UNCASVILLE, Conn. To consider Maya Moore is to acknowledge that there are human beings among us who are simply wired differently, and who do more with their footprint to make the world a little better. This is not an indictment of the rest of us there are many good souls among the Not Maya as much as it is a testament to Moore, and the people like her, who impact the world at multiple points.
How else can you decipher a basketball career, which will be cemented this weekend with Moores induction into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, that includes three state championships in high school (career record at Collins Hill High: 125-3), two national championships at UConn (career record with the Huskies: 150-4), four WNBA championships with the Minnesota Lynx, a league and Finals MVP award, and six All-Star appearances?
How else can you consider someone who was, arguably, the best basketball player in the world at the time, rationally deciding, at the top of her prime, at 30, to walk away from all of it in 2019, and to put all of her substantial energy and focus and platform into overturning the conviction and 50-year prison sentence of a man she sort of knew through her godparents?
And, further, how to contemplate someone not doing a one-off fundraiser or press conference, but actually seeing it through, over the next year-plus, as part of the team that got the mans conviction overturned, and got him released from prison in 2020? While becoming close friends with him? And, then, falling in love with him? And, then, marrying him? And, then, never looking back, never going back to the game she dominated, to lean into family and faith?
Who does this?
Besides Maya Moore, I mean?
Our communities are in need of help, and life, and thriving, and just mind shifts, system shifts, Moore said Friday, at a press availability at the Mohegan Sun Casino before Saturdays induction at Symphony Hall in Springfield, Mass., the home of the Hall, about an hour northwest.
The reason a UConn or a Lynx is the way it is is because they have systems set in place to help everyone thrive, Moore said. They have leaders in place who actually are competent to be leaders, who know to actually connect to people and bring out the best in people. And, just the mindset of everybody eats. Its not you up here, you down there; Im going to use you to get what I want. Its were going to do what we do for each other, and its going to be great.
Thats what I love, still, about sports. You still see that. The ultimate teams like the OKCs and the UConns, the teams that are winning, they just love each other.
So, while this is one of the greatest classes of WNBA talent ever going into the Hall at the same time alongside Moore Saturday will be Sue Bird and Moores Minnesota teammate, Sylvia Fowles Moore stands out.
The fact that Maya really changed the world, versus playing basketball, is something that is beyond admirable, Bird said Friday.
Moore grew up in Jefferson City, Mo. Her godparents, Reggie and Cherylin Williams Reggie Williams was Moores mothers cousin had become interested in the case of Jonathan Irons, also from Jefferson City. He had been tried as an adult by an all-White jury and convicted of burglary and the shooting of a man at the mans home in OFallon, Mo., about 45 minutes from St. Louis. Irons insisted he had been misidentified through photos by the man, whod been told by police to take his best guess at IDing the suspect after being unable to pick one from a police lineup.
Prosecutors said that Irons had admitted to breaking into the mans house. Irons steadfastly, and repeatedly, denied hed made any such confession. There were no witnesses, no fingerprints at the scene that belonged to Irons, nor was there DNA or blood evidence that would have tied him to the scene.
The Williamses had gotten to know Irons through a prison ministry. They were immediately taken with him, with his case and his repeated insistence that he was innocent. They told Moore, who was just about to head off to UConn after becoming a star at Collins Hill High outside of Atlanta, where her team won three state championships.
We called her the female Jordan, recalled Dwight Howard, another 2025 Naismith inductee, who was a few years ahead of Moore and also becoming a star in the Atlanta area, at Southwest Atlanta Christian Academy.
Moore met Irons just before going to Storrs. Over the next few years, as she became a focal point on the Huskies back-to-back title teams in 2009 and 2010, and became the schools all-time leading scorer, they became friends. After Moore went to the WNBA as the first pick in the 2011 draft to Minnesota, she became a key part of one of the leagues greatest dynasties. The Lynx won four championships in the next six seasons, with Moore, Sylvia Fowles, Seimone Augustus, Lindsay Whalen and Rebekkah Brunson leading the way.
They won with drive and accountability, but also with joy. Fowles was the teams designated dessert police, making sure that Moore only had a couple of macaroons at the training table.
Because shes the dessert queen, Fowles said.
On and off the court, the Lynx drove conversations.
They had already become one of the most outspoken teams in sports about political issues, holding a news conference before a game in 2016 to draw attention to the shooting deaths of Philando Castile in nearby St. Paul, Minn., Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, La., by police officers. Moore, Whalen, Augustus and Brunson wore T-shirts to the news conference that read Change Starts With Us. Justice and Accountability. Four police officers assigned to work the Lynx game that night at Target Center walked off their jobs in protest.
As she continued to operate in the social justice space, Moore became driven by the notion that she had to do more than just talk about Irons case. Her background as an elite, winning athlete helped steel her for the slow, incremental journey through the criminal justice system. Elite athletes truly buy into the notion of being where their feet are. The boring, every day drudgery of working out and practicing and lifting is what makes the greatest athletes the greatest athletes. They come to love what seems unbearably tedious to the rest of us.
They grind. And you have to grind to free a person from prison.
I really, really do think stepping away from the game, and the long haul of the justice system, how its not set up to bring justice quickly, it gave me the endurance to realize that this is a season, Moore said. Were going to get through this. Theres ups, theres downs. Jonathan lost 11 appeals. Not one, not two. Eleven. Before the 12th one set him free. So, I dont know where I would have been without that person who Id become, through competitive, long, hard, grueling, grinding seasons, to be able to bring that same mindset to something that matters even more.
In the Lynx community, what Moore did was consistent with what the team had talked about out loud and amongst one another.
I never questioned it, Fowles said. I think the hardest part for people to understand is that basketball is a part of us, but its not us. Its something that we do. And Maya is a prime example of that. She played basketball, but basketball wasnt, like, her life.
Outside the bubble, even those who were as great as Moore on the floor needed time to process what she decided to do and keep doing.
I think there is a lot of truths when it comes to Maya stepping away from the game, Bird said Friday. Honestly, anybody, really youd be lying if you said there wasnt some happiness, and then some bittersweet feelings. Because she was so great. She was at the peak of her career, potentially in her prime. Did I love competing against her? But thats, like, the best compliment I could give. She was setting the bar.
And, to be honest, there was this other part of it, where she was popular. And she was well-known. They had just done a Wings poster, the Jordan Wings poster of her. And in terms of the (WNBA) business building that was, she was a really important part to that. So it was a little bittersweet to have this player this specific player walk away. And then you hear her talk, and you listen to the reasons why, and you see the impact, you see the work. all of that just kind of fades away. All that kind of fades away. And you see she had something pulling her, something calling to her, much bigger than basketball ever did.
In March 2020, that 12th appeal paid off. A Missouri judge vacated Irons conviction, citing several problems with the prosecutions case, including not divulging the existence of a fingerprint on a door at the home of the man who was shot that did not belong to either the man or to Irons, which would have supported Irons claim that someone else was in the house that night, not him. Ultimately, the county prosecutor in the mans town declined to try the case again, and Irons was freed. It was only then that Moore and Irons let everyone in on their secret.
But she never went back. The W is on better economic footing now that it was for much of Moores prime, when players bounced from their final college seasons to their first W season to playing overseas to make ends meet, then coming back for a few weeks of training before starting another W season if they didnt have to play for USA Basketball in World Cups or Olympics. But that grind came with a physical and emotional cost. Moore officially retired in 2023.
She and Irons run a social action non-profit, Win With Justice, and are continuing to try to make the criminal justice system work more equitably. And Moore still has huge goals.
The next challenge for me is fully potty-training J.J., Moore said, referring to the couples 3-year-old son. He had his first successful poo-poo in the potty recently. And it was like, this is it. This is like, championship-level joy.
(Photo of Maya Moore: David R. Martin / Associated Press)
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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