WNBA All-Star Skills Challenge: Delle Donne impresses in Shooting Stars
· Yahoo Sports
CHICAGO — Elena Delle Donne played her last WNBA game in Sept. 2023, but her jump shot looks like it hasn’t taken a day off since.
In the inaugural WNBA All-Star Shooting Stars challenge, Team Washington — made up of Delle Donne, current Mystic Shakira Austin and high school player Jezelle “GG” Banks — took the win in large part because its legend was in the best form of any of the four former WNBA players. While the rest of the retired players struggled to hit from the long range, the first 50-40-90 player in WNBA history found her stroke from distance to help Washington advance to the final round, and then the youngster took it home.
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Banks, a gold medalist for the USA at the U-18 level and a member of Team Durant in grassroots basketball, hit three of the six jumpers in the first round before finishing with two half-court shots (no other team hit more than one). She carried the team in the final round, when they knew they had to hit a target score of 25. She made more of the first six jumpers and hit the half-court shot to give Washington 27 points.
Washington kept shooting even after they had the trophy secured, and Banks made another halfcourt shot, earning the largest cheers of the evening as she celebrated the victory.
As Delle Donne told the broadcast following the competition, her stamina wasn’t there for the second round, and she needed Banks to carry the load. The Class of 2027 recruit is ranked No. 4 nationally by the 247Sports Composite.
The winner of the Shooting Stars competition gets $15,000 from the WNBA and an additional $85,000 from Aflac through a partnership with the WNBPA. Every current player participant makes $7,500 for appearing.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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