Sports
Former Blue Devil Chelsea Gray Shines on Olympic, WNBA Stages … – GoDuke.com
This story originally appeared in the 14.12 Issue of GoDuke The Magazine – July 2023
Becky Hammon doesn’t impress easily. She’s been around the block a few times.
But Chelsea Gray impresses her.
“She’s kind of playing like she’s from another planet the last year. Her passing has always been there but the degree of difficulty of shots she’s made in big moments has been unworldly. I haven’t seen a player do that and be on the kind of run she’s been on.”
Hammon is the coach of the Las Vegas Aces of the WNBA and Gray is her star point guard. The Aces won the WNBA title last season and got off to a 16-1 start this season, the league’s best record.
Hammon has lots of talent at her disposal, including two WNBA MVPs, A’ja Wilson and Candace Parker, and star wings Jackie Young and Kelsey Plum. But Gray has the key to the car.
Chelsea Gray was a top five recruit St. Mary’s High School in Stockton, Calif. She could have gone to college anywhere. But she chose Duke, almost 3,000 miles from her home.
She is not afraid of a challenge.
When she was healthy, she was one of the best players in Duke history, one of the best players in the country. She was named ACC Player of the Year in 2013, an award she shared with Maryland’s Alyssa Thomas.
But both her junior (2013) and senior (2014) seasons ended with her on the sidelines with a knee injury. Duke was 16-1 and ranked second nationally when she fractured her right kneecap in 2014.
Gray was selected 11th in the 2014 WNBA Draft, much lower than her talent level suggested. She sat out the 2014 season rehabbing the injury and was traded from Connecticut to Los Angeles after the 2015 season. She says this rollercoaster ride taught her to enjoy every moment.
And there were lots of moments to enjoy. She was a key reserve as the L.A. Sparks captured the 2016 WNBA title over Minnesota; former Duke star Alana Beard also was on that L.A. team. The two teams met again in the 2017 finals, with the result reversed. Gray made the 2017, 2018 and 2019 all-star games and was named first-team All-WNBA in 2019.
She had a good thing going in L.A. But she was a free agent after the 2020 season and she says she needed something new.
“It was just a time and a place and a moment in my career when I needed a change. I didn’t want to go too far East and it just so happens that Vegas is right there. So, it ended up being a cool process for me to figure out what my next step was. It was hard leaving somewhere I had been so long, that I had gotten used to, relationships and friends and so forth.”
Gray signed with the Aces.
Fast forward to the 2022 season. The WNBA announced the rosters for the midseason all-star game and Gray’s name was nowhere to be found. She parses her words carefully when asked if this snub fueled her fires.
“At that moment, yeah, it was some disrespect that I felt. It’s not like I’m craving outside approval. But you work hard to reach certain goals and when you feel like you’re being slighted, that’s when it kind of motivates you to play with more grit and motivation.”
It can’t be denied that she raised her game to new heights. Gray was virtually unstoppable during the 2022 WNBA playoffs. She made 7-of-8 from beyond the arc in a first-round win over Phoenix. She made 9-of-13 in the championship-clinching win over Connecticut (20 points, five rebounds and six assists). She averaged 21.7 points and 7.0 assists in the Aces’ 10 playoff games, hitting 61 percent of her field goal attempts. She scored or assisted on 44 percent of the Aces’ postseason points, a WNBA playoff record.
“I’m not sure I’ve ever seen someone hit so many clutch shots,” Hammon recalled in an interview with GoDuke The Magazine earlier this month.
Not surprisingly, Gray was named postseason MVP.
“I’m her assistant,” Hammon told the media after the title run. “I tell them (her team) all the time if Chelsea calls something and I call something, you listen to Chelsea.”
From that peak, Hammon says Gray is improved and is playing the best basketball of her career right now. Hammon is not just a respected coach but also a former standout WNBA point guard. She knows how that position works and she says Gray checks all the boxes.
“Her intelligence is a separating factor for her. She’s big (5-11, 170). She has vision that you can’t teach. By vision I mean her ability to read the defense. She’s reading her defense, she’s reading her teammate’s defense, and her ability to kind of dissect it. If you take this away, she’s going to do that. If you take that away, she’s going to do this. Whatever the read is, she gets the ball into the right people’s hands. She just makes good decision after good decision. She’s like a professor in reading. She reads defenses, what her own teammates are doing, how they’re cutting. She reads things and dissects the game accordingly.”
Gray has started covering ACC women’s basketball as a studio analyst. When asked to put on her Chelsea Gray analyst hat and break down Chelsea Gray’s game, here’s what she said.
“A dynamic guard that really leads her team. Very vocal. Can score at three levels and make everyone around her better. It’s always been my thought process to make sure we get the best shot possible at all times and to be able to do that in all fashions, whether it be how to get my shot, get someone else’s shot, who’s got the hot hand, matchups, all of that is going through my mind.”
Gray agrees that she’s playing her best basketball, citing her all-around game. “IQ wise, this is the best I’ve ever felt, being able to score in every way. I really feel confident about that.”
Hammon adds another wrinkle.
“Not only is she not afraid of a challenge, she excels at it, which is definitely a different kind of breed. She’s built differently, she’s wired different. There’s some people that aren’t good under pressure. She’s somebody who kind of becomes super-human in those situations.”
An example comes from June 26, when the Aces met the Indiana Fever. The Fever took a 77-76 lead with just over two minutes remaining. In a span of five possessions Gray hit two contested two-point jumpers, drew the defense to her and found Plum wide open for a 3-pointer and made 4-of-4 from the line. An 11-0 run in which Gray scored or assisted on every point broke open a close game.
“That’s always a balancing act for someone of her skill set,” Hammon says, “to know when to get teammates involved, when to take over. She has the ultimate trust of her coaches and her teammates and myself. A lot of times it’s put the ball in her hands and let Chelsea be Chelsea.”
Gray’s take?
“I think it’s a calm within the storm that comes over me in those moments that I really can’t put into words. It’s kind of something I practice, a deep breath, visualizing moments like that. But it’s also IQ wise, where and how to get to my spots, how I can set up the best shot possible.”
Gray has always been a good shooter but she’s become more than good.
“Just the work ethic,” Gray says. “I really expanded my game with being able to have a pull-up jumper, a mid-range game, a 3-point game. It creates different threats, different close-outs.
She’s done all of this without a shooting coach, without a sports-performance coach. Through July 6 Gray was third in the league in assists per game at 6.4 per game, fourth in 3-point shooting percentage (45 percent), first in foul shooting (97.1 percent), 11th in steals (1.5 per game), all while averaging 14.5 points per game and directing the league’s most prolific offense.
Most of the publicity going into this season focused on the New York Liberty and the super team they were putting together, led by Breanna Stewart. Hammon cautions that the Liberty are still learning to play together and adds “we’re good” with someone else other than the reigning champions getting all the ink.
But the Aces won the much-hyped first match between the two teams 98-81.
Lesson sent? Well, the playoffs are still months away.
“We’ll be able to prove what type of team we are through our play,” Gray says. “It’s pretty simple.”
The Aces look like the team to beat going into the all-star break and Hammon says Gray is a big reason why.
“We have some real pieces that are tough to deal with. We’re a pick-your-poison type of team. That being said, with the game on the line, Chelsea keeps on coming up being the woman every time. When you’ve done it as many times as she has, you just expect every shot to go in. We have a bunch of superstars who are taking less money to play together. That in itself is special. When you have buy-in factor from your leadership and your core players it gives you a foundational piece to start building a dynasty. This group has that potential.”
Winning another title is a short-term goal. But there are long-term goals. The WNBA is at an inflection point, with ratings up, a new TV contract coming and expansion looming. Gray is poised to be one of the faces of that growth.
“I’m open to a lot of different things. Ownership of a team or entity. I want to continue to push women’s sports forwards. Possibly coach. I don’t want to limit myself. The goal is always to leave the league better than you found it. I feel like I’m on track to do that. For kids growing up that look like me and want to be in my shoes and execute their dreams, that’s always a goal when I’m talking to the younger generation.”
“She’s a special human being,” Hammon adds. “I think she’s even greater in real-life moments for her family and friends.”
In a span of less than four years Gray has gotten married to former Cal State-Long Beach star Tipesa Moorer, won an Olympic gold medal and WNBA title and been named finals MVP. She has been selected a starter in the 2023 all-star game and she has her own Adidas-branded shoe, labeled POINTGAWDDDDD on each heel.
“It’s like ‘Wow, it’s been a crazy two years’ and what that looks like, the accomplishments, the places we’ve gone, the things we’ve been able to do. It’s definitely a blessing and something I don’t take for granted.”
Dedicated to sharing the stories of Duke student-athletes, present and past, GoDuke The Magazine is published for Duke Athletics by LEARFIELD with editorial offices at 3100 Tower Blvd., Suite 404, Durham, NC 27707. To subscribe, join the Iron Dukes or call 336-831-0767.
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