Storm Exit Interviews: The Word from Tina Thompson

posted by Jayda Evans: Womens Hoops Blog
Monday, October 15, 2012 at 8:12am EDT

Jayda Evans covers college and pro women's basketball. While its her first year on the Washington beat, she has covered the Storm since its inception. She'll offer observations, critiques, occasional off-beat tales and answers to select e-mail inquires. Evans also has written a book on the Storm and women's hoops, called "Game On!"

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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.

Storm Exit Interviews: The Word from Tina Thompson

2012 WNBA Season

Tina Thompson

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