With the WNBA on hiatus for the next three weeks during the Paris Olympics , Connecticut Sun coach Stephanie White’s top priority is giving herself — and her team — a badly-needed break. The team won’t be on the court in Uncasville at all for the next week, which White is spending with her four sons on vacation for their first trip to Europe, joking that it will also likely be their only one. “I’m looking forward to that and just spending some quality time with the family,” White said.
“Any season, but this condensed season especially, is physically, mentally and emotionally draining. For me, being with my family fills my cup, so (I’ll be) able to do that and ..
. recalibrate from a mental standpoint and come back ready to make a strong push.” Connecticut superstar Alyssa Thomas will also be in Europe, though without the luxury of a rest from basketball.
Thomas is competing in her first Olympic Games with Team USA going for an eighth consecutive gold medal, and fiancée DeWanna Bonner is headed to Paris to cheer her on after the couple went head-to-head in the WNBA All-Star game on Saturday. But even though she won’t be competing in Paris, Bonner already has a space lined up to get her own training in around Thomas’ games. “It’s already done.
Already got my gym, got my workout times, got my workout schedule,” the 36-year-old Bonner said with a smile. “Nothing changes for me. I’m nonstop, because I gotta keep this body in shape.
” Sun guard DiJonai Carrington is currently enjoying a beach vacation with girlfriend and Indiana Fever forward NaLyssa Smith, but she said she looking forward to seeing the team get back in the gym without Thomas and Bonner. The star duo, in their 11th and 15th WNBA seasons respectively, both averaged almost 33 minutes per game in the first half of the season, and the Sun hope to establish a stronger foundation of depth to support their veterans through an anticipated grueling playoff run in the second half of the year. “You’re gonna see teams are gonna separate themselves (during the break).
We need to be a team that separates, and we’re not going to have AT and DB while we do that,” Carrington said. “We rely on them heavily offensively and defensively, so all of us having to step up and work on our stuff in practice without them is going to definitely help with when they come back.” The return to practice may be even more important for Connecticut than expected, with two new additions to its roster for the second half of the season.
The Sun entered the break with an 82-74 loss to the New York Liberty at Barclays Center on July 16, and a day later the team made a major trade to acquire sharpshooter Marina Mabrey from the Chicago Sky . Connecticut also added depth to its frontcourt, signing forward Caitlin Bickle to a seven-day hardship contract on Saturday. Both Mabrey and Bickle will need to hit the ground running out of the break, because Connecticut plays six of its first eight games after the Olympics on the road.
The team also has multiple matchups against the Seattle Storm and Las Vegas Aces remaining on its schedule, both of whom beat the Sun by double digits in meetings earlier this season. “We’re going to be playing teams for the second, third, fourth time, so teams are going to make adjustments and play us to our strengths,” White said. “Some of the things that the numbers show might not be our strengths, we’re going to work on those individually and collectively .
.. I think it’s going to be a great chance for us, one to get some rest, recover and recuperate, but two to take a big step forward in the things that we’re doing and trying to be different in things that we’re doing both offensively and defensively after the break.
” The Sun report back to Connecticut for practice beginning Aug. 2, which will give the team a full two weeks to establish chemistry with the new pieces before resuming play against the Dallas Wings on Aug. 16 in Arlington, Texas.
Mabrey comes onto a team with a well-established lineup after starting all 23 games for the Sky in the first half of the season, so figuring out her role in the new-look rotation will be a key priority. Bickle has some familiarity with White’s system after briefly playing with Connecticut on a training camp contract in 2023, but the forward has never made a WNBA roster or appeared in a game in the league. Individualized player development work will also be a priority for the Sun during the break.
The Olympics put the WNBA on pause for longer than its typical All-Star break, which also condenses the regular season and significantly limits teams’ practice time around games and rest days. Carrington, Connecticut’s breakout star of the season, spent most of the 2023-24 offseason rehabbing an foot injury that nagged her last year, and she is also averaging 12 more minutes per game than she has ever played in her professional career. The break will give her her first opportunity in nearly a year to put in work on her solo game.
“The first part is definitely just going to be getting rest and getting all the soreness and little ailments out,” Carrington said. “We haven’t been able to practice a ton, and for me personally I haven’t been able to get in the gym and do a bunch of one-on-one stuff because I have just been kind of exhausted a little bit. It’s going to be nice to just do some skill work and fine-tune things.
” Offense was the Sun’s biggest issue through the first half of 2024, ranking in the bottom half of the WNBA in points per game, 3-point percentage and effective field goal percentage despite holding the league’s second-best record. Adding Mabrey should give Connecticut a boost from beyond the arc, and White said she hopes the recovery time will also help the Sun address the slow starts and fourth-quarter breakdowns that they’ve struggled to resolve since the season began. “Some of it is fatigue.
I mean, DeWanna Bonner is 15 years in the league and has been playing 30-plus minutes,” White said. “Brionna Jones, while she’s been outstanding, is still working her way back (from an Achilles rupture in 2023). Ty Harris has never been in this position in her career to have to play as efficiently as we need her to play for 30-plus minutes a game .
.. As a staff we’ve got to continue to find creative ways to address slippage, because we know it doesn’t get any better when we get back on the road.
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