Storm Exit Interviews: The Word from Tina Thompson
Series note: The Storm conducted exit interviews on Oct. 4, giving me the opportunity to ask players everything from views on their season to fashion and hair tips. This is the final installment. Centers Ewelina Kobryn (Poland) and Ann Wauters (Belgium) weren't featured due to their quick return home. Here's a conversation with forward Tina Thompson. The WNBA's original No. 1 overall draft pick in 1997, Thompson signed with Seattle in 2012 as a free agent. She started one game but became a full-time reserve for the first time in her 16-year career as teammate Katie Smith meshed better in the opening lineup. Thompson's three-point shot was an asset, shooting 42.7 percent from that range this season. She sprained her knee and ankle at Los Angeles in July and didn't fully recover. Thompson averaged 8.9 points and 3.4 rebounds this season, scoring a WNBA-record 7,000th point on Sept. 18 against Chicago. She established a Twitter account (@ThomboiiNC) in October for her foundation that's "Empowering young women to embrace their inner tomboy and outer lady."
Q: You're still not choosing to play in the offseason to raise your son in Houston. From playing overseas in the past, what did you tell rookie Shekinna Stricklen about her first trip? Thompson: She's going to Turkey, which is great, she's playing in a competitive country. A lot of American players are there and the Turkish teams are pretty good as well. The players there in Turkey -- a lot of their national team players play there, so the level of competition that she'll face on a regular basis is going to be pretty good. I just gave her simple advice, you know. 'You've gone through an entire season now, you have that under your belt. You know what the WNBA's like, for sure it's different from college, so work on the things that you feel like you need to get better at. A lot of the things that (Storm coach) Brian (Agler) said to you this season were for a reason. Not only did he feel that you could do them, but you could probably get better at them. Those things would help further your career and performance in the WNBA.' She's excited. She had a great rookie season and she played extremely well, especially when called upon. She, as well as Alysha (Clark), rose to the occasion going from not really playing at all to sometimes starting and playing big minutes. I was really proud of them.
Q: What were highs and lows for them this season from you perspective? Thompson: For me, it was more mental things than physical things. We have a very veteran team and we started kind of shorthanded, then we had injuries and things like that. So you go from your dream of playing in the WNBA to getting there and being really hungry and anxious and not getting huge opportunities to having the biggest opportunity playing and actually doing well. But then your veteran players, they get better, they get healthy, they come back from the Olympics and your role changes, so it's definitely an adjustment mentally, for sure. Just knowing kinda how to handle it and find a balance.
Q: You mentioned veteran players, where are you at as far as returning, knowing you have one more year left on this contract? Thompson: For the last six years I've literally just kind of evaluated myself in the offseason. For me, this is the first time in my entire career that I was like injured. That was like, 'Oh, wow! This is different.' Something I've never experienced before, so it was just a lot mentally and physically going through that. I basically told (Storm president and CEO) Karen (Bryant) that I'm just going to kind of reevaluate. The last thing I want to do is to just come back simply because I have another year on my contract. I have personal expectations of myself. No matter how good it may look to everybody else, it's how good it feels to me. If I don't feel good about the effort and my abilities and the things that I did when I was on the court, then for me, I just kinda feel personally that I'm doing a disservice. You could probably call it obsessive-compulsive. It probably is. But (laughs), that's just who I am. I'm going to go back to the drawing board, as I always do, and do the things that are physically taxing once I get rest and get kinda back healthy, again, and if I feel like I can do it at a level that's comfortable for me, then I'll definitely be back. I won't be playing anywhere else (in the WNBA), for sure.
Q: You're saying you have to rest your knee? Thompson: I'm not totally physically healed. I don't know how I'm going to be. I didn't like how I felt physically (this season) at the end or just after the Olympic break. I was limited in things that I could do and stuff like that. Just to feel good, especially when your mind is telling you or wanting you to do other things and you get out there and try and do it and it doesn't work. It's frustrating. Especially when you've played at a really high level for a long time. That's just not something I want to go through. It's not something that I even want to put my teammates through either, whether they know it or not. For me, it's not a comfortably place to be in.
Q: And that was a new feeling for you? Thompson: Yeah, I've never been hurt. I mean, I've been hurt, but I've never been injured. So, yeah, it was tough. That was the first time that I could mentally process what my teammates in the past have gone through because it's not something -- the most serious injury I've had is that I broke my nose. It was two days before the first season of the WNBA and I played in opening day. And that was serious for me. I've pulled my calf muscles, tweaked an ankle or something like that. But I was better in like a matter of days. It was lingering, but it wasn't something that totally stopped me from being able to compete the way I wanted to.
Q: You obviously missed games due to your knee injury before the Olympic break, but even up until Game 3 of the playoff series against Minnesota you were feeling the pain? Thompson: Yeah, for three months...I probably haven't had a good night's sleep in three months other than being just completely exhausted. But even then, that's not really good sleep. Right now, as we speak, my leg is still numb. My toes? I know that they're there, but I can't feel them. So, yeah, that's what I've been going through for the last three months.
Q: There are good NBA physicians in Houston, do you utilize them or do you have your own people? Thompson: For sure, but it's actually something that you can't rehab. As far as my ankle or MCL, Tom (Spencer), our trainer, is amazing and our team of doctors are great. I did all of the proper rehab I needed to do for that. But nerve damage is something totally different. It's not something that you can rehab. They (nerves) have to literally generate themselves over a period of time. I could go as long as another six months before I completely get the feeling in my knee and in my leg. And it might not be exactly the same. They said I'll have a full recovery, which is great, but the rate at which nerves regenerate is really, really slow.
Q: And you have no clue how your body does that because you've never been injured before? Thompson: (Laughs) No. And I don't think they really know. They know the amount that regenerates over time, but it depends on the body. You can't really tell. The good thing for me is that I heal pretty quickly. I went from not being able to move my leg at all to being able to step on it in a matter of like a week or so. That was a good sign and mass improvement considering the situation. It's all positive. It's not something that I'm worried about. It just can be frustrating.
Q: The offseason is about seven months, so when that time period comes that you need to start doing the heavy work to get back into WNBA-shape, if you're not feeling where you were in even 2011, is that when you say, 'Eh, I'm not going to come back?' Thompson: It's more so...even though I was playing and running and stuff like that, it's just me being able to go from side to side comfortably. It was all restricted, like I couldn't lift weights, I can't cross my leg to the right side. Just little things like that. I couldn't put extreme pressure on it. I couldn't do certain stretches and I couldn't squat or do certain things that you actually need to do to physically to become stronger and stuff like that. It's hard to not be able to do those things and still be completely prepared (to play). I'm sure in maybe two to three months I'll be able to do those things without actually causing more damage or stopping the process, but that was the concern. Once I'm able to just run and just...I couldn't even just go and do an extra workout on the treadmill and stuff like that just because the results of that -- I'd probably be in more pain or my foot would be numb. So, I'd start the game where I would usually be at the end of the game. Even warming up, I warmed up a lot less than I usually did because I didn't want to get too fatigued. Once (the knee) cools down, getting it back up and going was hard. I had to tweak a lot of stuff that I normally did in order to keep myself at a steady place.
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Storm Exit Interviews: The Word from Tina Thompson