“Maybe the WNBA wasn’t for me,” the Minnesota Lynx star Alanna Smith had said back in June. Smith, a number 8 pick during the 2019 WNBA draft had a long and rough road to the ‘Twin Cities.’ Through her short stint for the Indiana Fever, her struggles convinced the Australian athlete that the “WNBA in general is a really hard league to crack as a young basketball player.” However, things changed with the Chicago Sky. Now when she is with the Lynx, Smith has powered the team to the semi-finals. And hence, the 28-year-old naturally had her mic drop moment when questioned about her former team.

A remorseless Smith, during the postgame press conference after the Game 2 win over the Phoenix Mercury on Wednesday, gave a reality check to the Fever. “Yeah I mean I’ve said this so many times it’s all about opportunity. I was given a really really good chance by a really good group of people. And I am really lucky, I find myself like really grateful that I’ve fell into this situation where I’ve been put in a position to succeed one, I’ve been supported no matter what happened throughout the season,” Smith stated.

Smith, this season, played 39 regular season games for the Lynx and started in all of them, which speaks a lot about her importance in the team. Plus, she was given an average of 26.5 minutes per game, which has helped her as she has hit 10.1 points with 5.6 rebounds per game. And all this has given the impetus to the Lynx to reserve a semi-final spot for themselves.

“You’re just lifted to this place where you have confidence and you… you want to win with these people you know and so I look at being cut and I’m I think I’m so happy that happened to me like I’m so happy that I was cut from that team and it led me to this because now I’m in the semi-finals of this season in the WNBA and that team’s not.. So I’m just gonna drop the mic,” Smith said in the press conference.

When Smith was cut from the Indiana Fever in 2022, she decided to move on from the WNBA. During her Fever stint, she could only ply her trade in 9 games and was given only 12.9 minutes per game on the court. This disheartened her as the Tasmania-born resolved to never look back at her past and forge a life in a different league from here on. But Cheryl Reeves showed her trust in Smith in 2024. Smith could not thank her enough for that.

“They’re not looking at like what’s happened with me previously. They’re not looking at hey she got cut like we don’t we’re not interested in her you know but there’s been a belief in me from the very start and like when you have a group of people behind you especially like people like this like your head coach and your best player on your team who have that belief in you like it just lifts you to higher heights and I think that shows with how well we have done this season like it’s not just me that’s experiencing that it’s everyone else on this team…,” Smith said, praising Cheryl Reeve and Napheesa Collier for keeping their faith in her.

The Lynx have been doing exceptionally well this season as they are the only team to have won a series (2-1) against the number one-seeded New York Liberty. Alongside, they advanced to the Finals of the Commissioner’s Cup and won the title, defeating their opponents and the reigning Commissioner’s Cup champs in the Barclays Center by 94-89. And now the franchise, thanks to their defense, has advanced to the semi-finals after a clean sweep against the Mercury. For Cheryl Reeve, this performance comes down to a single factor: chemistry in the team. And Smith has an important part to play in that.

The Lynx leads the league in field goal percentage, three-point percentage, threes made per game, assists, and scoring. It has five of the top 15 three-point shooters in the game, including the top two in Kayla McBride and Alanna Smith. And Reeve’s team has done a remarkable job in using Smith in the games.

Smith is not a dominant low-post presence, but she is good as a high-post passer. Based on this, Reeve’s staff altered the offense to look more like it did when they won titles in 2011 and 2013 with high-post passers Taj McWilliams-Franklin and Janel McCarville. In the Lynx’s June 11 victory over the Aces, Lynx became the first team in league history to have all five starters score at least 14 points (none more than Smith’s 18), get at least four rebounds (none more than Collier’s six) and make at least one three-pointer in the same game. On the other hand, the Fever sits in a diagonally opposite situation.

Indiana made it to the playoffs for the first time since 2016. However, their main stars, Caitlin Clark and Kelsey Mitchell, struggled to overpower the Connecticut Sun and lost two Round 1 games. Adding insult to injury, Smith’s words must have pierced the hearts of her Fever mates. Meanwhile, Smith had also previously shared her gratitude for the Chicago Sky, who she played for in 2023.

Alanna Smith thanks Chicago Sky for turning the tables

During an interview in a June episode of ‘Locked On Women’s Basketball’, Smith thanked the Sky for giving her significant minutes on the court, which according to her has made all the difference. According to her, her peers and fans are stunned that Smith’s game has improved so much. Acknowledging the same, the W star, now in her sixth season, revealed that “We unfortunately had a lot of injuries early on, and that kind of allowed a spot open for me to play a lot of minutes.”

After a disappointing 2022 season, James Wade, who was leading the Chicago Sky, helped the Smith make a comeback by getting her on his team. She was given a fair amount of time to prove her mettle as she averaged a decent 9.4 points, 6.6 rebounds, 1.4 blocks and 1.3 steals per game in the regular season, having her best season up until then. Interestingly, she had more points, rebounds, assists, blocks, and steals than in her first four years in the league combined, despite playing in nearly 30 fewer total games.

Notably, Chicago had injuries in Rebekkah Gardner and Isabella Harrison, among others, that opened up space for Smith. “A lot of people ask me how my game [has] improved so much. And I always tell them, I’ve been doing the same thing, I just haven’t had the chance to play and show you guys that this is what I can do,” Smith enumerated back then.

Indeed, the Sky recognized her potential well as former Sky coach and general manager James Wade had pointed out. “She’s very underrated and she plays really, really hard. A lot of times, we just saw she was on the floor a lot. So we were like, ‘Why is she on the floor a lot?’ Well, she’s on the floor because she plays so hard,” Wade had said last year. So, her playing time significantly shot up once she was with the Sky.

While previously her best playing time average came with the Mercury in 2020 when she averaged 15.6 minutes per game on the court, with the ‘Windy City’ franchise she got 26.5 minutes per game, which explains a lot about why she could showcase her talent. Hopefully, Smith will lead the Lynx to the Finals by defeating the Connecticut Sun starting this Sunday.