On Jan. 16, the day before her inspirational memoir co-written with husband Jonathan Irons was released, Maya Moore officially announced her retirement from professional basketball. It did not come as a surprise. Moore has not played in more than four years. She took the 2019 and 2020 WNBA seasons off to concentrate on family, ministry and advocacy for criminal justice reform and then didn’t return.
Shortly after Irons was released from prison on July 1, 2020 (Moore played a significant role in getting his conviction overturned), they got married. Last year, they welcomed their first child. On Jan. 17, “Love and Justice: A Story of Triumph on Two Different Courts” was released. The book speaks about each of their journeys, as well as the long road to Irons’s freedom.
Moore’s basketball career is the stuff of legends. It includes two NCAA Championships, two Olympic gold medals, four WNBA titles and countless accolades, including WNBA MVP. She is often credited as the crucial piece that propelled the Minnesota Lynx into the team that dominated the league from 2011 to 2017. Through it all, she was a vocal social justice advocate, with the Lynx breaking league protocol in 2016 to wear T-shirts advocating for racial justice.
She was part of the University of Connecticut women’s basketball team that established a new record, winning 90 consecutive games spanning from April 2008 to December 2010. Toward the end of that streak, a journalist asked what the UConn Huskies were learning about winning and losing if they never lost. At the time, I wrote a piece for the Amsterdam News saying what they learned was how to be excellent.
At Big East Media Day in 2010, I asked the UConn players in attendance what that winning streak taught them about excellence. Moore thought about it and gave a detailed response not only about hard work and practice, but also about commitment, focus and belief in yourself. She showed that sense of excellence in her determination to see Irons freed from wrongful incarceration.
“Our personal story with Jonathan was just at the forefront for me over these last few years in shifting away from the game,” said Moore. “This has definitely been unexpected, but at the same time, it’s been really thoughtful and planned and prepared. That’s life. A lot of it is unexpected, but you also do your best to try to be prepared. That’s basketball, too; you don’t know how the game’s going to unfold, but you do your best to prepare.”
Moore may not literally be prepared for everything life hands her from now on, but she will always bring her sense of excellence.
