Last week, we wrote about Elena Delle Donne being named to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Things have been hectic on my end, and sorry it is late. But the Washington Mystics will have more to celebrate with Chamique Holdsclaw and the USA Basketball women’s national team also being named to the Class of 2026.
Holdsclaw was a six-time WNBA All-Star and was the No. 1 overall pick to the Mystics in the 1999 WNBA Draft. She was widely known as the Mystics’ first franchise player and was part
of Washington’s 2002 squad that made the Eastern Conference Finals. Holdsclaw was also a member of the 2000 USA Basketball women’s national team that won the Gold Medal.
The 1996 USA Basketball women’s national team was the first USA women’s team to pave the way for the Americans to win the Olympic Gold Medal eight straight times in 5×5 women’s basketball. The team’s biggest star players were not in the WNBA because … there was no WNBA then. Their biggest stars included recently graduated college players like Lisa Leslie from Southern Cal, Rebecca Lobo from UConn, Dawn Staley from Virginia and Jennifer Azzi from Stanford. A future Washington Mystics player, Nikki McCray (later McCray-Penson) was a guard on the team. The Americans were coached by then-Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer.
McCray-Penson played for the Mystics from 1998-2001 before moving onto other teams. She then became a long-time college assistant coach at South Carolina before becoming the head coach at Old Dominion (2017-20) ad then Mississippi State (2020-21). She passed away in 2023 due to complications from breast cancer.
