Love and Basketball

Haven’t we seen this before? A young girl named Monica Wright has to work hard to prove herself on the basketball court. She overcomes a series of obstacles and finally sets foot on the hardwood, having achieved her goal of playing professional basketball.

Most WNBA fans will recognize this as the plot of the 2000 Gina Prince-Blythewood film, “Love and Basketball.” Fast forward a decade. The sequel to “Love and Basketball” began at the 2010 WNBA draft, when the Minnesota Lynx, with the second overall pick, selected, (guess who?) Virginia guard Monica Wright, considered by many to be the hardest working point guard in the draft.

“I was in New York. If you do get invited, you are probably going to go first-round,” Wright said about her Draft Day experience. “I wasn’t sure where I’d go because drafts in the past have been unpredictable. You can’t really guess. I was grateful just to be there, I wasn’t really thinking about where I was going.”

When the Lynx drafted her, she joined the ranks of a team that has two other players with Virginia connections, forward Hamchétou Maïga-Ba (Old Dominion ’02) and center Quanitra Hollingsworth (Virginia Commonwealth ’09).

“Q [Hollingsworth] is actually close to my age and we have a lot of things in common,” Wright said about the Virginia connections. “It’s good to know that someone knows what I’m talking about when I talk of home. We listen to the same type of artists and discuss other basketball players we know from Virginia and she’s someone who knows the area. It’s good to have that in common.”

Her biggest role model is her father, Garry Wright, who served in the U.S. Air Force while she was growing up.

“My Dad was always my best friend my whole life. Usually girls have best friends, like BFFs, but that was my Dad for me,” she said. “I was a military child so I didn’t always get a chance to have a lot of relationships with people. He taught me a lot about sacrifice, giving and selflessness. I’m the exact type of person that he is.”

Regarding the transition from college ball to the professional level, Wright said, “It wasn’t that bad. There is a lot more to learn and a lot of different things you have to maintain, like the different lingo. I’m a pretty intense player already. The speed of play is a little bit quicker, but it didn’t impact me that much. There are just so many different terms, different actions and a lot of new plays to learn. The biggest difference is that you are on your own after practice. It’s like going to work every day.”

Wright started playing soccer and track when she was young, and took basketball seriously when she knew she could get a college scholarship out of it. While playing for Forest Park (Va.) High School, she earned the McDonald’s, USA Today, WBCA and Street & Smith’s All-American status. She was the second-highest ranked guard and 11th overall player in the nation, and took home the Gatorade Virginia Player of the Year honors.

At the University of Virginia, she received numerous ACC and All-America honors, including the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association Defensive Player of the Year title.