{"id":761727,"date":"2026-04-29T16:30:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T16:30:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/761727\/"},"modified":"2026-04-29T16:30:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T16:30:13","slug":"sparks-to-retire-two-time-wnba-champ-delisha-milton-jones-jersey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/761727\/","title":{"rendered":"Sparks to retire two-time WNBA champ DeLisha Milton-Jones’ jersey"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Sparks<\/a> will retire former player DeLisha Milton-Jones\u2019 No. 8 jersey on July 28 when the team hosts the New York Liberty as a part of the league\u2019s 30th anniversary celebration.<\/p>\n

Milton-Jones played 11 years for the Sparks, helping lead them to back-to-back titles in 2001 and 2002<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like one of those moments where it\u2019s Christmas, and you\u2019re anticipating getting a gift and and when the day finally is here, that feeling you can\u2019t even describe is rather euphoric and nostalgic all at the same time, and it brings a peace about you in a way that you can\u2019t explain,\u201d Milton-Jones told The Times. \u201cBecause you put so much time, energy and effort into everything that you did in that moment in your life, and now to be rewarded in this manner is just pretty big.\u201d<\/p>\n

Milton-Jones will be the fourth Sparks player to have her number retired after Lisa Leslie<\/a> (No. 9), Penny Toler (No. 11) and Candace Parker<\/a> (No. 3).<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m going to be cheesing from ear-to-ear,\u201d she said about the upcoming ceremony. \u201cI\u2019m probably going to be fighting back tears, because when I think about my time spent in the purple and gold man, it was riddled with so many hard days, but it taught me so much about being a winner, and that turned into being a champion two times over.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now the head coach at Old Dominion, the 51-year-old Milton-Jones was inducted into the women\u2019s basketball Hall of Fame in 2022. She is also a two-time gold medalist and formerly coached at Pepperdine before taking over at Old Dominion.<\/p>\n

She played 17 years in the WNBA after being drafted fourth overall by the Sparks in 1999 and set the record for most games played in league history before that was broken by Sue Bird. In addition to the Sparks, she played for Atlanta, New York, Washington and San Antonio. She played the first six seasons of her career with the Sparks and returned for a second stint from 2008-2012.<\/p>\n

Her 5,571 career points also rank 16th in WNBA history.<\/p>\n

Milton-Jones averaged 17.0 points, eight rebounds and four assists in the Sparks\u2019 2001 championship run, the franchise\u2019s first. She played all 40 minutes of Game 1 of the 2002 WNBA finals and scored 17 points with three blocks and two steals.<\/p>\n

She was also a WNBA All-Star in 2000 and holds the franchise record for first-half points with 27 and 18 in a single quarter.<\/p>\n

The Sparks and Liberty faced each other in the first-ever WNBA game in 1997<\/a>, and the Sparks wanted to find a way to honor some of their franchise greats during the 30th anniversary season.<\/p>\n

Milton-Jones said they had been talking about a number retirement ceremony for a few years, but the timing felt right to do it this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cI found out [officially] a month ago,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd I cried like a baby. I was just elated that it was finally going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Sparks will retire former player DeLisha Milton-Jones\u2019 No. 8 jersey on July 28 when the team hosts…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":761728,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[49],"tags":[313033,2563,12356,2968,313032,284017,203172,1520,471,68068,449,34961,4232,62,67,132,68,232,1516,1628],"class_list":["post-761727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-30th-anniversary-celebration","tag-career","tag-jersey","tag-league","tag-milton-jone","tag-most-game","tag-much-time","tag-new-york-liberty","tag-no","tag-old-dominion","tag-point","tag-record","tag-sparks","tag-sports","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-wnba","tag-wnba-history","tag-year"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116488950786926224","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761727","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=761727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761727\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/761728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=761727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=761727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=761727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}