Diane Richardson and Yolanda Laney give New York’s WNBA title some Philly flavor

For just a moment, the thunderous roar that greeted the announcement of Jonquel Jones as the WNBA Finals’ most valuable player had died down.

She stood at the table holding the trophies to give her thoughts for a TV interview. After eight seasons, two WNBA teams, and five foreign stops across four countries, she had finally reached the pinnacle.

“Y’all know my story. Y’all know how many times I’ve been denied it,” Jones said. “But it was delayed, that’s all it was. And I’m so happy to do it here.”

While much of the roaring crowd knew the Bahamas native’s story, the national TV audience might not have — including viewers a few hours south in Philadelphia. So some ears around here might have perked up when Jones offered two words in particular.

“I moved over, and I lived with strangers, and those strangers became my family,” she said. “‘Coach Rich’ is here today. My mom is here today.”

That was a shout-out to Diane Richardson, Temple’s women’s basketball coach, who adopted a 14-year-old Jones in 2008. A year later, Richardson became head coach of the Riverdale Baptist School girls’ team in suburban Washington and coached Jones into a Division I-level recruit.

» READ MORE: Breanna Stewart and Jonquel Jones carry the New York Liberty to a long-awaited first WNBA title

Jones’ path from there went from one season at Clemson to three at George Washington, then the first round of the WNBA draft in 2016. Although she’s been a five-time All-Star, a Korean league champion in 2017, the WNBA’s MVP in 2021, and a three-time WNBA finalist before now, she’d never won the biggest prize of all.

Now she has, as a fully fledged star of the Liberty’s first championship in their 28-year history. Richardson was there to see it and was on the court amid the celebrations.

“She’s always worked hard, and she’s always been coachable,” Richardson told The Inquirer. “So to be there with Sandy [Brondello, New York’s coach], and Stewie [Breanna Stewart] and Sab [Sabrina Ionescu], and all those players that are high, elite players — and to be able to model her game in with theirs, in a team way, that they all had a goal to win a championship — was awesome.”

It’s been 16 years since Richardson adopted Jones, but the significance of that time has not diminished.

“I don’t do it for the impact, but I do it to help others, just like somebody helped me,” Richardson said. “They helped me to understand that basketball could be a way of opportunity for me, and I wanted the same thing for her. She was looking for an opportunity, and I was blessed — my husband and I were blessed enough to be able to do that for her.”

» READ MORE: For all the talk of WNBA expansion to Philly, the league is still vague on details

Richardson was not the only Philly-based basketball coach on the court. A few feet away stood another one who had become a friend and brought some of the city’s deepest roots in the sport.

Forty-two years after Yolanda Laney led Cheyney to the first NCAA women’s basketball title game, her daughter, Betnijah Laney-Hamilton, won her first WNBA title in her 10th year as a pro.

“I am thankful and blessed to be able to see it,” said Laney, one of the all-time names in Philly hoops for her decades of coaching local youth teams.

To no surprise, she had a heap of congratulatory calls and texts already by the time the final buzzer of Game 5 sounded. Her phone blew up further when ESPN’s cameras captured a warm moment with three generations of the family: Laney, Laney-Hamilton, and Laney-Hamilton’s 2-year-old niece.

“She wanted to be a champion, and she fulfilled that goal of hers,” Laney said. “I couldn’t be happier to have been present there with her, to be the first one that she came looking for.”

» READ MORE: Philadelphia named a street in Yolanda Laney's honor last month

Laney-Hamilton admitted she didn’t have much time to talk with her mother much during the Finals, given how busy things were. But they were “enjoying the moment,” and Laney-Hamilton knew how it would elevate the family even further.

“She started me on this journey,” she said. “I hated basketball at first. But with her continuing to believe in me — not pushing me to it, but just kind of allowing me to gradually jump into it — and then just the support and everything that she’s given me over the years, she’s a big part of where I am today.”

Laney said it was “very fulfilling” to hear those words from her daughter, who “just sat in the gym while I taught other kids” back when.

It was at around age 10, she said, that things started to turn, and Laney-Hamilton started to enjoy playing.

“I knew exactly how to prepare her to reach the heights,” Laney said. “She decided, when she was 13 years old, goals she set for herself, what she wanted to do when she told me that she loved basketball.”

Laney promised then “to give everything in me to try to make sure that she was successful and she would go further and have more opportunities than I had when I was playing basketball.”

And, she added, “continue the Laney legacy.”

The family name was a burden as Laney-Hamilton made her way in the sport. Other coaches asked Laney how she got her daughter to listen to her coaching, no small feat for any coach but often harder in a family dynamic.

“Not forcing her,” Laney said. “Everybody was always coming, telling Betnijah just how good her mother was, and make sure that you pay attention and you listen. And she did. … I’m thankful that I’m not one of those parents that said, ‘She wouldn’t listen to me; she listens to everybody else but me.’”

» READ MORE: Betnijah Laney watched her mother give back to the Philly basketball community. Now the WNBA standout is following her lead.

Now Laney-Hamilton, 30, has played for five WNBA teams and in Australia and Israel. She also helped the United States win the FIBA World Cup in 2022.

“She excelled to the highest levels, and I couldn’t be prouder to see all her hard work,” Laney said. “The skill that she developed, being able to play anywhere from the one [point guard] down to the four [power forward] because of her skill set, because of her strength. And for her to take heed and listen and take the guidance and the structure that I put in front of her and never to rebel against what I was trying to teach her.”

Late on the night when New York erupted for its first basketball title in decades, Laney-Hamilton reflected on how far she has come. As she did, she made a little space for another city, a certain rival of the Big Apple.

“This championship isn’t only for us, it isn’t only for me,” she said. “It’s also for my family, for the fans, for this organization. Just everybody that’s been a part of it.”