Cheyenne Parker-Tyus has been working hard to get back this season and help the Las Vegas Aces to another championship.
The 11-year veteran signed with Las Vegas this offseason knowing she'd be out for most of the year as she was pregnant with her second child. She gave birth to Yoshua on July 1.
Now, she's trying to come back from giving birth quickly, setting a target date of Sept. 9 to play her first game. Other players such as Napheesa Collier and Candace Parker have come back in the same season
they gave birth. Parker did it in 53 days. It took Collier 74. If Parker-Tyus plays on next Tuesday it would be 68 days.
“I did the research to see how quickly people came back,” Parker-Tyus said in an interview with The Associated Press. “Can it be done?, I always have the mindset that I’m built differently.”
Parker-Tyus gave birth naturally as opposed to having a cesarean section when she had her daughter in 2021 , which she feels helped quicken her recovery time.
“Most of the time you have to wait six weeks to start training, but I started at four weeks, so I think that kind of gave me a little bit of an edge,” she said. “I was able to start a little sooner to just do the little things like getting back to my core.”
The 33-year-old post player might even exceed her target date as she has a chance to play over the weekend, when the Aces host the Chicago Sky on Sunday.
“Definitely would like to at least play the last two games of the season and that's the the plan, for now,” she said. “It was just kind of go week by week, see how I feel.”
Parker-Tyus knows she can help the Aces, who have won 12 straight games and vaulted to second place in the standings. Las Vegas won back-to-back championships in 2022 and 2023 before losing to New York in the semifinals last season.
She wasn't even sure the Aces would want her this year. Parker-Tyus was concerned when she had a Zoom call with Las Vegas coach Becky Hammon and team president Nikki Fargas in the winter when she was playing in China to gauge their interest. She knew she had to discuss her pregnancy.
Parker-Tyus is friends with Dearica Hamby, who has an on-going lawsuit against the Ace s over alleged mistreatment because of her pregnancy.
Hamby, who has two children, was always a sounding board for her. Parker-Tyus said that Hamby was surprised at how the Aces responded, but knew each situation is different.
“I was sweating bullets," she recalled. "I’ve played in this league for a long time and knew I just had to be honest and up front and they appreciated that. I just was so scared and nervous that they would just go 'we’ll reach out next year or something.”
Hammon and Fargas put Parker-Tyus' mind at ease quickly on the call.
"I know she was nervous as she broke down in tears. We were all crying. It was actually a pretty cool moment. At the end of the day, bringing a baby into the world that’s amazing,” Hammon said. “We just said, ‘we’ll wait for you.' We look at her as a long term piece. It wasn’t just for this year. Like, we want we want to build that relationship with her, and give her an environment that she can really flourish in."
Anything that Parker-Tyus, who was an All-Star in 2023, can provide Las Vegas would be a bonus at this point.
“My job at the end of the day is to always do what’s best for the Aces and try to put the Aces in the best position to win,” Hammon said. “If we can get her in there and integrate that, that’s going to be great.”
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AP WNBA: https://apnews.com/hub/wnba-basketball
