WASHINGTON — For the second time in as many years, Washington Mystics guard Brittney Sykes felt a particular responsibility to play well on the day the Mystics inducted a legend into their Hall of Fame.
Last year, Sykes wore No. 15, the same jersey number as the Mystics’ Hall of Fame selection, the late Nikki McCray-Penson. This season, Sykes switched to No. 20 — and the Mystics inducted another No. 20, Alana Beard, into their Hall of Fame on Friday night.
Sykes delivered on the self-imposed pressure, pouring in a season-high 28 points, six rebounds and five assists against the Los Angeles Sparks. Time and again, Sykes drove for a layup or hit a pull-up jump shot, and Beard, sitting courtside near the tunnel leading to the Mystics’ locker room, applauded her.
“I didn’t let it overwhelm me,” Sykes told reporters afterward, “but in the back of my head, it’s like, ‘Come on, Slim. You’re wearing the number that’s literally being [honored].’ … And I really respect AB … so it was really cool to be able to perform with my team in front of her.”
Beard joined McCray-Penson, Chamique Holdsclaw, Murriel Page and Vicky Bullett in the Mystics Hall of Fame, which began in 2022 at the urging of general manager and then-head coach Mike Thibault. She played with Holdsclaw and Page in Washington, and she credited Page on Friday for mentoring her and teaching her about leadership.
A 5’11 guard/forward, Beard arrived in Washington in 2004 as the No. 2 overall pick out of Duke. She told reporters on Friday that she was “pretty ecstatic” to come to Washington because, in her mind, it wasn’t much farther for her family in Shreveport, Louisiana, to drive — only another four hours on top of the 14 to 16 they’d driven regularly to Duke.
Though Beard said her adjustment to the WNBA was challenging, that didn’t show up in her rookie stats. She put a lot of pressure on herself to excel immediately, and she made it happen.
She started all 34 games in 2004 and averaged 13.1 points, 4.2 rebounds, 2.7 assists, 2.0 steals and 1.0 blocks per game while shooting 37.5% from 3-point range. She received votes for WNBA Rookie of the Year, Defensive Player of the Year and Most Valuable Player.
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That season, the Mystics went 17-17 after going 9-25 in 2003. They made the playoffs but fell to the Thibault-led Connecticut Sun in the first round. Current Mystics head coach Eric Thibault, Mike’s son, was only 17 years old then, but he recalled that series on Friday.
“She had just totally revitalized that team,” he told reporters pregame. “She came in as a rookie and was pretty sensational right away.”
Across her six healthy seasons with the Mystics, Beard averaged 16.2 points, 3.4 rebounds, 2.5 assists and 1.7 steals in 32.6 minutes per game. She was a four-time All-Star, a four-time All-Defensive Team selection and an All-WNBA selection in 2006. Though she had five head coaches in six years, she helped the Mystics make the playoffs three times.
But in 2010, she tore the posterior tibial tendon in her left ankle during a preseason practice. That tendon holds the foot up and is a relatively rare athletic injury. “It’s an old man’s injury,” her doctor told her — and he warned it would probably end her career.
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Instead, Beard returned for the 2012 season, signing with Los Angeles in free agency. (Mike Thibault recalled on Friday how she was his first call that year as he tried to get her to choose Connecticut instead.)
She wasn’t the scorer she once was, but she became a two-time WNBA Defensive Player of the Year and won a WNBA championship in 2016.
“I reinvented myself. I came back completely different,” Beard said on Friday. “I couldn’t jump with the best, I couldn’t run with the best, I couldn’t score with the best because my body was just different [and] my mindset was different because of what I had just gone through. And so I would say it was the first time that I just truly had to reinvent who I was, and I don’t regret it at all.”
“You had to rethink your entire approach to getting into your offense when you played against [Beard],” Eric Thibault said. “If you were lucky, they put her on a wing, she guarded a wing, and so you could actually get the ball up the floor. … You had to have your big bring it up. You’d have to have two or three guard outlets and hope that she didn’t run over and take the one who was initiating. [You had to] hope they didn’t change her matchup out of a timeout. It was just destructive. …
“Those LA games are just one big blur of her picking people at half court.”
Beard is the first Mystics Hall of Famer who overlapped with some of the current team in the WNBA. Wing Karlie Samuelson was Beard’s teammate with the Sparks in 2018 and 2019, Beard’s final two seasons. Center Stefanie Dolson and guards Sykes, Ariel Atkins and Shatori Walker-Kimbrough all played against her.
For the guards in particular, Beard was an inspiration because of her defense. Sykes and Walker-Kimbrough both told The Next that Beard had inspired them to strive to win Defensive Player of the Year, an award that otherwise has nearly exclusively gone to frontcourt players.
“A guard winning Defensive Player of the Year, that wasn’t — like, she created that,” Walker-Kimbrough said on Aug. 17. “She created that segue for guards like all of us, like me. It’s giving me a goal … that I know I can possibly achieve.”
“She gave me hope,” Sykes added on Friday. “She made me realize that defense is key and that you can make that a part of your identity and still be a bucket.”
Both players vividly remembered going against Beard as rookies. In Walker-Kimbrough’s case, she was with the Mystics in 2017, the year Beard won her first Defensive Player of the Year award, and the coaches told the players to run every play away from whichever side Beard was on. Walker-Kimbrough had heard that at times for elite shot-blockers, but never for a perimeter player.
The same year, Sykes was with the Atlanta Dream, and Beard guarded her for a few possessions. “She terrorized me,” Sykes said postgame. At the time, Sykes wanted the refs to call Beard for fouls, but later she started to study how Beard played and emphasize defense herself.
And on Friday, with Beard watching, Sykes jumped a passing lane near the top of the key and raced in for a layup at the other end, much like Beard was known for.
For Atkins, Beard also left a lasting impression because of how she carried herself on the court.
“She’s [got] such a calm demeanor, but she goes about business. … I really kind of look up to her for that because I think it has a lot to do with the way that I play as well,” Atkins told reporters postgame. “So … to have her a part of this organization and to come back and enjoy it and to see her get her flowers today is, it’s pretty cool.”
Despite playing only six seasons in Washington before her injury, Beard is the Mystics’ all-time leader in points and steals and ranks in the top six in assists and blocks. Across her entire career, Beard ranks fourth in WNBA history with 709 steals, 20th in minutes and games played, 22nd in defensive win shares, and 29th in points.
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Her return on Friday was met with plenty of excitement, even though the game featured two of the WNBA’s worst teams this season. Fans arrived early to claim commemorative Beard bobbleheads, Eric Thibault wore a retro blue Mystics T-shirt to his pregame press conference, and Hall of Fame banners encircled the arena.
During a timeout in the second quarter, congratulatory messages played on the video board, including from Sparks head coach Curt Miller, 2004 No. 1 overall pick Diana Taurasi, Beard’s family, a childhood friend, the program director of Beard’s 318 Foundation, and several former Mystics teammates. The biggest cheer during the video came when Page, known as “the original” Mystic, appeared on the screen, and the clamor continued as the public address announcer introduced Beard for the first time.
At halftime, Mystics players hustled to the locker room as staff members prepared the court for Beard’s ceremony. The exception was Sykes, who lingered to speak with a few of the coaches. When she headed toward the tunnel, she paused to shake Beard’s hand.
The lights then dimmed in the Entertainment and Sports Arena, and the Mystics played a highlight reel from Beard’s time in Washington. Under a spotlight, Mike Thibault introduced Beard, and her former teammates and friends stood nearby. As he spoke, Beard and her wife and son waited in the shadows under one basket.
Thibault presented her with a bright blue custom letter jacket, flowers and a commemorative basketball in a glass case. She high-fived her son, and then it was her turn to speak. The fans stood as she was introduced, and most remained on their feet throughout her brief remarks, which were mainly thanking her friends, her family, the fans and Mystics ownership.
After that, all that was left to do was unveil the updated Hall of Fame banner, now with five names instead of four.
“The one question that I get from family and friends is if I’m excited,” Beard said pregame. “And I think if you know me, you know that I don’t get excited about much, but this is a true honor.”
She added, “I didn’t play the game to get recognized. I didn’t play the game to be celebrated. I played the game simply because I loved it and I wanted to be one of the best to ever play it. And so what this [honor] really means is that it’s, I guess, an attribute to me showing up every single day, consistent in who I am and what I did on the court, and … that means pretty much everything to me.”
During the fourth quarter, Beard left her courtside seat to greet her supporters and teammates on the arena’s upper level. But she was back for the final minutes, leaning forward to see how the game would end. After the Mystics closed out the 80-74 win, Beard stood and applauded, then met the team in the locker room.
“It’s one of my … favorite nights of the year, and I think it’s one of the most important ones we do,” Eric Thibault said pregame about the annual Hall of Fame induction. “… I think it’s cool every year that our players get to see it and see what it can mean to play here and have an impact on this city and this team.”
The night meant a lot to the fans, some of whom had watched Beard play in Washington or even at Duke. Several wore T-shirts or jerseys featuring her No. 20. During the fourth quarter, a little girl wandered over to Beard to get the box containing her bobblehead signed, and Beard held an extended autograph signing after the game.
During the autograph session, Beard seemed unbothered by the line snaking around the court. She engaged with every fan, asking them about the T-shirt they were wearing or whether they play basketball. She joked and laughed with them, including ribbing one fan who nearly forgot her signed poster because she was so excited to have gotten a selfie with Beard.
At the end of the line, there was a surprise for Beard. Two sisters showed her a photo they’d taken with her in 2008 and asked if they could recreate it. That made her feel old, she said, but she gladly obliged.
It meant a lot to the Mystics, too, to be able to celebrate Beard with a win, especially one where they executed defensively. The Mystics tied a season high with 13 steals and held Los Angeles to 37.3% shooting overall, including 17.9% over the final 17 minutes. In that span, they went on separate 11-2 and 14-3 runs that decided the game.
“We dug in,” Eric Thibault said afterward. “… We just kind of played through the ugliness. We had people … diving on the floor left and right. The crowd loves it. Our bench loved it. And that kind of gave us that separation that we needed.”
It was just the Mystics’ seventh win of the season and their first since July 10.
“Maybe,” Eric Thibault joked postgame, “we need to do a Hall of Fame night every night.”
