Happy Tuesday, Ball-Knowers!

This newsletter concerns one player and one player only. Many WNBA fans have been wondering if 37 year old Tina Charles would find her home on a roster this season and it appears that, at least for now, most of the league has moved on from the longtime vet.

So Charles, one of the last true New York City women’s basketball prep stars, decided to go out quietly. Her announcement this morning was captioned, ‘It was all a dream’, and let the world know that she’d be hanging it up.

In honor of one of the best to ever do it, the newsletter won’t touch on three topics today. Instead, we will discuss one: Tina Charles.

Let’s get to it.

Previews for the New York Liberty…

Indiana Fever…

And Las Vegas Aces…

Plus, our buddy Sean Highkin of Rose Garden Report joins Luxury Tax!

Tina Charles is, in a lot of ways, the last of a dying breed.

There was once a time when New York City churned out some of the greatest high school basketball stars, boys or girls, and earned its reputation as a Mecca for the sport.

Nancy Lieberman, Gail Marquis and Debbie ‘Pearl’ Mason were some of the first players to women’s basketball on the map around the Five Boroughs. Then came future stars like Chamique Holdsclaw, Sue Bird, Kia Vaughn, Nicky Anosike and Tina Charles.

At Christ the King High School in the Middle Village neighborhood of Queens, the standard was high. Charles walked into a team that had already sent Sue Bird to UConn and Chamique Holdsclaw to Tennessee, saw Carrem Gay win 2005 Miss New York Basketball and boasted a young star named Lorin Dixon, who would win the same award in 2007.

But Tina wasn’t fazed in the slightest.

In 2006, she averaged over 25 points and nearly 15 rebounds per game, along with a legitimately insane 5 blocked shots per game. Charles didn’t just win Miss New York Basketball, she also took home Gatorade State Player of the Year, WBCA National Player of the Year and was a McDonald’s All-American.

If Bird and Holdsclaw were the names to chase, Tina had already met or surpassed the lofty expectations. Christ the King won 57 straight games during her tenure and committed to UConn, joining another New York City area superstar in Kia Vaughn.

It was there, surrounded by some of the greatest players of the era and followed by the shadows of past superstars, that she made a name for herself. UConn won a championship in 2010, and Charles was the Final Four Most Outstanding Player. President Barack Obama said that he “Truly believed this was the best team in all of sports”. One year later, the Huskies were back in the White House, having won another national title.

Tina was selected first overall by the Connecticut Sun in the 2011 WNBA Draft and immediately became a draw for a crowd that largely supported UConn at the college level and the Sun in the pros.

Immediately, Charles proved that she had what it took to be a superstar in the league and the numbers…well, they speak for themselves…

People will see the statistics, her place as the second leading scorer in WNBA history behind fellow UConn Husky Diana Taurasi and think the greatness ends there. A star scorer and rebounder who never managed to make a WNBA Final.

But the legacy of Charles is underscored by her final contribution to the new collective bargaining agreement and how it fits with her entire career of quietly being one of the most potent activists in the league’s history. And if you know anything about the WNBA, that’s no small feat.

“You also have to realize you're not going to see the result if the work isn't put in,” Charles told the Museum of the City of New York in a Basketball & Activism panel in 2021. “If we don't, we're not the ones who will probably see the result, but those after us will, and we have to continue to put confidence into those coming up behind us to make sure that they keep on using their voice, that they keep on advocating, because change will happen, not maybe not when we want it, but it will happen, and that's what we've been seeing along the way.”

She founded the Hopey’s Heart Foundation in honor of her late aunt, Maureen ‘Hopey’ Vaz, to help provide automated external defibrilators (AED’s) for schools to save lives in the event of sudden cardiac arrest. In 2011, she paid $32,000 out of pocket to help underwrite construction of a school in Mali. She donated another $7,500 to the New York City Department of Education to purchase AED’s for their schools.

“Asking how you can serve others and then really accomplishing it, are very different,” she wrote in a 2016 Player’s Tribune story.

She credited Maya Moore with helping to inspire Tina to walk in her faith, lean into her desire to help others and never losing your own voice.

“That's who gives me confidence,” Charles told the museum panel, “That's who I always look to.”

Even now, Tina has left her mark on the game through the collective bargaining agreement. When speaking in 2021 about the most recent deal that had been signed with the WNBA, she told the panel something that feels almost prophetic now.

“The decisions that we made [in 2020] for the CBA is not going to impact every single current, 144 players,” Charles said. “It's going to impact the future generation, and that's what I'm most excited about, that they can believe that they can achieve the same things that we're doing today.”

Ironically, while she wasn’t able to cash in for even a one year contract under the new CBA stipulations, she fought hard for one key provision: that dependents of deceased players would receive retirement recognition payments (around $100,000) for those that played for more than ten years in the league. Her former New York Liberty teammate, Kara Braxton, sadly passed away in February of this year.

Thanks to Tina’s work in advocating for that stipulation, Braxton’s family stands to be taken care of as they navigate the future.

In a litany of ways, Tina Charles has left her mark on this game. From her stature on the floor to the records that she holds to the stands she has taken and her advocacy of the players around her. History will try to flatten her into a WNBA figure that stuffed a box score but could never win the big one.

It’s your duty, as the Ball-Knower you are, to carry this knowledge of what Tina Charles’ legacy is and to make sure it remains honored in perpetuity.

As New York City’s status as prep basketball Mecca fades and powerhouses like Long Island Lutheran take the exalted status Christ the King once held, Charles represents some of the last of the real ones. A player that grew up as a hooper on the blacktops of Queens, took her talents to the dynasty of dynasties, stood tall aside the legends of past and present, while making her impact felt far beyond her box score.

Shout out to a legend. Hopefully we’ll see you back in the game soon.

And, as my wife would say, “utterly devoured”…

Here’s A’ja Wilson…

Angel Reese…

And Paige Bueckers…

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WNBA teams smashed Nigeria's D'Tigress... but it wasn't as bad as the scores suggest by Colin Udoh, ESPN

Natasha Cloud finally finds her WNBA home in Chicago, although her arrival (yet again) raises questions about the Sky’s team-building process by Cat Ariali, Swish Appeal

If you haven’t tapped in with Sean Highkin and his incredible Portland Fire and Trailblazers work, check it out here!

And tap in with us too if you haven’t already!