Happy Labor Day! This week’s open threads will highlight those Queens of social justice, the WNBA. This week’s threads will highlight who’s considered the top/best WBNA players of all time.
Tamika Devonne Catchings (born July 21, 1979) is an American retired professional basketball player who played her entire 15-year career for the Indiana Fever of the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA). Catchings has won a WNBA championship (2012), WNBA Most Valuable Player Award (2011), WNBA Finals MVP Award (2012), five WNBA Defensive Player of the Year Awards (2005, 2006, 2009, 2010, 2012), four Olympic gold medals (2004, 2008, 2012, 2016), and the WNBA Rookie of the Year Award (2002). She is one of only 11 women to attain all four accolades. She has also been selected to ten WNBA All-Star teams, 12 All-WNBA teams, 12 All-Defensive teams, and led the league in steals eight times. In 2011, Catchings was voted in by fans as one of the WNBA’s Top 15 Players of All Time.
Tamika Catchings is a prolific scorer close to and far from the basket, and a capable rebounder, ball handler, and defender. After playing at Adlai E. Stevenson High School and graduating from Duncanville High School, Tamika Catchings became one of the stars of the University of Tennessee women’s basketball team. In 2001, the Indiana Fever drafted her. After sitting out the entire year in which she was drafted because of injury, she had an all-star rookie season in 2002. She is famous for recording the first-ever quintuple-double (25 points, 18 rebounds, 11 assists, 10 steals, and 10 blocks) in 1997 and served as President of the WNBA Players Association from 2012 to 2016. Catchings will be inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in 2020.
Catchings was born in New Jersey. She played for Duncanville High School in Duncanville, Texas, where she was named a WBCA All-American. She participated in the WBCA High School All-America Game where she scored twelve points.[2] She is also the first player at any level in history to be officially credited with scoring a quintuple-double. Catchings was an All-American with the Tennessee Lady Volunteers basketball for 1997–2001. She earned the Naismith College Player of the Year award, the AP Player of the Year award, the USBWA Women’s National Player of the Year award, and the WBCA Player of the Year award in 2000. As a freshman on the undefeated 1997–98 National champions, she was part of the “Meeks” with Semeka Randall and Chamique Holdsclaw.
Catchings was drafted 3rd overall by the Indiana Fever in 2001. Unable to play in the 2001 season due to an ACL injury sustained during her senior year at Tennessee, she had an outstanding year in 2002 and was named WNBA Rookie of the Year while averaging 18.6 ppg, immediately impacting the Fever roster in her first year as a pro. During her rookie season, in a regular-season game against the Minnesota Lynx, Catchings had tied a then WNBA record, 9 steals (which has since been broken by Ticha Penicheiro). That year, the Fever made it to the playoffs and despite losing 2–1 in the first round, Catchings had a dominant series, averaging a playoff career-high 20.3 ppg.
Catchings’s best season of her career would be in the 2003 season, where she averaged a career-high 19.7 ppg, although the Fever never made it to the playoffs that year.
As of her retirement, Catchings ranks 1st all-time in career playoff scoring, 1st all-time in career playoff rebounds, 2nd in all-time regular-season rebounds, 2nd in all-time career regular-season scoring, 1st in total career steals, and 1st in career steals per game average. She also holds another WNBA record for most consecutive playoff appearances of 12 straight seasons. Catchings had also appeared in 3 WNBA finals. She was also listed in the WNBA Top 20@20, a list of the league’s best 20 players ever in celebration of the WNBA’s twentieth anniversary.
In January 2017, it was announced that Catchings will serve as a game analyst for Women’s Basketball Games on SEC Network. In February 2017, Catchings purchased a tea shop, Tea’s Me Cafe from the previous owners on the near north side of Indianapolis that she had been frequenting while playing for the Indiana Fever.
In April 2017, Catchings was named Director of Player Programs and Franchise Development for Pacers Sports & Entertainment. Catchings competed in the Baltimore qualifying round of Season 11 of American Ninja Warrior. The episode aired on NBC on July 1, 2019.
Catchings serves as the Vice President of Basketball Operations and General Manager for the Indiana Fever. Catchings founded the Catch of the Stars Foundation, a charitable organization that provides basketball camps, fitness clinics, mentoring, and literacy programs for underprivileged children to help them become successful in sports and academics.
Catchings advocates to support the Black Lives Matter movement and against police brutality and gun violence. Before the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, she and Carmelo Anthony, an NBA athlete, attended a town meeting in Los Angeles to discuss violence committed by police officers. She and her teammates knelt during the playing of the National Anthem to protest infringements upon human rights.
At another game, she and her teammates, along with members of two other teams, were fined $500 per player and $5000 per team for wearing warm-up shirts that read “#BlackLivesMatter” and “#Dallas5”, regarding violence by and against police officers.
Catchings is the daughter of former NBA player Harvey Catchings. Her sister Tauja also played basketball at Stevenson and the WNBA drafted by the University of Illinois and now plays in Sweden. Tamika’s cousin Bobby is a starting forward for Eastern Illinois University’s basketball team. Tamika majored in Sports Management at the University of Tennessee.
Catchings helped Stevenson High School to Illinois’s IHSA Div. AA State Championship in her Sophomore year in 1995 under head coach Frank Mattucci before moving to Texas. During her sophomore year at Stevenson,, she won Illinois Ms. Basketball (which at the time was the youngest player to ever win the award). Besides leading Duncanville High to the state basketball title in her senior season (she played only two years at Duncanville after moving from the Chicago area), she also led the volleyball team to its only state title as a junior.
Catchings was born hard of hearing; she wore a hearing aid as a young girl. In 2000, she was honored with the Reynolds Society Achievement Award by the world-famous Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary in Boston. On June 24, 2008, Catchings was awarded the Dawn Staley Community Leadership Award for her work in the Indianapolis community with her Catch the Stars Foundation.
Catchings refereed a game of 3-on-3 basketball played by Barack Obama along with local students from Kokomo, Indiana at the Maple Crest Middle School on April 25, 2008. Fever teammate Alison Bales also played on Obama’s team.
In February 2016, Catchings married Parnell Smith, who is a former basketball player at the University of Buffalo. The couple first met in July 2014 through a mutual friend.
Catchings is also a Christian. She had opened up about her faith in an interview by saying, “God is definitely my Savior. He’s the one that walks beside me through my ups and downs, and the one that keeps me focused on where I am going in life. He protects me. He provides for me. He guides me and he leads me”.