DeWanna Bonner, the First of Her Name, Two-Time WNBA Champion, Six-Time WNBA All-Star, Three-Time WNBA Sixth Woman of the Year, deserves a little more respect than what she's been receiving of late.
If you're new here, and by here I mean the WNBA, I can kind of understand why you might not realize exactly who Bonner is. Though it's difficult to let you totally off the hook, even if you only started watching in 2024—because that's the season Bonner spent with the Conneticut Sun, who finished the season third in the league and were coached by Stephanie White. So even if you were really only watching games to see Caitlin Clark play (which, by the way, is okay: it's 100% fine to have a favorite player and only want to see the games she's in, people do that all the time), you would have encountered Bonner at some point.
If you started watching in 2025, it would have been even more difficult to escape Bonner, because that was a big season for her in more ways than one. She followed White to the Indiana Fever, a move that was announced during free agency ahead of the season and that was celebrated by the same fans who were also thrilled to have White. (I'd be curious to know what the Venn diagram of Fever fans who were excited about Bonner and White but who are now calling for the return of Christie Sides would look like.) And they had a good reason to celebrate: Bonner is an incredible basketball player.
She's also, by nearly all accounts, a really nice person. She's a WNBA Champion who somehow missed the 2017 season to give birth to twins and returned—and managed to help lead the Sun to the WNBA Finals two years later. Have you ever given birth? Can you imagine what it takes to grow a human, birth that human, physically and emotionally recover, and then get back into professional athlete shape? And that's just for one baby.
I know we see athletes like Serena Williams, Candace Parker, Skylar Diggins, Katie Lind, Alex Morgan, and more do this and make it look easy, but... it's not.
But all of that isn't why Bonner deserves a lot more credit for dealing with everything she's been handed since her mid-season decision to leave the Fever and go back to the Phoenix Mercury (where she won championships, where her now-wife, Alyssa Thomas, also plays). Sure, it wasn't the best move in the eyes of many, and it's valid and fair to say it was disappointing for Fever fans (and probably the team). But that doesn't mean she deserves all of this.
Death threats, racist comments, threats to the people she loves the most: why is this what athletes have to bear? For changing teams?
Even in the face of renewed controversy and taunts, Bonner's still staying quiet. That might be because she's part of an upcoming ESPN documentary, which will hopefully allow her the opportunity to say what she wants to say (whatever that might be).
But it might also be because she doesn't have to traffic in faux-outrage and clickbait to make money and compete. This season isn't her strongest by any measure, but it's also her seventeenth. Do you know how unusual it is for a WNBA player to remain competitive for that long? To overcome wear and tear, to keep pressing on and playing the game they love? It's another thing that others, like Diana Taurasi, who played 20 seasons, and Sue Bird, who played 19, have also made look easy. It's not.
There's something to be said for staying the course and holding your head high. There's something to celebrate about not giving in to the very real human impulse to defend yourself in the heat of the moment. Bonner has, more often than not, met each offensive moment with grace and patience, something she doesn't owe anyone — it's something she chooses to give.
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