in foul trouble.

With the win, the Connecticut Sun are now tied for the top spot in the WNBA standings at 17-6. They have a first-place showdown set with the Las Vegas Aces on Tuesday, Aug. 24 at 7 p.m. ET.

Connecticut ended Chicago’s seven-game winning streak Sunday afternoon, defeating the Sky 74-58 at the Mohegan Sun Arena.

DeWanna Bonner led the charge for the Sun, putting up 23 points and seven rebounds. Bonner shot 47.1 percent from the field while hitting four of her seven threes.

Sunday marked Bonner’s second consecutive 20-point game for Connecticut.

Brionna Jones followed close behind Bonner, adding 21 points and nine rebounds to the Sun’s tally.

Connecticut’s victory served as redemption for the team after losing their last two matchups with Chicago.