UConn women’s basketball: Asjha Jones joins Portland Trail Blazers front office

Former UConn women’s basketball forward Asjha Jones will leave her position as assistant coach with the Washington Mystics to become the Portland Trail Blazer’s director of basketball strategy, the Mystics announced.

Jones is the second former Husky to join an NBA front office on a full-time basis along with Swin Cash, the New Orleans Pelicans’ vice president of basketball operations and team development. Sue Bird also spent the 2018-19 season with the Denver Nuggets as a basketball operations associate.

Previously, Jones spent the last three seasons with the Mystics as a player development assistant in 2018 and 2019 and a full-time assistant in 2020 following a successful career as a player in the WNBA. The Mystics selected Jones fourth overall in the 2002 draft out of UConn, where she played two seasons before being dealt to the Connecticut Sun.

There, Jones played under Mike Thibault (now the Mystics’ head coach) where she was a WNBA All-Star in 2007 and 2009 and missed both the 2013 and 2014 campaigns with injury. After 11 seasons in Connecticut, the Sun traded Jones to the Minnesota Lynx, where she helped capture the WNBA title alongside fellow UConn alumni Kalana Greene, Renee Montgomery, and Maya Moore.

Jones came to Storrs as part of the famed class of 1998 that also included Sue Bird, Swin Cash, Keirsten Walters and Tamika Williams — nicknamed the TASSK Force. She helped the Huskies win national championships in 2000 and 2002, earned All-Big East First Team honors and was also named Big East Tournament Most Outstanding Player in 2002.

Internationally, Jones won gold at the 2012 Olympics and the 2010 FIBA World Cup with Team USA, coached by Geno Auriemma.

She is the only women’s basketball ever to win a national championship, WNBA title, Olympic gold medal and World Cup as a player and a WNBA championship as a coach.