PHOENIX — Looking up to someone for one of the few times in her basketball life, Brittney Griner leaned into the 7-foot man in front of her, watching and listening as he flipped in one hook shot after another.
Once he was done, Griner took a turn, spinning and flipping up a few hooks of her own over outstretched arms that reached farther than her own lengthy ones.
After getting a crash course in professional basketball from some of the WNBA’s best players over the past week, Griner was given the lesson of a lifetime on Wednesday with a one-on-one session on the skyhook with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
One of the NBA’s greatest players teaching the nuances of perhaps the most unstoppable move in any sport? Yeah, that’s pretty cool.
“I went to legend school today and it was awesome,” Griner said at the Phoenix Mercury’s practice court inside the US Airways Center.
Griner had gone through a rapid learning curve during her first week of training camp, getting a firsthand look at how physical the WNBA really is while being taught things like the pick-and-roll and how to avoid being called for illegal defense.
The intensity ratcheted up when Diana Taurasi, Penny Taylor, DeWanna Bonner and Candice Dupree, some of the best players in the WNBA, joined the team after playing overseas.
Wednesday’s session was something different entirely.
Griner has earned her own level of fame as the No. 1 overall pick in the WNBA draft and one of the most heralded players in college basketball history.
But Abdul-Jabbar is on a different level: A Hall of Famer, six-time NBA champion, six-time MVP, one of the greatest athletes of a century and one of the most recognizable people in the world.
“I was star struck right there,” Griner said.
The tutorial was put together by Mercury Vice President Ann Meyers Drysdale, who asked the NBA office to see if Abdul-Jabbar would be available to address the team and work with Griner.
He accepted and spent Wednesday’s practice watching from a perch above the court with his oversized feet poking through the rail.
Once practice ended, Abdul-Jabbar walked down to the floor and addressed the team before taking questions from the players and coaches.
After a group photo, he peeled off his sweat jacket, took off his blue UCLA hat and met Griner under one of the baskets.
