wnba fan
Years ago
Phillips in the USA
While rehabbing, Phillips watches the Sun
MOHEGAN -- For someone still rehabbing a knee injury that knocked her out for the whole season, Erin Phillips was genuinely beaming Friday.
Phillips, who averaged 5.4 points as the Connecticut Sun's sparkplug off the bench last season was, as she put it, "in the neighborhood" after she was invited by the team to come back to Mohegan Sun Arena to take in Connecticut's 76-58 win over the Seattle Storm.
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Technically "suspended" from the team -- a move made solely to save room under the salary cap -- Phillips has spent the summer in her native Australia rehabbing a torn anterior cruciate ligament, cracked meniscus and some bone bruising she suffered in January while playing for the Adelaide Lightning of the WNBL.
Phillips had played nearly 40 minutes in a game the night before and, for the first time in a long time, felt tired even in warm-ups. Then, while crossing over in front of Canberra Capitals and Indiana Fever guard Tully Bevilaqua -- a move she's made "a thousand million times" -- her knee simply gave out on her.
It put her in the tough position of deciding whether to sit out the season or push it to make it back in time for the WNBA playoffs. As hard as it was, she chose the former and now has a target date of November to begin playing basketball again.
"People come back from this type of injury in six or seven months and have no problems. Some people come back after 12 months and have many problems and then some are fine," Phillips said, before later adding, "It's too risky. This my career, my job, who knows if I came back this year and it didn't work out, it could be another 12 months and I would be in the same situation."
She currently is limited to running in straight lines and jumping, but hopes to progress to pivot work when she returns from the trip to Connecticut .
But it's not as if she hasn't helped the Sun at all this season. While playing with current Sun forward Kristen Rasmussen during the offseason in Australia, Phillips said she "was a pest," constantly joking with Rasmussen, then a free agent, by saying, "When are you signing with Connecticut?" or, "You know who you should play for? Connecticut."
"She thinks that she's part agent all of a sudden and that she wants a cut of my salary," said a laughing Rasmussen, who had Phillips over to her house for dinner the other night. "She was always that little bug in my ear saying, 'What about Connecticut?' Because at first, I was kind of like, 'I like it over in the West (she played for Phoenix last season)' and I was comfortable over there.
"But certain things happen for a reason," she continued, "and she was always there to guide me this way."
The Sun, of course, enjoyed having her here, if it was only for a few days.
"It's nice to have her around her teammates and it gives her a little bit of a pizzazz in her rehab for things to look forward to for the future," Sun coach Mike Thibault said. "It was good."
