Candace Parker
The Visionary
The future, and what is barely possible, reads round the next corner.
Candace Parker reads as The Visionary, a player who saw what basketball could become before the sport consented. She dunked in an Illinois tournament, won the McDonald's All-American Dunk Contest, and forced positional evolution in the WNBA as a four insisting on pace before that identity was accepted. Through shoulder injuries, new motherhood, and costly overseas returns, Parker has led from conviction, treating the game's future as something to be authored, not awaited.
“I just wanted it to bring attention. I dunked in Downers Grove in a Christmas tournament my sophomore year and I woke up the next day and there were news cameras on our lawn and I was just like, it's that big a deal?”
“I don't want to just dunk. My dad always told me, so you want to just be known as a dunker? I wanted it to be a part of my game, and if it brought people to see the game, then they could see all the other things I can do.”
“We're doing this to just grow the game. But at some point you're like, at what cost are you gonna let some of these things go? Twenty times what I made in the WNBA overseas — that's how I fed my daughter.”
Knuckleheads with Quentin Richardson & Darius Miles: “KH Classic: Candace Parker”
LISTEN AT THE SOURCE ↗THE RECORD IS CHECKABLE