I had, of course, seen Breanna Stewart play, but I hadn't seen Breanna Stewart.
It’s a realization that emerged slowly as I assembled this week's newsletter - how a player whose athletic achievements border on the mythological had constructed an even more profound legacy by making herself visible in moments most would hide from.
She chose to stand at the forefront of struggles familiar to too many women (and to be clear, one woman is too many), transforming private pain into public purpose.
Yet in focusing the story on her Achilles injury - on how nothing simply happens to us, but happens for us - I wrestled with leaving this broader context on the cutting room floor.
Then I realized: these narratives aren't separate, but symmetrical. Both speak to the essential truth that our deepest wounds can become portals to purpose, particularly when we allow ourselves to be seen in our struggle.
These are not my words. They are hers.
"Yeah, I'm a great basketball player," she reflected in a 2021 interview with The Ringer. "But all of the things I've been through, people are going through. Realizing they can be OK from the trauma they've experienced - I want to make that the real message."
None of us are invincible to the devastation of the human experience.
Life does not give a fuck who you are.
Not even if you're a basketball god.
But perhaps that's exactly why her story matters so much - because it illuminates how our darkest moments can demand transformation, not just of ourselves, but of what's possible for others.
I am excited for many of you to truly see Breanna Stewart this week.
It turns out the best of who she is emerges most powerfully when she has eyes on her - not because she makes excellence look effortless, but because she makes transformation look possible.
In your corner,
The Legend:
Breanna Stewart's rise felt inevitable - not a series of peaks, but plateaus of ever-increasing altitude.
By age 23, she had already collected four NCAA titles, four Final Four MOPs, Olympic gold, and WNBA Rookie of the Year.
Then came 2018, when she assembled a year of achievements that most legends spend careers pursuing: WNBA MVP, a league championship, Finals MVP, FIBA World Cup gold, and World Cup MVP.
Each trophy, each milestone, each moment of excellence built upon the last until dominance felt like her natural state.
Even college basketball's all-time winningest coach Geno Auriemma - her former coach at UConn - seemed almost resigned to the effortlessness of her transcendence.
“She makes everything look easy.”
The Moment:
EuroLeague Final. Hungary. April 14, 2019.
She rose for a jumpshot - a motion she had performed tens of thousands of times before.
The moment between leap and landing lasted forever, then shattered.
No thunder. No warning. Just silence where a sound should have been. The Achilles tendon, that ancient tether between intention and action, had ruptured completely.
“I was at my highest high, and in a split second, I was at my lowest low.”
There's a particular cruelty in how mundane catastrophe can be - the sudden recognition that your body, the instrument you've spent a lifetime perfecting, has betrayed you in the most fundamental way.
The player who had once walked into Coach Auriemma's office as a freshman, looked him in the eye, and predicted - then delivered - four national championships, now couldn't predict her next step.
The Words:
"My deepest fear was not being able to be back. Just thinking about - there was so much more that I still wanted to do, in basketball, in life.”
The Truth:
Imagine a clock whose hands suddenly move in both directions.
In rehabilitation, Stewart found herself simultaneously reaching backward and forward - trying to grasp the athlete she'd been while glimpsing the player she might become.
Her best friend's words carved the path forward: “You're not going to be the same Stewie as you were before. You have to work three times harder to be better than you were before.”
It was a truth that crystallized slowly: this wasn't about returning to form, but about reimagining what form could be.
With mobility limited, she developed her handle.
With explosive leaping impossible, she refined footwork.
It wasn’t just adaptation - it was evolution.
Stewart emerged not as a diminished version of her former self, but as an expanded one. She had transformed the very boundaries of her game, turning what could have been an ending into a beginning.
The Echo:
The bubble season of 2020 unfolded like a fever dream, but Stewart's dominance felt like her same old waking reality.
Finals MVP. Another championship. A sweep of Las Vegas where she averaged 28.3 points per game.
The very achievements that once defined her had returned, but now they spoke a different language.
A lesson emerged not about comebacks, but about acceptance, and what it had yielded: a more sophisticated post game, improved ball-handling, the same fluid athleticism now layered with new dimensions. She could still drive at will, pull up whenever she chose.
But each movement now carried the weight of understanding - that control in basketball, as with time - as with everything - is always an illusion.
She had not only reclaimed her excellence, she had expanded it.
The anger, the resentment, the endless questioning of “Why me?” had transformed into something else entirely - a deeper understanding of the game, and all the ways it could flow through her.
The Lesson:
Here's what they don't tell you about trauma: it doesn't just change you – it demands you change yourself.
In those early days of rehabilitation, Stewart's trainer offered wisdom disguised as permission: "You can have a pity party. You can feel these feelings."
Then came the question that would define everything after: "Now, how are you going to harness them?"
The answer wasn't about chasing her old self.
Each rehabilitation session became about evolution, about expanding what was possible within her transformed reality. She developed new moves not to replace old ones, but to discover new dimensions of her game.
The legacy of her injury isn't about the comeback – it's about the recognition that setbacks can catalyze growth.
It's written in the way she moves now, familiar but different, like a favorite song played in a new key.
The Deep Dive:
📹: Breanna Stewart Suffers Achilles Injury During Game (WSYR Syracuse)
📰: ‘I want to be the best player in the world again’: Breanna Stewart’s Long Journey Toward Self-Discovery (The Athletic)
📰: Breanna Stewart Finds New Perspective Atop the World (The Ringer)
Sometimes a red pill moment is thrust upon us - something unforeseen, traumatic, and irreversible.
They are red pill moments because they offer no real choice between which pill we'd like to take; the option to go back to our old life - to take the blue pill - is simply not on the table.
And when that choice isn't even ours to make but belongs to the circumstances in which we find ourselves, we must recognize it for what it is: a call to let go of your old self and step into something entirely new.
When The Oracle tells Neo, "You've got the gift, but it looks like you're waiting for something", she's speaking to our universal tendency to pause right on the brink of transformation, waiting for a sign or a nod to take that leap.
This is not cinema, or even philosophy - it’s science (remember science?).
In her TED Talk "Why change is so scary," Maya Shankar explains something fascinating: our brains are actually built to handle these massive life shifts.
Consider that for just a second - your brain literally expects things to go sideways sometimes and has tools ready to help you adapt.
It's like having an emergency kit you didn't even know was there.
What’s crazier still?: the harder the change hits us, the more likely we are to come out different - and often stronger - on the other side. Not because we're special, but because that's literally how we're wired. When everything falls apart, we don't just rebuild - we rebuild better.
For you non-nerds, think about it like this: You know how in Spider-Man, Peter Parker goes through this intense period of struggle after Uncle Ben dies? He's questioning everything about himself, his responsibilities, his values?
It's not just grief - it's your whole system saying "okay, the old way clearly isn't working anymore. Time for an upgrade." Most people who go through really tough times report finding strength they never knew they had, deeper connections with others, and a clearer sense of what matters to them.
That's not just good luck or positive thinking - it's what happens when life forces us to level up. It hurts like hell, but it's also an invitation to become someone new.
The point is this: whatever language speaks to you - be it movies, science, or superheroes - here's what I want you to remember: if you're in one of these moments right now, you're not at the end, you’re at the beginning.
You’re writing your origin story.
When the NBA All-Star Weekend invitation arrived, Indiana Fever’s star declined, and in doing so, further highlighted how important her role is in American sports.
It is a moment defined not by what she turned down but by what she affirmed: choosing substance over spectacle and competitive integrity over crossover appeal.
By reserving her first pro shooting exhibition for the WNBA All-Star stage in Indianapolis, Clark not only made a personal choice but signaled a new direction - one where the biggest stages aren't borrowed, they're built.
To Take All the Time She Needs to Feel Ready - Mikaela Shiffrin
“The only thing you can do is keep trying. So that’s what I will do.” (Mikaela Shiffrin / IG)
To Speak it Into Existence - Ava Jones
“The chances for me to beat it is 100 percent; I’m going to beat it, I know I’m going to; that’s just who I am and who my parents have raised.” (KSNW Kansas City)
