KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Candace Parker’s basketball journey has come full circle.
It started when she led Tennessee to two national championships, then continued in the WNBA, in which she was part of three titles and won two MVP awards. She also helped the U.S. win two Olympic gold medals.
Parker, 40, was inducted Saturday night into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame. She was joined by Elena Delle Donne, Amaya Valdemoro and Isabelle Fijalkowski; coaches Cheryl Reeve and Kim Muhl; television analyst Doris Burke; and posthumous veteran honoree Barbara Kennedy-Dixon.
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While accepting the honor, Parker said she had brothers who were eight and 11 years older than her. She spent her life trying to do whatever they did.
“Whenever I struggled when I was young, my mom would whisper ‘can do’ to me,” Parker said, referring to her nickname. “It reminded me to push the doubt away. I was a little girl who dared to dream. I whispered that to myself whenever I was scared.
“Nobody creates in a vacuum. They have influences. We are our ancestor’s wildest dreams.”
Chamique Holdsclaw, another Lady Vols legend who presented Parker at the induction, put her career in perspective.
“She knocked down every bar set in front of her,” Holdsclaw said. “She changed the way the game looks. She brought creativity, skill and athletic ability.”
Parker, the Naperville Central graduate who won three straight Ms. Basketball of Illinois awards from 2002-04, is the 11th player and 17th person with Tennessee ties to be enshrined. Later this summer, Parker and Delle Donne will be inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame.
Parker, a seven-time All-Star, won three WNBA titles with three teams: the Los Angeles Sparks, her home for her first 13 seasons after they selected her with the No. 1 pick in 2008; the Chicago Sky, whom she helped win their first championship in 2021; and the Las Vegas Sparks, for whom she played the last of her 16 seasons. She’s the only player in league history to win both the MVP and Rookie of the Year in the same season.
The Sky last season retired Parker’s No. 3 jersey during a halftime ceremony Aug. 25 at Wintrust Arena.
Delle Donne, 36, originally committed to play her college basketball at UConn but chose instead to stay close to her Wilmington home at the University of Delaware. She was a three-time Colonial Athletic Conference Player of the Year.
Delle Donne was the Sky’s selection with the No. 2 pick in the 2013 draft and won the WNBA Rookie of the Year award and played her first four seasons in Chicago. She won two league MVP awards — in 2015 with the Sky and 2019 with the Washington Mystics, whom she led to their lone WNBA championship.
A seven-time All-Star, Delle Donne became the first player in league history to shoot better than 50% from the field, 40% from behind the 3-point line and 90% from the free-throw line. She also was part of an Olympic gold-medal-winning team.
Widely regarded as one of the most accomplished international players, Valdemoro made her mark in the WNBA. The native of Spain was part of the Houston Comets’ run of three straight titles. She excelled in the EuroLeague.
Fijalkowski was born in France and played college basketball at the University of Colorado. She played in the WNBA’s first two seasons for Cleveland. She became the French national team’s all-time leading scorer (2,562 points).
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The head coach and executive since 2010 with the WNBA’s Minnesota Lynx, Reeve has won the league’s Coach of the Year honor four times and Executive of the Year twice. Reeve has led the Lynx to four WNBA titles. She was an assistant coach on two gold medal-winning Olympic teams before leading the U.S. to gold in 2024 as the head coach. Reeve took a break from the busy WNBA season to come to the induction ceremony. Her team plays at Dallas on Sunday.
After 37 years, Muhl announced his retirement as head women’s basketball coach at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He won 1,108 games.
Burke began working as a television analyst for Big East men’s basketball in the early 1990s. By 2017, she was a full-time NBA analyst for ESPN.
Kennedy-Dixon, who died in 2018, was a player and longtime administrator at Clemson.