Keyshawn Johnson and Candace Parker agreed that Cheryl Miller was the “greatest women’s basketball player of all time”, but Miller, humble to a fault, pushed back on that praise. While appearing with Parker on “Women’s Hoops Pioneers,” the second episode of Johnson’s limited series, “LA Legends,” Miller acknowledged that compliment, and redirected it, spreading the love to the people who helped her achieve her success.
Miller’s selflessness is a significant factor in why she’s revered and honored so widely. But, whether she’s willing to accept it or not, she was arguably the greatest women’s basketball player of all time, and Johnson and Parker wanted to reinforce that.
“You know when you can tell about somebody by the way they move, that they’re different?” Parker asked, rhetorically. “Cheryl just had a before-her-time, in-any-era game. You put her in any era, she’s successful. You put her in this era, it doesn’t matter, she’s going to do what she does.”
Miller played four seasons at the University of Southern California, leading the Trojans to back-to-back NCAA Championships in 1984 and 1985. She averaged over 20 points per game in all four of her collegiate seasons, peaking at 26.8 in her junior year. She won the women’s Naismith Player of the Year award in 1985 and 1986.
Miller, undoubtedly, dominated the best talent women’s basketball had to offer at the time. However, the WNBA — which was founded in 1996 — did not exist when Miller was playing, so her career could not last past college. Therefore, it’s tough to judge how she would stack up against potential professionals of her era, or the ones playing in the WNBA now.
But, from Parker and Johnson’s perspective, Miller would have thrived.
[Related: Keyshawn Johnson Returns to Los Angeles Roots in New Limited Series ‘LA Legends’]
“You’re the biggest ladies’s basketball participant of all time,” Johnson mentioned.
“To be sincere, I am one in all many,” Miller responded. “It is debatable. Relying on who you ask, it is debatable. I have been lucky to play with nice coaches and be in the correct spot on the proper time.”
No matter how she feels, Miller actually has the correct to have an opinion on this debate. And, in a while throughout the “Girls’s Hoops Pioneers,” she shared her ideas on present WNBA budding stars Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese.
“You had Magic and Larry, who competed (towards each other) in faculty,” Millers “It is sort of like the identical factor a bit with Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark.”
To Miller’s level, Reese and Clark had the same fiery rivalry throughout their collegiate tenures at Louisiana State and the College of Iowa to those Magic Johnson and Larry Chook did whereas at Michigan State and Indiana State.
Reese and Clark confronted off 4 instances whereas in faculty, with Reese’s LSU Tigers successful three of the 4 matchups, together with the 2023 NCAA Division I ladies’s basketball championship, and the 2024 Elite Eight.
Now, within the WNBA, Reese and Clark have performed towards one another twice, with Reese’s Chicago Sky and Clark’s Indiana Fever splitting the 2 matchups. Whatever the outcomes, Clark has had far more general success than Reese since being drafted in 2024. As a rookie, she averaged 19.2 factors and eight.4 assists over 40 video games and received the WNBA Rookie of the 12 months award. She additionally made an All-Star look and earned All-WNBA first-team honors.
In reality, Clark was the primary rookie since Parker in 2008 to make the All-WNBA First Staff, so future the Corridor of Famer respects Clark’s recreation.
“She’s a bucket,” Parker mentioned.
“Caitlin is a baller, she’s a dawg,” Miller added. “The identical factor with Angel.”
Reese, at coronary heart, is a tenacious competitor, and has proven glimpses of being an elite submit participant within the WNBA, however her adaptation to the skilled recreation hasn’t come alongside practically as shortly as Clark. Miller referred to it as “ever-evolving,” whereas acknowledging Reese’s spectacular drive to win.
Reese has averaged a stable double-double of 13.3 factors and 13 rebounds over 51 WNBA video games, throughout two seasons. Nonetheless, her field-goal proportion sits at 39.7% for her profession. It is her crowning glory that might use some enchancment, but when she will get that down, then she may attain her spectacular ceiling.
The fact is that Clark and Reese aren’t of their prime but, and will probably be fascinating to see the place their careers go. Miller is actually excited. She believes there’s an opportunity they may attain the heights that Parker and Johnson declare Miller did and grow to be among the biggest ladies’s basketball gamers of all time.
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