Candace Parker has been on the go since she announced her retirement from the WNBA in 2024.<\/p>\n
From broadcasting college and pro games to taking over as the president of Women’s Basketball for Adidas, the future Hall of Famer has been busy. She’s also had more time for what she calls her most important job \u2014 being a mom to her daughter Lailaa and sons Airr Larry and Hartt Summitt.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am doing more now than I have. I used to be able to use basketball as a crutch,\u201d Parker said in an interview with The Associated Press. \u201cNow it\u2019s like, you ain\u2019t going to rest up for nothing. I think this first year of retirement has kind of been my like \u2018What do I want to do more of in this first year?\u2019 My main priority is being there for my family. My daughter\u2019s going to be a junior next year and is going to start to get recruited for volleyball.\u201d<\/p>\n
Next up for Parker is the Los Angeles Sparks game on Sunday to have her jersey retired. She brought a championship to the franchise in 2016 and the Sparks will be playing Chicago, Parker’s hometown team that she went to and helped win a title for in 2021. <\/p>\n
The Sky will retire her No. 3 jersey later this summer, making her only the second WNBA player to have her number retired by two different teams. Lindsay Whalen had her jersey retired by both Connecticut and Minnesota.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s surreal to be honest,\u201d Parker said of the two jersey retirements. \u201cI would be lying if I didn\u2019t say that when I go into an organization, I want to be one of the best. I want to be remembered as one of the best. And sometimes one of the best doesn\u2019t always get their jersey retired.\u201d<\/p>\n
Parker, who also wrote a book “The Can-Do Mindset” that was just published, said when she was drafted by Los Angeles No. 1 in 2008 she wanted to win championships there.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy main thing when I look up into the rafters is like, I want to hang a banner, I wanted to hang banners,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
She brought one title to Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
Coming to Chicago she wanted to help her hometown win its first championship. It was something she accomplished in her brief time there.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be able to do that and walk around the city and know you have a championship, I think is super special for me,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Parker never wanted a retirement tour when she decided to end her playing career before the start of last season.<\/p>\n
\u201cI never got a chance to stop and like, really live in the moment and be where my two feet were,\u201d she said. \u201cNow I\u2019m able to. And because of that, I realized how much I missed out on by not stopping and, like, smelling roses. And so now I\u2019m, like, smelling every flower, every rose, every letter.\u201d<\/p>\n
One area that Parker is trying to get into, but hasn’t had success yet is WNBA ownership. She was part of the expansion bid put in by Nashville.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t think of why the league wouldn\u2019t want a team in Nashville. I feel like it\u2019s kind of the birthplace of women\u2019s basketball,\u201d Parker said. \u201cIn terms of Pat Summitt and what she\u2019s meant to the rest of women\u2019s basketball, why can\u2019t or why shouldn’t we have a team in Tennessee. I think it would be a state team and wouldn\u2019t just be a team from Nashville.\u201d <\/p>\n
If Nashville was to get an expansion team, that would just add more to Parker’s plate which is quite full right now.<\/p>\n
She’s busy trying to make women’s basketball at Adidas into the next big thing.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere women\u2019s basketball is in general, it was looked at as a negative balance, and now it\u2019s actually looked at as a business. It is the future of where sports are. We at Adidas have to be on our horse and make sure we understand the power of the dollar sign behind women. Women sell the numbers. That\u2019s the thing that\u2019s changed with women’s sports. It went from being looked at as a charity to now it\u2019s a runway.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Candace Parker has been on the go since she announced her retirement from the WNBA in 2024. From…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":21636,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[1488,62,67,132,68,10190,232],"class_list":{"0":"post-21635","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-los-angeles-sparks","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us","13":"tag-wires-bot","14":"tag-wnba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21635\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}