Sue Bird isn’t the only Seattle Storm guard retiring at the end of the 2022 season. A former Connecticut Sun player is calling it a career, too.
Briann January is also in her final WNBA season.
“Understanding this was going to be my last year, I wanted to compete for a championship, and I felt like this team is built to compete for one and put themselves in contention,” the guard recently said in a statement released by the team. ” … Ultimately, it came down to playing in front of my family one more time.”
She attended Arizona State University and began her successful college career in 2005. Throughout her time in Tempe, she earned a series of conference honors, including Pac-10 All-Freshman Team, as well as a first- and second-team selection to the all-Pac-10 team. The Sun Devils went 104-32 during her time on campus.
Her impressive college career led to her being chosen sixth overall in the 2009 WNBA Draft by the Indiana Fever as part of a draft class that also featured Angel McCoughtry, Kristi Toliver and DeWanna Bonner.
January was a part of the Fever from 2009 through 2017, winning a championship in 2012. The 35-year-old averaged 10.3 points and 3.9 assists in the 2012 regular season, along with 11.5 points and 3.8 assists in the playoffs.
She accomplished so much for the Fever before heading to the Phoenix Mercury for two seasons. That brief stop in the desert preceded her lengthy move to Connecticut where she joined the Sun prior to the 2020 campaign.
January played two seasons with the Sun, started in all 29 games she played in and averaged 30.2 minutes per game in 2021. The guard averaged seven points and 3.1 assists that season. From Connecticut, the Washington native headed to the Storm.
Storm head coach Noelle Quinn reflected on January’s fitting in well for her team.
“She has no problem with that aspect of coming to work every single day, putting the work in, going hard in everything she does,” Quinn said in the press release.
The list of January’s accomplishments is a lengthy one, and it includes seven All-Defensive Team selections, four trips to the WNBA Finals and one All-Star Game appearance.
She has played 389 games and started in 293 of them over the course of her career so far. The Storm still have four regular-season games remaining before final playoff appearances for Bird and January.
January, as detailed in the statement, has hopes to coach after her 14-year career officially comes to a close.
“I want to coach in the ‘W’ and help some of these women have long careers like I did and achieve everything and experience everything that I did, being an All-Star and winning a championship,” January said in the statement. “I want to give back to this game that has given so much to me.”
