Sometimes things come at the right time in sports. With Satou Sabally, just in time for the start of the playoffs in the American professional league WNBA, the news is: She can play basketball again – that’s important to mention because she was gone for a while. Problems with the Achilles tendon, several weeks and eight games on sick leave, with “crunchtime” now coming up. That phase in which everything is at stake after a long banter.
Sabally, 23, doesn’t know that feeling yet, at least not in the WNBA. Since the Berliner joined her club Dallas Wings as a newcomer in 2020, she has not played a playoff game, last season her team just failed to qualify. It was the corona season, the game was played in a bubble in Florida, basketball in a sterile environment and without fans. A strange experience to get started in the big world of basket throwing.
Sabally becomes champion in Turkey, but misses the Olympics
To bridge the league break, she joined Fenerbahce for some time in the spring, where she became Turkish champion. Then she missed qualifying for the Olympics with the German 3×3 team. Now things are starting again for her in her adopted home USA, and everything is different. Fans are back in the halls and the WNBA is getting more exposure because the men are on pause with the NBA at the same time.
And: After a season with fluctuations, Sabally and her wings slipped into the knockout round two game days before the end of regular time. At the end of the day, the seventh-best team in the league had 14 wins out of 18 defeats – without their failure in August and September, it would have been even more possible.
Nonetheless, one of the league’s international attractions, Sabally, has had some stake in the club’s success after her return last week. On her comeback against New York Liberty, she scored 13 points: first she sank a three in the crucial phase, then she helped Dallas with a vigorous spin to the basket to 77:76. The win meant their team’s first playoff participation in three years.
Sabally couldn’t just celebrate. When she was substituted, she vomited on the bench 38 seconds before the end. The effort, the pace and the struggle had drained her after weeks without any practice on the floor. “That was probably my body that let me know: This is really exhausting now,” she said afterwards. “The nerves, the exhaustion. Never happened to me before.”
“She’s an all star,” says coach Vickie Johnson of Sabally
The national player is not one who complains for a long time. She prefers to attack and help her team in conjunction with Dallas leader Arike Ogunbowale. “I feel good and I am glad that we did the job,” was her analysis apart from her own health. Playoffs are worth the suffering, there is no slacking off. The newspaper praised her tenacity Dallas Morning News even with the description: “heroic deeds in the closing stages.” Now, above all, a healthy and energetic Sabally is needed so that the team has a chance towards the finals.
How important the German is in Dallas can also be seen in the judgment of trainer Vickie Johnson. It is “great that Satou is back on the field,” she said. “She’s an All Star. Her throwing skills and how to use her colleagues are extremely important.” In the USA the term “unicorn” was introduced for her – a player who combines versatility with height. Sabally’s footwork sometimes allows her to move ballet-like. Just like a dancing unicorn.
In the elimination round it is now with her “young and aspiring team”, as she finds, in a big showdown: In round one on Friday night, a single “elimination game” against the Chicago Sky decides on progress. Another German from Dallas can tell Germany’s currently best female basketball player how you can achieve more heroic deeds in the playoffs: Dirk Nowitzki, who continues to live in the city after his playing with the Mavericks.
Sabally mentioned him in one recently Portrait of the city magazine DMagazine a “basketball god”. Of course, she has his cell phone number for a long time, and the exchange is going very well: “He helped me a lot here in Dallas, especially last year.” It was about finding your way, about basketball culture and the lifestyle in Texas. After all, some things can be quite overwhelming as a professional in the early days in the USA. But at Nowitzki, in the end, a very passable career emerged.