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OPHIE CUNNINGHAM,
Missouri basketball icon turned
versatile rookie for the Phoenix
Mercury, understands how
lucky she is to receive daily
basketball wisdom from her teammate
Diana Taurasi.
But Taurasi’s best advice so far for the
6-1 wing centered less around what she
needed to learn, and more on reinforcing
what she already has.
“You’ve been playing this game ever
since you were a kid,” Cunningham recalled
Taurasi telling her during training camp.
“You know how to play. I have seen you. You
know how to play, so just go out there and
have fun.”
And that’s just what Cunningham has
done every day since the Mercury made her
the first pick in the second round
(No. 13 overall) of the 2019 WNBA Draft.
The on-court comparisons are difficult
to find. She’s got the height of a wing,
but during a four-year career at Missouri
that included four trips to the NCAA
tournament, her assist percentage never
dipped below 20. And despite serving as the
first entry on every opposing scouting
report, she shot better than 56 percent
from two and 40 percent from three as
a senior, while grabbing rebounds and
steals in bunches.
“When you’re a senior in college you
know the ropes,” Cunningham says. “You
know what you’re supposed to do. Your
confidence level is at an all-time high the
whole time because you know you’re the
best of the best. I think something that I’ve
learned is, I just never want to stop learning.
I want to grow, I want to be a sponge and
keep learning from BG, keep learning from
Diana and Sandy [Brondello].”
That level of comfort on the court comes
as no surprise to anyone who saw her push
her Missouri teammates to be their bestselves at all times, motivating them (and
aggravating opponents) with a win-at-all-
costs mentality that drove plenty of
comparisons to Taurasi.
“I totally prefer the games more than
practices because, I mean, games you
can just go out there and show what you got
and win a ball game,” Cunningham says. “I
love to compete. Even though our practices
are very competitive, in games you have
fans, you have so many people either
cheering with you or against you and so, tocompete in that environment is just
awesome.”
It is the day-to-day that Cunningham
says presents the biggest challenge:
Bouncing back from a difficult practice,
keeping up with the speed of the league, the
quick turnaround between games.
But Cunningham isn’t stressing it. She’s
relishing it. “I’m trying to keep the games
simple and I’m getting paid to do what I
love,” she says. “So it can’t be that rough of
a life, right?” —Howard MegdalSOPHIE
CUNNINGHAM
PHOENIX
MERCURY
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