Returning from injury, Kia Nurse aims to reach new heights in first season with Storm

New city, new team, new role and hopefully a right knee that’s as good as new, if not better. 

Kia Nurse is heading into her fifth WNBA season, but it hardly feels like same-old, same-old.

On Saturday afternoon, Nurse will make her debut with the Seattle Storm in their season-opening matchup against the defending champion Las Vegas Aces.

The Canadian women’s national team member hasn’t played in a WNBA game since tearing her ACL 39 seconds into Game 4 of the 2021 semifinals.

Her last time on the floor in a competitive situation was playing for Canada at the FIBA Women’s World Cup last October, where she helped Canada to a best-ever fourth-place finish while playing on a minutes restriction.

Meanwhile the Storm – arguably the WNBA’s most successful franchise, with four titles and 18 playoff appearances in their 23-year history – are adjusting to a new era following the retirement of Hall of Fame point guard Sue Bird after 19 seasons and the departure of four-time All-Star and former league MVP Breanna Stewart to the New York Liberty via free agency.

“This is a massive challenge here in Seattle. This is a very different-looking team. I don’t how many times I’ve heard someone say: it’s going to look so different this year. No Sue Bird, no Brianna Stewart,” Nurse said in a recent interview. “I keep reminding people that in sports, change is inevitable. Change happens. I’ve never played on the same team two years in a row in my lifetime, but this is a big turnaround for this team.”

It's exactly what Nurse signed up for as she explored free agency after sitting out all of the 2022 season rehabilitating her knee. 

In her career, she’s already been a splashy rookie, and in her second season was a WNBA All-Star. She was traded to the Mercury and took on a role as defensive stopper and complementary scorer on a team that was poised to win a title. Now, she’s looking for something a little more and little different: a chance to lead a team and help it exceed expectations.

“I hired a new agent in the off-season, and one of the things I talked to him about heading into free agency is, coming back off the ACL, I wanted to be put into a big role and have to play that role and take on that challenge, and really see where I could take my game,” she said. 

“Seattle was the place to do that, it had that opportunity, and playing alongside (four-time All-Star) Jewell Lloyd in the backcourt I think is going to be something that’s absolutely incredible.”

Nurse has made the most of her mid-career pause due to the knee injury. In addition to expanding her broadcasting duties at TSN, she’s expanded her off-court portfolio to include her own basketball academy and well as Kia Nurse Elite – her summer competitive program playing on the prestigious EYBL circuit.

She’s extended her existing relationship with Jordan Brand and just recently signed a deal with Gatorade, both partnerships helping support her academy and Kia Nurse Elite.

The deals reflect her growing clout in the marketplace, but it’s still a bit of a pinch-me experience.

“When I think about sports, I think about Gatorade,” she said. “I think about those iconic commercials I saw as a kid growing up and the iconic athletes that worked with the brand."

Now she’s one of them.

“As a role model, it’s cool that kids can say, ‘She’s an athlete signed by Gatorade, maybe I could do that one day,’” she said.

But it starts with basketball, and Nurse is hoping that after 11 months rehabbing her knee and with nine month of training following her return to action at the World Cup, she can explore new parts of her game and be a better version of her previous self.

“It's an interesting part of my career right now. Typically, if you look at basketball players, female basketball players especially, their prime starts around  27, 28 years old, and I’m entering that part of my career now,” said Nurse who recently celebrated her 27^th birthday.

“Thinking back to the ACL, a lot of times when people are returning from those injuries, they say they want to get back to where they were before they were hurt. And, in all honesty, right before I got hurt I was playing some of my best basketball in Phoenix, and that was kind of disheartening,” she said. “But at the same time, I don’t think I want to come back at that place.”

Nurse averaged 15.5 points and 3.0 career assists per 36 minutes in 2020, her last season with the Liberty, and averaged 2.5 made threes per game on 36 per cent shooting per/36 while playing more off the ball with the Mercury. She believes the time she’s spent training after her injury will allow her to play at her highest level yet.

“I’ve spent so much time and so much effort over the past – I want to say 11 months, but it was 11 months before the World Championships, and it’s been nine more in the off-season before getting here," she said. "And just working on my game itself, I think I’ve added getting to the free-throw line a little bit more, something I used early in my WNBA career but got away from, and I’m playing a little bit more in the mid-range. It’s known around the league that I can knock down the three, and that’s opened up the rest of my game for me, so just making sure I have those counters and the ability to get to the rim from there.”

She’s shaped some of her goals with the input of Storm head coach Noelle Quinn, who is an assistant coach with the Canadian Women’s national team. Quinn’s presence was one of the factors that encouraged Nurse to sign with Seattle, and at a women’s national team minicamp in France in February, the benefits were evident when some of the sets that were being put in were variations on what the Storm will be running this season.

“The World Championships was the first time I was back in that national team environment, but I really liked what she had to say, I really liked the offences she had put in for our national team,” said Nurse. “I had known (Quinn) when she was player early in my career and I just knew how smart she was as a player and I knew that the Xs-and-Os side of things was something people around our league complimented her very highly on, and I had a great relationship with her at the national team.

“And when we went to France in February for a quick little camp, I had already signed with Seattle, and so when she was putting in offences there, she would say, ‘These are sets that we’ll be running in Seattle, these are shots you’ll probably get within our offence’ and I went home and had her text me all the things she wanted me to work on, and I gave it to my trainer and we just worked around that.”

Justin Alliman, her trainer, saw her development firsthand. He’s bullish on where his client’s game stands, but also preaches caution: “I tell her it’s going to take time, not just coming back from her injury, but also from such a long time away from the league. But as the season goes along, we’ll see the old Kia.”

From Nurse’s point of view, the work has been done, the changes have been made, the knee feels good and Seattle is beginning to feel like home. There’s nothing left but for the games to begin. She’s confident she and the Storm can surprise people.

“No one is really talking about us right now and they might have to when we turn their heads at some point this season,” said Nurse. “But across our league in the WNBA, there is so much change from free agency in the off-season, it should be a heck of a summer for women’s basketball in the WNBA.”