WASHINGTON — Throughout a 33-point loss to the Atlanta Dream on Sunday, Georgia Amoore sat forward in her chair in the second row of the Washington Mystics’ bench. She wore a jean jacket over a white T-shirt and wide-legged black pants that covered her injured right knee, and she held an orange padfolio bearing the Wilson basketball logo.
Amoore talked frequently with the staff members seated around her throughout the game. And she stood and listened intently in every timeout, sometimes leaning against the chairs in front of her to get closer.
Amoore injured her ACL in practice on April 29, just the third day of training camp, and will miss her entire rookie season. In the meantime, the 5’6 point guard has morphed into the team’s No. 1 fan or an extra coach, depending on who you ask.
But what everyone agrees on is that Amoore has been around the team constantly, even as she manages long hours of rehab.
“She’s been with us in every practice, every meeting, every situation,” assistant coach Emre Vatansever told The Next on Saturday, pantomiming a tip of the cap at the end of his comments. “… It’s usually the case that when you have [an] injured player, you don’t see their faces a lot because they’re busy … for rehab purposes. I’ve never seen a person who gets injured and just, I see her as much as I see the other players.”
From the moment Amoore got injured, she has been resilient and optimistic. When it happened, she joked with teammate and fellow Australian Jade Melbourne that it better be serious because she’d “screamed like a little wuss,” Amoore said on the podcast “It’s a Cole World.” And when it was time to share her diagnosis with her teammates, she forbade them from being sad.
“It’s actually been like, ‘Hey, Georgia, can you be sad?’” Melbourne told The Next on Saturday with a laugh. “Like, she’s going through such a big thing. But she’s just absolutely killed it.”
“I don’t think I’ve seen anyone who seems more prepared for a moment like this,” center/forward Shakira Austin told The Next on May 16, “like [with] the stuff she was saying and her perspective on going through this, and even just her energy and her character from Day 1.”
Amoore’s rehab process has been smooth so far, which she credits to already having strong quadriceps, calves and other leg muscles. Less than a week after surgery, she could lift her leg and bend it 90 degrees, she said on “It’s a Cole World.” Now, about a month after surgery, she is walking without crutches and focusing on eliminating her limp.
She has put in long days in the training room to be around the team and also get all her rehab done. Often, she times the physical therapy exercises she does in the weight room to coincide with her teammates’ lifting, forward Emily Engstler told The Next on Sunday. She does other rehab exercises before or after the team is together.
“Anything that I have to do, I stagger it around every single film or practice or game to make sure that I’m still there and engaged and watching,” Amoore told reporters before Sunday’s game.
One of the few times Amoore wasn’t present was for the season opener on May 16, which was just after her surgery. So second-year forward Aaliyah Edwards brought a cutout of Amoore’s face on a stick and put it on top of the team’s water cooler on the sideline. The gesture made Amoore cry.
“I thought it would be great just to have a little piece of her physically, even though she wasn’t here,” Edwards told The Next on Sunday. “… It just means a lot to her team that she’s a part of it, and she’s always engaged. … We just love her energy.”
Amoore still managed to make her presence felt that day, though. She texted the team’s group chat that morning to hype everyone up and texted general manager Jamila Wideman throughout the game. She also posted an Instagram story showing the game displayed on a tablet next to her knee, which was in a black brace that ran nearly the length of her leg.
“She told us she was watching that from [the] hospital,” Melbourne said. “I was like, ‘Didn’t you get cut open, like, three minutes ago?’”
Now that Amoore is back with the team, her face on a stick has been relegated to her locker. She is approaching this season not as a lost year, but instead as getting a full year to prepare for the WNBA rather than the weeks most rookies get. In a way, she said, her role is simplified: She can focus primarily on rehab and the mental side of the game rather than everything that goes into playing a full WNBA schedule.
“So much of being a point guard, obviously, is how you play and what you do, but it’s [also] the mental aspect and it’s the vocal aspect,” Amoore said. “So I can clearly do that on one leg. So that’s all I’m trying to bring. …
“I’ve always had to do the little things, and I’ve always had to learn the intricacies, learn my teammates, learn the flow, [and] learn my coach and what they want to see manifest on the court. So it’s been really fun for me to take a step back and just really be a nerd about it.”
For Amoore, it almost feels like she’s in school, taking classes on the details of professional basketball. She watches practice, points out things she sees to teammates, and answers their questions when they aren’t sure what to do. Rookie wing Sonia Citron told reporters after Sunday’s game that Amoore talks to her one-on-one in practice, relaying what she sees and sharing “little tips and tricks” she thinks will help Citron.
“She’s extremely intelligent as a point guard,” Engstler said. “She knows exactly … how to help us do things without having to be on the court.”
During games, Amoore takes notes in her padfolio. Head coach Sydney Johnson said Amoore’s notes are related to “offensive execution [and] defensive execution,” while Edwards said she’s tallying things like hustle plays that aren’t always reflected on the stat sheet. Melbourne said Amoore listens for opponents’ play calls and, when there’s a play she recognizes, relays it to her teammates.
“She’s just so engaged,” Johnson told reporters before Sunday’s game about how Amoore began taking notes. “It’s like, ‘OK, we gotta channel this somehow, some way,’ because there’s a certain output that you’ll have as a player, and she’s not quite getting that.”
In games, Amoore is often talking to fellow point guards Melbourne and Sug Sutton — and usually telling Melbourne to shoot the ball.
“The information she’s feeding us is priceless,” Melbourne said.
Johnson agrees, saying she’s been “a connector” between what the coaches are teaching in practices and film sessions and how the players are executing it on the court. “That’s a lot for a rookie point guard,” he said. “But … she’s doing a really good job.”
Amoore also tries to boost her teammates’ confidence and energy during games. She said it’s repaying the favor from how they continually lift her spirits during her rehab. In the third quarter on Sunday, for example, the Mystics telegraphed an inbounds pass, and Dream guard Jordin Canada intercepted it for an easy layup. Johnson called timeout, and Amoore clapped one hand against her padfolio as her teammates approached the bench.
‘Rare Gems’ is out now!
Howard Megdal, founder and editor of The IX Basketball and The IX Sports, wrote this deeply reported book. “Rare Gems” follows four connected generations of women’s basketball pioneers, from Elvera “Peps” Neuman to Cheryl Reeve and from Lindsay Whalen to Sylvia Fowles and Paige Bueckers.
If you enjoy Megdal’s coverage of women’s basketball every Wednesday at The IX Sports, you will love “Rare Gems: How Four Generations of Women Paved the Way for the WNBA.”
Once she’s healthy, Amoore is expected to be part of the Mystics’ foundation alongside Citron and rookie forward Kiki Iriafen. Her rehab process will take months, but she is off to as good of a start as anyone could expect, with both her physical progress and her mental approach.
“She’s going to have good days and bad days,” Melbourne said. “But so far, she hasn’t had a bad day. She’s just been so well drilled in what she’s doing.”
