WNBA legend Candace Parker announced her retirement from professional basketball via Instagram on Sunday afternoon and teased some details about an expanded future in the sports business world.
“This is the beginning … I’m attacking business, private equity, ownership (I will own both a NBA & WNBA team), broadcasting, production, boardrooms, beach volleyball, dominoes (sorry babe it’s going to get more real) with the same intensity & focus I did basketball,” Parker wrote in her post.
The 16-year WNBA veteran was the first player to win three league titles with as many different teams. She won with the Los Angeles Sparks in 2016, the Chicago Sky in 2021 and the Las Vegas Aces in 2023. Parker was a seven-time all-star and finished ninth on the WNBA’s all-time scoring list with 6,574 points. She was picked first in the 2008 draft.
Parker cited lingering foot injuries—she’s had 10 surgeries in her career—and a promise to herself that she would never cheat the game as her reason for leaving the court.
“The competitor in me always wants 1 more, but it’s time,” she wrote. “My HEART & body knew, but I needed to give my mind time to accept it.”
She is not going far from the game. Parker has been preparing for those post-basketball plans while she was still in the WNBA. She entered the broadcasting industry and has been with the NBA on TNT crew since 2018 and signed a multiyear extension with Turner Sports the following year. She appeared on NBA TV and provided coverage of the NCAA Division I men’s basketball championship.
If Parker does decide to go to the ownership route, she would join a small handful of former WNBA stars to have ownership stakes in teams. Sue Bird recently joined the Seattle Storm’s ownership group Force 10 LLC after she spent her entire career with the franchise.
Expansion appears to be the No. 1 discussion topic in WNBA circles and commissioner Cathy Engelbert said as much during her remarks at the WNBA draft. She hopes to expand from 12 to 16 teams by 2028 and said Nashville could be one of the landing spots for an expansion team. That is roughly 180 miles from Knoxville where Parker played her college ball at the University of Tennessee.
