Justine Pissott‘s basketball journey began in childhood, but gained steam when she was thirteen years old. That’s also when Vanderbilt’s assistant coach, Kevin DeMille, started scouting her.
Pissott kept in touch with DeMille over the years, even though she ultimately didn’t commit to George Washington University, where he coached under 2013 Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame inductee Jennifer Rizzotti at the time.
“I’ll never forget the day when she called Jen Rizzotti to tell her she wasn’t going to commit to GW,” DeMille told The IX Sports in May, soon after Pissott was drafted by the Indiana Fever. “And by that time, she had become a top 10 player in her class, and we knew she wasn’t coming to George Washington.”
He and Rizzotti were in the latter’s office when Pissott’s call came through. “And she’s like, ‘Why is Justine Pissott calling me right now?’ And [Justine] said, ‘Hey, Coach, this is Justine. I just wanted to let you know I’ve made my decision for college, and I’m not going to GW’, and we all like, we laughed. I think she was 15 at the time, she was 16—she didn’t understand why it was so funny.”
DeMille continued: “She was sassy and bratty in a very Jersey Shore way that I understand as a native of New Jersey. She had a lot of fire to her. She was a fire from the jump, but she was just so competitive in so many ways, and I’ll never forget that she she still had the respect for us to call us and tell us she wasn’t coming to GW I was a fan for a while, and then when it became that we were competitors, I was a little disappointed we had to coach against her.”
Listen now to The IX Sports Podcast and Women’s Sports Daily
We are excited to announce the launch of TWO new podcasts for all the women’s sports fans out there looking for a daily dose of women’s sports news and analysis. Stream on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or anywhere you listen to podcasts, and make sure to subscribe!
Simple twist of fate
Sometimes, second chances come back around. Pissott signed with Tennessee in 2021, then the highest-ranked player the program had attracted in two years, but DeMille got another shot at signing her a few years later. She hit the transfer portal after two seasons with the Lady Vols, and DeMille—who was now coaching under Shea Ralph at Vanderbilt—wasn’t going to let her miss him without a fight.
“And then the universe just has a funny way of keeping connected people who need to be connected,” he said. “We actually had Jordyn Oliver on an official visit. She committed at a dinner the night before, and we were at breakfast, just kind of hanging out with Jordan Oliver’s family.”
This was before “the portal was absolutely crazy,” and DeMille was refreshing every few minutes to see who had entered. “I got a tweet [that] came through that Justine was going to enter the portal. I checked, and after breakfast, I called her dad.”
Things were set into motion.
Though she didn’t get to play many seasons with Ralph and the Commodores, the program prepared her well for the WNBA. Pissott, who had set her sights on the league since she was 13 or 14, had to grow into the role.
“This journey can be the separator a lot of times, for al ot of players,” DeMille said. “It was almost a separator for Justine in other ways. She’s been through a lot, but I think her investment in herself and in her own growth, especially in the last 15 months … if it weren’t for her recommitment to herself and her goals and the things that she wanted, and if it weren’t for her ability to invest in her teammates, and invest in us as coaches … all of those things that are differentiators, the things people really struggle to decide to invest in, she decided to invest in the in really powerful ways.”
Pissott spent her time in Nashville becoming a great teammate and the kind of leader the Commodores could count on. “She was forced into a couple of roles where she had to play maybe outside of the position she normally envisioned for herself, and realized that she’s probably more effective as a four, and she bought into that,” he explained.
Pissott and DeMille worked on her threes, an area she wanted to develop (and has demonstrably done so to great success). It would be easy for DeMille to take the credit, but he gave it all to her.
“I think she just, she committed to the growth process,” he said. “She committed to… it doesn’t always have to be unicorns and rainbows, as Shea likes to say, but it will result in your growth. And she really leaned into that perspective and really committed to that.”
DeMille wasn’t the only person at Vanderbilt who wanted to pursue Pissott. “We were recruiting other players that Justine played with and against after she had committed to Tennessee while we were still at Vanderbilt,” he said. “She was going into her senior year, and Shea turned to me at one point and said, ‘I would love to coach that kid’.”
The Commodores believed in Pissott, who, in turn, believed in them. She was part of the squad that made it to the Sweet Sixteen at the end of the 2025-26 season.
“I like to say we just tried to clear the path as best we could for her to become who she’s supposed to be,” DeMille added.
“I think she’s changed my life,” Pissott told reporters of Ralph after her final game. “I’m going to get emotional, so I’m not going to say a lot. But I’m super thankful for her.”
“Not only is she a great human being, but the amount of times we’ve had conversations about faith and God is what makes her so special. She knows how important He is to me, and last night we had a conversation, and she wrote me a letter, and it was just tears to my eyes.”
From the Fever to the Aces
This year’s WNBA Draft was held on April 13, 2026. The Indiana Fever picked up Pissott as the No. 25 overall pick of the night in the second round, and soon elected to sign her to a developmental contract with the team. That could have given her the opportunity to play up to 12 games for Indiana this season, but the team never activated her, and other teams (and fans) rarely had the opportunity to see her on the court at all.
She also didn’t do much press. In fact, Pissott was fairly silent for months, cheering on her teammates from the bench. The Fever offered little insight or indication she might make it to the floor, though when asked directly about her, head coach Stephanie White offered praise.
In late April, White noted Pissott had already demonstrated growth in terms of her defensive game. She’d already gained “a little more awareness on the defensive end of the floor, and some of the ways that we play when we git in rotation—hunting those opportunities,” White said. “She can shoot the ball. We know that.”
So there was hope that Pissott would make it to the court for the Fever, and fans who have watched her for years could get a glimpse of that growth themselves. But earlier this month, the Las Vegas Aces announced the team had signed Pissott to a rest-of-season contract, a move that had her nearly immediately shipping out west.
When asked why the Fever didn’t offer Pissott a contract of her own, White acknowledged that the team would have had to dismiss someone else—likely Grace VanSlooten or Damiris Dantas—and they weren’t prepared to do so.
“I think that’s the great thing about these development spots, and the challenging thing about these development spots, is that you have opportunities to develop players, then when they get an ability to get a standard contract … this is what it’s meant for,” White told reporters at the time. “To continue to advance opportunity for the players, and to continue to keep them ready for when their opportunity presents itself.”
To that end, White was correct. The change couldn’t have been more different for Pissott, it seemed. She found herself playing as soon as she was ready to—and Pissott made the most of her debut.
The 6’4 forward, who had previously only played a handful of minutes in a preseason game against the New York Liberty, lit up the court for Las Vegas. She recorded 19 points and made five three-pointers in only ten minutes of action, a statement that reverberated throughout the community of WNBA players and fans.
It also resonated with the Aces’ head coach, Becky Hammon, who made her interest in Pissott clear after the game: “I mean, I just met her,” Hammon said. “What I will say is we watched a lot of tape on her. Obviously, you guys know I love shooters, and she can shoot that thang.”
For Pissott, signing with the Aces gave her the chance to accomplish what she came to the league to do in the first place. “I think it was a great opportunity, an opportunity where I can bet on myself,” she told reporters after the game. “I think I had to do that for me, and for my game, and for my family.”
Her new teammates also encouraged her ahead of her first game. “I don’t think there’s a lot of pressure on me,” Pissott added. “Even my teammates are like, just go out there and do what you have to do.”
To that end, Pissott more than met the moment—and she has the rest of the 2026 season (and, hopefully, many more) to keep showing what she’s capable of.
No matter what, DeMille said that he’s enormously proud of how far she’s come. “I mean, it’s no secret that she’s going to have to be willing to be more physical,” he said of Pissott’s entry into the league. “It’s not that she can’t do it. She just has to decide how important it is to her.”
He continued: “She has found a way to win through every scenario of her life. Sometimes it’s driven me crazy. Most of the time, it’s made my hair gray, but she’s found a way to win, and she is going to compete and find a way to contribute, even if it doesn’t look the way that she envisioned it looking.”
A lot of the road that led Pissott to this moment didn’t look how she’d imagined it would, he said. “But she got to a point where she’s accomplished all the things she’s wanted to accomplish, and she’s relinquished this illusion of control over how this goes.”
“She’s going to find a way to make an impact on this or any team that she’s on, because that’s what she’s always found a way to do,” he said, “and she’s learned now more than ever that believing in herself is the ticket to get there. And I’m just really proud.”
The Las Vegas Aces will next meet the Tempo in Toronto on July 20.
“Becoming Caitlin Clark” is out now!
Howard Megdal’s newest book is here! “Becoming Caitlin Clark: The Unknown Origin Story of a Modern Basketball Superstar” captures both the historic nature of Clark’s rise and the critical context over the previous century that helped make it possible, including interviews with Clark, Lisa Bluder (who also wrote the foreword), C. Vivian Stringer, Jan Jensen, Molly Kazmer and many others.
