Cappie Pondexter, Retired From the W.N.B.A., Has ‘Never Been So Alive’

Cappie Pondexter has no regrets.

She declared an end to her W.N.B.A. playing career before this season, announcing her retirement on Instagram after a run that included seven All-Star appearances, the fourth-most points in league history and two championships.

“I’d been talking to my agent, and my parents and a few of my mentors,” Pondexter, 36, said. “I was just like, it’s time.”

This is how she has made decisions her entire life — by “what the universe tells me,” as Pondexter put it.

The W.N.B.A. will miss her.

A game with Pondexter all but guaranteed a chance to see something sublime. She never stopped attacking, probing defenses for pathways to the basket that nobody else could see, much less exploit the way she did.

In the waning moments of the 2009 W.N.B.A. finals, with Tamika Catchings and the Indiana Fever on the ropes, Pondexter saw a gap between her defender and the two other bigs who came to help. She rose and released her shot in that sliver of space.

Two minutes later, Pondexter and the Phoenix Mercury were champions. Again.

“At her peak, she was the most unstoppable player in the league,” Diana Taurasi, who was part of that championship team, said in a phone interview. “And it’s hard to do that at 5’8” with such an athletic big league, and Cappie, when she was on the court, Cappie could have been 6’4.” That’s how big her game was. That’s how much impact she had on games.”

Selected second overall in the 2006 W.N.B.A. draft by the Mercury, Pondexter quickly connected on the court with Taurasi, the two of them serving as unguardable freelancers, creating and distributing in a way that presaged the free-flowing modern game. The four-year partnership between Pondexter and Taurasi resulted in All-Star appearances, and a pair of championships, in 2007 and 2009.

Now Pondexter says the universe is telling her it’s time for something else.

She has done some acting. Her leadership role in 4Season Style Management, an image consulting firm she founded, is more hands-on now without basketball to interrupt her progress. She’s become an outspoken gun control advocate, after using her shoes to highlight the issue last season, and she’s constantly looking for investment opportunities in the tech sector, “turning on Bloomberg, or CNBC, to look at the cool things that are going to happen.”

She spent a full day riding and talking with Angela Davis, a former professional track and field star who is now an instructor for SoulCycle. Pondexter is shopping for a 2020 presidential candidate to support, someone “to bring progressive change” to the country. She and a long-term partner plan to marry and have children.

Pondexter is also listening, knowing that the universe will tell her what she’s going to do next. She smiled: “You know, I’ve never been so alive.”

Though Pondexter is confident in her choice to retire from basketball, the story of her career is ripe for an epilogue to flesh out some unresolved plotlines.

“Being able to spend more time with Taurasi would have been ideal,” Pondexter said.

Following the Mercury’s championship in 2009, Pondexter said she sensed that it was time to leave Phoenix, to build a brand in a bigger city. She requested a trade.

It’s hard not to wonder: How many W.N.B.A. championships could she and Taurasi have won together?

“That’s the scary part — I don’t know,” Pondexter said and smiled. “Two in three years is a lot, quickly. And we were very young.”

Ultimately, the professional breakup was not amicable.

Taurasi said she spent much of the 2009 off-season on the phone with Pondexter trying to persuade her to stay. But Pondexter, who played for Rutgers in college, joined the Liberty. The next season, the Mercury’s Penny Taylor, who is now married to Taurasi, fouled Pondexter hard, triggering an altercation between the three women.

But now, nearly a decade later, Pondexter and Taurasi recall their time as teammates — and their relationship — fondly.

“We were supposed to play our whole careers together,” Taurasi, 37, said. “And it was Penny, Cappie and myself, and that’s what it was going to be. That was the feeling internally, and then when it happened, it’s like when your sister gets you mad: You’re probably going to scratch and pull hair, and then you’re going to share a glass of wine together as you get a little older. We’ve all gone through that maturation of our lives and relationship.”

The regret in Taurasi’s voice is clear.

“I wish I never had to think about it,” Taurasi said. “We were just on our way, and for us, I felt like that was not even the tip of the iceberg. There was just so much more to achieve.”

Pondexter went on to lead the Liberty to three straight playoff appearances but could not deliver what would have been the franchise’s first championship.

Playing under Coach Anne Donovan, a Hall of Fame player who coached the Seattle Storm to the 2004 W.N.B.A. title, the Liberty finished 22-12 in 2010, tied for the best mark in the Eastern Conference. They beat Catchings and the Indiana Fever to advance to the conference finals as the favorites against the Atlanta Dream.

Pondexter found another level in those playoffs, scoring 28.4 points a game, but it was Angel McCoughtry’s Dream that moved on to the league finals. After that, the frequent foil of Liberty basketball — instability — struck again. Donovan left, replaced for two years by John Whisenant, then by Bill Laimbeer.

After the 2014 season, Pondexter was ready for another change, and the Los Angeles Sparks beckoned. Then Pokey Chatman, the coach and general manager of the Chicago Sky, offered Pondexter the chance to play in the city where she grew up.

Two more playoff appearances followed, before the Sky’s franchise star, Elena Delle Donne decided, as Pondexter had years before, that she would request a trade.

“Playing with Delle Donne, a young talent, reminded me of Taurasi; I said O.K., we can do this,” Pondexter said, and smiled. “And then I get there, and Delle Donne doesn’t want to be in Chicago.”

In 2018, after a brief stint in Los Angeles, Pondexter ended up with the Fever, who wanted a mentor for a young, rebuilding roster. Pondexter took pleasure in instructing those “babies,” as she called them, getting in their ears the day she arrived in Indiana, on the bench in street clothes just after signing.

Now those days are over, a strange shift, Pondexter said, for someone whose life has been basketball. But in retirement, if nothing else, the universe has taught her this: Life goes on.

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