Bond beyond basketball: Longtime friends Ogwumike, Diggins hope to extend Storm's season

It was a play nearly two decades in the making.

With 6.1 seconds remaining and the score knotted at 82, the Seattle Storm took a timeout. In the huddle, coach Noelle Quinn called a play for Skylar Diggins to take the last shot.

But as the guard walked onto the court, she told teammate Nneka Ogwumike that the Washington Mystics had been aggressively defending pick-and-rolls. If Ogwumike went early and slipped the screen instead, she'd be open.

That's how it played out moments later in the Aug. 24 victory. Diggins found Ogwumike, who freed herself for a winning jumper from the free throw line.

It was the kind of play the longtime friends envisioned when they finally teamed up on the Storm in 2024 free agency. It was the kind of play they'd done together years earlier at USA Basketball camps.

"Very potent pick-and-roll since teenage years," Diggins told ESPN.

Their pairing the past two seasons in Seattle has helped both players stay at an All-Star level in their mid-30s. But as the Storm face an elimination game Tuesday (9:30 p.m., ESPN2) against the Las Vegas Aces and former teammate Jewell Loyd in the first round of the WNBA playoffs, Diggins and Ogwumike are still looking to translate their partnership into the team success they expected.

"In the short time that we've been together, we've been through a lot," Ogwumike told ESPN. "Going through those times of adversity, you end up leaning a lot on each other, and I'm just hoping that I can provide whatever support that is necessary for us to not just get through those times but to look forward to having more consistent wins and the way that we want to feel."

DIGGINS AND OGWUMIKE don't quite remember when they first crossed paths. There was a Nike camp in Portland, Oregon, and they were both stars on the AAU circuit. But they made a memorable mark on each other while playing for USA Basketball.

"I was just like, 'I gotta step my game up,'" Ogwumike said of her first impression of Diggins. "I don't think I had ever seen anyone that competitive. ... With Sky, it's all or nothing. It doesn't matter who is in front of her. I just remember being in Colorado Springs and wanting to be on her team every time because it's very rare to find people that want to win at all costs."

Diggins had equal praise for Ogwumike.

"She just played like a pro," Diggins said. "She always seemed like a woman among girls, any place she was at. Not much has changed in 20 years. How she moved on the floor, how electric and dynamic she was as a player. That's not something you see very often."

They were teammates for the first time at the 2008 FIBA Americas U18 championships. A year later, they helped the United States win the FIBA U19 World Cup in Thailand as starters, with Ogwumike putting up 22 points and 20 rebounds against Spain in the final.

By then, their paths had already parted for college. Ogwumike, coming off her freshman season at Stanford, was on the cusp of becoming an All-American. Diggins was tempted to join her in Palo Alto, where Ogwumike hosted her official visit. All they'll share about that weekend is that it was a lot of fun.

Diggins got into Stanford, where Ogwumike said she "fit right in," but ultimately decided on Notre Dame, saying she needed to stay closer to home in Indiana.

"I loved [Stanford]," Diggins said. "If it wasn't so far. ... It was a perfect situation for Nneka and then it was a perfect situation for me [at Notre Dame]. We did everything to the 11th hour to try to make it work.

"Ever since then, we had always been trying to see if the timing worked for us outside of USAB and those camps, if there was a possibility that maybe one day we could play with each other."

DRAFTED INTO THE WNBA a year apart -- Ogwumike No. 1 by the Los Angeles Sparks in 2012, Diggins No. 3 by the Tulsa Shock as part of the star-studded "Three to See" 2013 draft -- the two kept in touch and mused about teaming up as their careers blossomed.

Diggins hit free agency in 2020 and requested a trade from her team, which had moved to Dallas and become the Wings. She was among the first star players to take advantage of the opportunities to change teams created by the WNBA collective bargaining agreement that Ogwumike was key to negotiating as president of the WNBPA. But the timing wasn't right for partnering.

Ogwumike's Sparks, who had lost in the semifinals the year before, had a loaded roster that included All-Star point guard Chelsea Gray. Diggins instead landed with the Phoenix Mercury to kick off the WNBA's superteam era, joining Brittney Griner and Diana Taurasi.

As both Diggins and Ogwumike approached free agency four years later, the situation was different. Diggins had already publicly split from the Mercury while sitting out the previous season on maternity leave. Ogwumike was ready for a change after watching Gray and Candace Parker depart Los Angeles in free agency, leaving the Sparks mired in the lottery her final three seasons.

Diggins, who had considered Seattle a potential landing spot if Phoenix traded her in 2023 and built a relationship with Quinn, was the first to sign on while Ogwumike decided between the Storm and New York Liberty.

Diggins spent that period "calling her every day and saying, 'I'm respecting your process,' but still calling her every single day," she said. "Everybody wants Nneka on their team. If she was free, 10 teams would still ask for Nneka to this day."

Said Ogwumike: "I would say that Skylar was definitely more sure of where she wanted to go before I came here. I was still trying to fight the misconception that I was being disloyal because I had been at that franchise for so long.

"Once I was able to leave that, I was really able to understand, 'OK, I have opportunities.' Not only did I have opportunities, but I had the chance to play with someone who I consider my sister, to play for people that have also been a part of my life growing into this basketball career."

Playing together has only strengthened that bond.

"You'll see Nneka on the plane holding my daughter and putting her to sleep," Diggins said. "No other woman in this world outside of my mother can say that. I trust her with my children. She's one of my very best friends in this world. You don't get a lot of those in this league. A lot of us cross paths, but to be able to connect and stay connected for that long, it's a rarity and something that I definitely don't take for granted."

Now in very different stages of their lives than when they first met -- Diggins grimaces for effect when she acknowledges they've gone from friends as teenagers through their 20s and now into their 30s -- they continue to find their values overlap.

"It's amazing when you can share the same discipline and competitive edge as somebody," Ogwumike said, "but then when you are on the team with them and it's someone that I consider like my sister as well, it almost feels like it activates something within me that I didn't know that I had or maybe that I was scared to tap into.

"She brings out kind of the best in my potential."

THE INDIVIDUAL GREATNESS of Diggins and Ogwumike is hard to deny, and their connection has kept them both among the best in the WNBA. The Storm generated 372 points out of Diggins-Ogwumike pick-and-rolls, which ranked fifth most of any combination in the league this season, per GeniusIQ tracking.

For Ogwumike, her 18.3 scoring average was the fourth-best in her WNBA career. And Diggins has averaged at least 6.0 assists both seasons in Seattle, having previously done so only once (2018). Both players are making history. Ogwumike is up to sixth on the league's all-time scoring leaderboard -- with No. 5 Tamika Catchings in her sights -- and seventh in career rebounds. Diggins has climbed to eighth in assists despite sitting out two full seasons because of maternity leave.

Yet the team success they expected hasn't followed. And to keep this season's championship dream alive, they'll need to go through their former teammate Loyd and the Aces.

When Diggins and Ogwumike met with Seattle reporters in February 2024 after signing their contracts, they didn't hesitate to discuss the goal of winning championships. Although Loyd wasn't on stage, those lofty expectations were largely because Diggins and Ogwumike were joining Loyd as part of a Seattle superteam.

The lone holdover starter from the Storm's 2018 and 2020 title teams that featured Sue Bird and Breanna Stewart, Loyd played a key role in helping recruit Diggins -- her teammate as a freshman at Notre Dame -- and Ogwumike. A year later, Loyd is on the other side of Seattle's series with the Aces.

A promising start to 2024, which saw Seattle enter the Olympic break tied for the league's third-best record at 17-8, came apart amid Loyd's unhappiness with how her role evolved. Per league sources and first reported by the Seattle Times, Loyd asked the Storm to fire Quinn after the team's first-round sweep against Las Vegas. Diggins and Ogwumike supported Quinn keeping her job.

"You want to go to battle with people like that that have your back no matter what, that keep the main thing the main thing," Quinn told ESPN. "Not saying it's always perfect or pretty -- we're a family and we go through the ups and downs of that -- but at the end of the day, they are amazing people. Basketball is the icing on the cake. The way that they've had my back through it all, it's honorable and it just makes me want to go harder for them."

After an investigation into Loyd's allegations of bullying and harassment by the Seattle coaching staff uncovered no violations of team policy, she requested a trade. The Storm sent Loyd to the Aces in a three-team deal that netted the No. 2 pick in this year's draft, used on promising 19-year-old center Dominique Malonga.

Despite the loss of Loyd, Diggins declared at media day that Seattle's was "definitely the most talented roster I've been a part of in my 13 years," including the 2021 Mercury squad she helped lead to the WNBA Finals.