THE STARS ALIGN
The following year, Sabrina leads the Pac-12 in points and assists, and the Ducks earn a 2-seed in the NCAA tournament. They make it to the Elite Eight again before falling to eventual champion Notre Dame. NBA stars like Steph Curry and Kobe Bryant take notice of Sabrina’s game. “She’s an unbelievable talent on that team,” Curry would go on to say in a Warriors news conference. “She’s a legend in her own right, that’s for sure.” He and Sabrina stay connected through the Bay Area community and its youth basketball scene.
Sabrina: I love having a relationship with [Curry], just being able to remember when I was little, watching him and kind of emulating my game after him, to now being able to call him or text him any time that I need help with something.
Eddy: I wasn’t too jealous of the people she’s met until Steph and Kobe. Those are probably my two favorite players.
Hebard: She loves Steph Curry. I think he’s her lock screen right now actually. [Laughs] I think she learns a lot from them, which is really cool, and she definitely brings back stuff to share with the team. She brought one of Kobe’s books into the locker room, and we all looked at it.
Ionescu also shares her knowledge with boys and girls at camps and academies, including Bryant’s Mamba Sports Academy. She becomes friends with Kobe, who mentors her, and with his daughter Gianna and her Mamba teammates.
Eddy: Kobe’s just wired different is what she told me. He just eats, sleeps, loves everything about basketball, which is literally the same thing with her.
Sabrina: Growing up, I loved having role models and being able to look up to Steph and Kobe and players like that for inspiration. Having kids come up to me after the game and just talk to me, wearing my jersey — some are shaking and just super excited to meet me — is awesome and humbling.
QUEEN OF THE TRIPLE-DOUBLES
After two years at the City College of San Francisco, Eddy transfers to Oregon, and he and Sabrina become roommates. Heading into her junior season, Sabrina has 10 triple-doubles in her career. With the eight she’ll add in her third year in college, she will become the NCAA leader in triple-doubles.
Eddy: At that time, I didn’t know or she didn’t know whether she was gonna leave for the WNBA. So we were kind of just banking that it was gonna be her last year.
Graves: There are nights when I can tell she’s going to get a triple-double. You just see it’s a little bit different in her preparation, in her focus, in her manner. It’s like, we’re in for something special tonight. And she usually delivers.
Hebard: I think it’s just amazing to see what she accomplishes because she works so hard, and then, like, triple-doubles, that’s such a big thing.
In the second round of the NCAA tournament, a 91-68 win against Indiana, Sabrina gets her first triple-double in a tournament game. In the postgame interview, she calls out ESPN: “It probably still won’t get recognized because ESPN never recognizes women’s sports.”
Sabrina: They had posted something about Ja Morant getting one and said that there was only eight or seven people that ever got one in the NCAA tournament, and they listed all the men that had gotten a triple-double. And so I was like, “All right, well this is my chance, I’m going to say something.”
Just being able to, you know, have that platform now at Oregon is something that kind of sparks me to try to just voice my opinion on social media.
Hebard: I think it’s needed. I think that, you know, college, even high school girls, athletes, need to step up and say, “Hey, we deserve this,” “Hey, do you see what I’m doing?” Just show the world what we can do a little more.
Graves: She takes it to heart. Maybe that’s what drives her. She takes to heart what people say, their comments. I applaud her. I know on one Instagram post she kind of talked about, you know, “I let my basketball do the cooking,” or whatever the case. I was happy that she pushed back.
With help from an Ionescu 3-pointer that puts them up by six with 1:12 left, the Ducks beat Mississippi State 88-84 in the Elite Eight to advance, at last, to the Final Four, where they play Baylor. The Ducks lead by a point after the first half, but strong post play propels the Bears, who hold Ionescu scoreless in the fourth quarter to win 72-67.
Sabrina: We struggled, and I think we didn’t handle adversity very well. It was hard. I mean, none of us had been in that position. We couldn’t hear ourselves, we couldn’t hear our coach, just because of how many fans were there.
Graves: We had a chance. We were the best shooting team in the country. And we were going against the No. 1 defensive team. And that fourth quarter, we just didn’t shoot the ball well.
Sabrina: That could have been my last game, you know, in an Oregon uniform, and so I didn’t have any idea, I just knew that, you know, I had let my team down. We let Oregon down in some way, because we had such high expectations for ourselves. No one spoke. People were crying and just so sad. You could really see how invested everyone was.
Hebard: She’s always mad at herself if we lose, but I think we were all just bummed and upset and crying. But we were all like, “OK, we got here, we know what we can do.”
Sopak: The biggest challenge she has now is overcoming losing. We lost nine games while she was in high school. I really don’t know if Sabrina cares about winning. I just know she doesn’t like to lose, and that’s, you know, it’s her biggest strength, but it’s also her biggest weakness.
Dan: Here’s one thing that I’ve learned through the years with Sabrina. When she’s losing a game, you do not talk to her. You just walk away, you mind your own business.
Eddy: That was probably one of her biggest lows. Just because I knew she tasted how close it was to winning that national championship. I had to let her be, just because I knew her draft decision was coming up. We didn’t really talk about the game for a little while. And then we kind of just sat down and discussed what her next plan was.
Forward Ruthy Hebard bought into her best friend’s mission of changing the culture at Oregon. Holly Andres for ESPN
LAST-MINUTE LIFE DECISIONS, PART II
Sabrina has 24 hours after the conclusion of her season to decide whether to declare for the WNBA draft.
Sabrina: I showered, I had some food. I’m kind of a procrastinator, so I let it get to like an hour before I had to decide. I went on a walk and just tried to clear my mind to figure out what I wanted to do.
Graves: I didn’t know who had her ear, quite frankly. I was hoping, and I felt like, OK, she’s got something to prove and she would like to come back. However, that’s quite a pull, you know? The WNBA.
Sopak: I’m on the phone with her and she has 19 minutes to notify the WNBA [laughs] if she’s going to declare for the draft, and we’re seeing things on Twitter that she’s going, she’s not going, and we’re laughing about it because she doesn’t know. She has no clue, and we’re trying to talk about the pros and the cons.
Eddy: We were together when she made that decision. It was definitely tough. I felt her emotional side of it, which is kind of weird to describe.
Sabrina: I could tell Eddy was really nervous. The entire time, he had played it off that he was like, “We’ll do whatever’s best for you,” and then was like, “All right, I’m going to go on a walk.” Then he called me and said, “Where are you?” And I was like, “I’m by the hotel here.” And he came, and his voice was shaking because I had like 10 minutes to decide and I hadn’t decided. And so he starts bawling, and then I start crying. I was like, “I just don’t know. I’m torn.”
[My family] saw the pros in both decisions, and they just told me, “The decision is yours, do what you want, we support you.” So I just remember, I said, “I’m going to stay.” That’s all I said.
Sopak: Even though I didn’t know until, I think, eight minutes before the deadline, when you step back and look at it, it was like that was the only thing she was going to do, if you know Sabrina. She wants to win a national championship.
NOTHING IS EVER GIVEN
With Oregon ranked No. 1 in the preseason Top 25, the spotlight on Sabrina is brighter than ever. Bryant narrates a Detail episode praising her physicality, court awareness and midrange game. The WNBA draft order is released in September, and the New York Liberty draw the top pick.
Hebard: When they came out with the draft, I texted her. I was like, “Have fun in New York!”
Graves: I think Sabrina in New York, if that’s the way it works out, is a match made in heaven. She needs to be playing on that kind of a stage. I think she has a chance to really change the game and the way the game is viewed by everybody.
In a November exhibition game, she has 30 points, 7 assists and 4 rebounds to lead the Ducks to a stunning 93-86 victory over the U.S. women’s national team, which features her heroes and soon-to-be WNBA peers like Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi. Taurasi, whose parents came to the U.S. from Argentina, says in an espnW interview that one of the similarities she sees between Ionescu and herself is “an immigrant mindset.”
Taurasi: Maybe your parents don’t necessarily speak English really well when you’re a kid, and you may have to do some things other kids don’t. But you see your parents just going to work every day, working hard. You take that on: You want to prove to everyone that you belong. That stuff comes out in you.
Sabrina: Work ethic and dedication, I learned that from my parents. They came here, and they’ve worked for everything they’ve gotten and had to work super hard. And nothing was ever given to us as kids. Nothing is ever given to us now.
Sabrina became the first college basketball player to compile 2,000 points, 1,000 rebounds and 1,000 assists the same day she spoke at Kobe and Gianna Bryant’s memorial. Carlos Serrao for ESPN
AN UNTHINKABLE TRAGEDY, A REMARKABLE RESOLVE
On the morning of Jan. 26, 2020, the sports world stands still when news breaks that Kobe and Gigi Bryant are among the nine passengers killed in a helicopter crash in Calabasas, California. As Sabrina processes her grief, she dedicates her season and everything that comes next to Kobe.
Sabrina: Everything that I’m going to do, I’m going to make sure that he stays close. From here on out, really, everything’s gonna be for him and what he taught me.
On Feb. 3, with so many still in mourning, No. 3 Oregon arrives for the first time at Gampel Pavilion for a matchup against No. 4 UConn, the school for which Gigi hoped to play. It’s the Ducks’ first trip to Storrs, where 11 national championship banners hang in the legendary arena. The Ducks administer a historic walloping, beating the Huskies 74-56 for their worst loss ever at Gampel. Ionescu comes close to another triple-double with 10 points, 9 rebounds and 9 assists.
Auriemma: When she walks out, you go, “That kid’s not gonna run by anybody, jump over anybody.” She’s not the biggest, quickest, fastest, strongest. Kind of like describing Sue [Bird]. Then you start to realize the incredible competitiveness that she has, the skill level that she has, the physical and mental toughness that she has. It’s a great role model for other kids to watch and say, “That kid’s doing it, not just by God-given foot speed or strength or agility, she’s doing it because she’s just skilled. She’s worked at it. She’s relentless.” These are things that kids can acquire; they don’t have to be born with those things. That’s what I admire most about her.
Later that month, Ionescu, Auriemma and Taurasi are among the eight people to speak at the Los Angeles memorial honoring Kobe and Gigi Bryant.
Sabrina, at the memorial: If I represented the women’s game, Gigi was the future, and Kobe knew it. So we decided to build a future together. … She always wanted to learn and to go to every game she could — college, NBA, WNBA. Kobe was helping her with that because he saw it in her. Just like he saw it in me. His vision for others is always bigger than that for themselves. His vision for me was way bigger than my own. More importantly, he didn’t just show up in my life and leave — he stayed.
That same day, Ionescu flies to the Bay Area for a game against Stanford. She has 21 points, 12 rebounds and 12 assists in the third-ranked Ducks’ 74-66 win over No. 4 Stanford. It’s her 26th career triple-double, and she makes history as the first college basketball player to compile 2,000 points, 1,000 rebounds and 1,000 assists.
Sabrina: Obviously that was tough. It was tough being there and it was tough having to play a top-five matchup right after that. But my teammates were ready and I tried to do everything I could to be ready in order for us to win.
CEMENTING A LEGACY
In March, the 31-2 Ducks are poised for a 1-seed and deep run in the NCAA tournament. But everything comes to a halt when the NCAA announces a complete shutdown of winter and spring championships. “It’s unfortunate we didn’t get to see them in the tournament. Because I think it would have been a really special run,” Graves says in a news conference. “There won’t be another group like this ever.”
On Monday, Sabrina says goodbye to Oregon in an Instagram post: “Although our unfinished business will remain just that, I have been blessed to be a part of this journey.” Indeed her legacy at Oregon had already been written.
Sabrina: What we’ve been building these last couple of years goes to show women’s basketball is valued. Everyone’s watching us. It’s awesome to be part of a team that has accomplished that.
Graves: She commands and demands and deserves the respect that she’s been given. She is just driven differently. The great ones are like that.
Eddy: We didn’t have these crazy expensive trainers, or these really nice exquisite gyms to go to, with the shooting machines and all this. We just started in a park, you know? Like regular kids. I feel like that’s definitely something that she’ll leave behind, that’s going to motivate the younger generation.
Liliana: I still feel like I’m just living in dreams, especially at the bigger games, and when I know that next year she’s going to join a professional team, it’s something that I never thought was going to happen. She’s going to play at that level. She did believe every word she wrote [in her speech when she was 12].
Earlier in the season, Sabrina watched the video her father took of her young self making that Toastmasters speech about her basketball dreams.
Sabrina: That’s all I talked about. I had this poem book, and we had to write poems for an entire year. I figured out ways to write poems about basketball the entire year. Every time I stood up, everyone in unison would be like, “basketball.” Because they knew exactly how it was gonna start.
It’s crazy to see everything come full circle and see how young I was and the dreams that I had and how dedicated I was to playing the game. Watching it now, like, wow, a lot of my dreams have become a reality.
is an analyst and reporter for ESPN.
Emma Reed contributed to this report. Cinematography by Monica May; Movement Coaching by Duray Thirdgill; Prop Styling by Dan Jesperson; Production by Amy Ground; Hair & Makeup by Celena Rubin.
