In case you haven't heard, Elena Delle Donne is good at basketball, but didn't want to play any more.
Crave more? Well, don't worry, because ESPN's got you covered.
Celebrating the one-week anniversary of the last time someone mentioned Delle Donne in print, the worldwide leader has gone all-out for some, I guess, exclusive info on the situation.
Not only did resident women's basketball expert Michelle Voepel weigh in, there is also a big "Outside the Lines" story online and another coming on TV Sunday at 9 a.m. (which can probably 20 other times thereafter). A preview of the TV report can be seen above.
But let me save you some time and summarize the story for you:
- Delle Donne is awesome at basketball, but didn't like the sport any more.
- She's now an OK volleyball player at Delaware
- A still-befuddled Geno Auriemma is quoted saying the same thing six times and begins to sound like Fox Mulder.
Exhilarating stuff.
To illustrate my point about Auriemma's quotes, I've pulled every one of them from the OTL print story and put them, in order, after the jump.
- "I don't know how you can play that much basketball and be that good at it and say, 'I hate it since the time I was 13.' To me, those two things don't go together … that you would be that good at something and not enjoy any of it. It's hard for me to come to grips with."
- "I'm still not able to see how that makes any sense. I didn't understand it and haven't understood it right from the beginning."
- "Nope," Auriemma says. "Not anybody that was any good -- let's put it that way. Never experienced anything like that from somebody who is really talented and successful.
- "How could [you] get to be the best if you don't have some passion for it?" he asks. "It would've come out a long time before. A lot of kids probably don't like playing piano, but I don't know that you become the best if you don't like it at all. At some point, you would screw it up on purpose, wouldn't you?"
- "I can't imagine Elena Delle Donne didn't love playing basketball," he says. "I can imagine she may not have loved the stuff that came along with it. That, 'I got to be Elena Delle Donne,' or, 'I've got to play at a certain level.' Maybe that makes more sense than, 'I hated the game since I was 13.'
- "There's something not quite out there yet," he says. "There's a lot of things that don't fit together."
The truth is out there, Geno.