TORONTO — Everything changed for Kia Nurse when she tore her anterior cruciate ligament in the 2021 WNBA playoffs.
The basketball star from Hamilton was locked in as starter for a team in the semifinals. She’d been selected as an all-star just two years prior. But in one awkward fall three years ago, she was plunged into the depths of surgery and rehab.
Nurse would miss the entire 2022 season due to the injury. She signed with the Seattle Storm for the 2023 campaign before a trade landed her with the Los Angeles Sparks last season.
Meanwhile, Nurse represented Canada at the Paris Olympics in August, but she struggled as the team failed to reach the knockout round for the second straight time.
The common thread throughout Nurse’s recent basketball journey? She just hasn’t quite felt like herself.
“I still love basketball with all of my heart, and it's my favourite thing that I get to do. And I'm so privileged to be able to say that I get to do it as a job,” Nurse said. "But the last two years for me have been just really rocky, up and down.”
Nurse, 28, will become a WNBA free agent as of Feb. 1. For now, she’s continuing her Raptors broadcast work with TSN and, on Monday, announced a new playing gig.
In February, Nurse will join fellow WNBAers Alysha Clark and Sydney Colson among 37 others for Athletes Unlimited’s third basketball season in Nashville.
Athletes Unlimited was founded as a women’s professional softball league in 2020 before expanding to basketball, volleyball and lacrosse. Its 24-game hoops campaign switches teams weekly and concludes by crowning a season-long individual champion.
Players earn points through a fantasy-style system that rewards team successes like wins as well as individual accomplishments from made three-pointers to steals to drawn fouls.
Outside of the unique scoring system, the game looks like traditional basketball — a major appeal to Nurse as she attempts to tap back into her roots.
“I am not proud of my performance at the Olympics and not necessarily proud of how I’ve been playing over the last two years. I just have goals of finding my true love of the game and kind of coming back and being stronger physically, being more fit and just ultimately having a good year,” Nurse said.
When Nurse’s career began in 2018, many WNBA players would ply their trade overseas during the off-season as a way of staying in shape and making additional money.
But over the past half-decade — and perhaps expedited by Brittney Griner’s 2022 detainment in Russia — more options have emerged stateside, including Athletes Unlimited.
“The (WNBA) now has a lot of the teams that have practice facilities, so they have full-time player development, practice-facility access and that's a big piece as well. But now ultimately we have these leagues at home like AU,” Nurse said.
Athletes Unlimited will not be the only professional women’s basketball operation in North America this winter.
A three-on-three league called Unrivaled, founded by WNBA stars Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart, will tip off in January in Miami.
Nurse said Unrivaled was an option for her, but she preferred Athletes Unlimited.
“I wanted a place where I'm happy with basketball again, really happy with myself and how I'm playing and a having a little more confidence boost from what I've had over these last two years. And I feel like AU, for me, that five-on-five setting was a big piece of it,” Nurse said.
The timing of the Athletes Unlimited schedule — deep enough into the WNBA off-season but with enough leeway to fine tune things before the 2025 campaign begins — also stood out to Nurse.
Ahead of AU, Nurse said she moved her training from Toronto to Hamilton, where she could stay closer to home and avoid the long highway drives.
And following two seasons in which Nurse’s WNBA teams suffered a combined 61 losses, she’s hoping to find a landing spot in free agency with a winning franchise.
“I want to … have an opportunity make a deep playoff run, be kind of like an X-Factor player, somebody who can go out there, be a three-and-D player, can help make winning plays,” she said.
Nurse said she and fellow WNBA veteran Bridget Carleton have discussed what went wrong in Paris and how it can be fixed ahead of Los Angeles 2028. Management changes have already occurred with the retirement of GM Denise Dignard and a mutual parting with head coach Victor Lapena.
The national team recently met up in Toronto for an informal training camp where Nurse and Carleton aimed to lay the groundwork for the culture they hope to create over the next four years.
“Getting back to the basics and just enjoying playing for Canada Basketball, but also creating a really strong, bonded culture where everybody does what they need to do for our team to win," she said.
"We understand our roles (and) we understand the commitment piece of it because now there's so much going on and people are all over the place."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 22, 2024.
Myles Dichter, The Canadian Press