The Minnesota Lynx for the second consecutive summer made a late season acquisition to help bolster its roster and playoff run. It was Myisha Hines-Allen last season who came from Washington and provided inside strength and toughness off the bench as the hometown WNBA club went the distance and finished league runners-up.
DiJonai Carrington, the fifth year guard, was acquired from Dallas August 3. The veteran has been very effective off the bench as a key reserve with her toughness and spunk on both ends of the court.
“I know it’s been a kind of ebbs and flows this season,” the 5’11” Carrington told me after a recent practice. “But God always has His hand in things, even when I didn’t see what was going on for the first three months of the season.”
Carrington in February was part of a sign-and-trade, four-team deal that brought her to Dallas from Connecticut, who drafted her 20th overall in 2021. With the Wings she played 20 games (13 starts), averaging over 10 points a game and five rebounds.
She also spent time dealing with an upper body injury. While recovering, the San Diego, Calif. native also had to deal with trade rumors — Carrington evidently was traded just days before the August 7 annual trading deadline.
Carrington said she always saw herself as a pro player after college. Her father, Darren Carrington, is a former NFL player, and her older brother Darren II played wide receiver at Oregon.
“My sister’s eight years older than me, and she was already into organized basketball by the time I really was aware of what sports were,” she recalled. “It was just a natural kind of transition into playing.
“My parents let me play all sports,” she continued. Playing hoops soon became her favorite sport, followed by volleyball; Carrington later scored over 2,000 points in high school and made All-American. She chose Stanford for college.
It was there where Carrington experienced her first “a-ha” moment — college basketball is a chore. “It was just hard,” she stressed. “The practices were really hard, especially pre-season. In high school, you have your two-hour organized team practices. But in college it’s like year-round, you never really have a break, maybe at least a week or two right after the season. It’s just a continuous cycle.”
But in the classroom, Carrington said another “a-ha” moment opened her eyes wide open. “I always knew I love psychology,” she pointed out.
“Growing up, I always was interested in people and why they do what they do. I’ve always been interested in understanding people’s way of thinking and what has led to that.
“When I got to college, my first summer I took an African American Women’s Lives class. I fell in love with all the information I learned, and my professor ended up being my advisor. It was amazing.
“I learned way more in that eight-week class than I had my entire 18 years at that time about myself, about Black history, about the African Diaspora, all of it. I was just intrigued, and I wanted to just keep learning. I just kept taking classes because I was interested in them.”
By her junior year, Carrington’s advisor told her she had earned enough credits for a degree and could pursue a second. “I was like, ‘Alright let’s do it. Let’s double up, and I just dedicated [myself] to both of them,” said Carrington, who graduated from Stanford with degrees in psychology and African and African American studies. She played her final collegiate season as a grad transfer at Baylor.
As her two former teams, Connecticut and Dallas, won’t make the playoffs, Minnesota will be the top seed when the post season begins. “I think that’s all testament to just the faith that I have and how it’s unwavering despite the current circumstances of my situations,” said Carrington.
Charles Hallman welcomes reader comments to challman@spokesman-recorder.com.