As she was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, Elena Delle Donne celebrated her family and expressed her definition of greatness

Unsurprisingly, Elena Delle Donne’s Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame enshrinement speech focused on family.

She was a top two player in the country in college, won two WNBA MVP awards, a WNBA championship and an Olympic gold medal. But she was comfortable giving her speech even though she knew it was a goodbye—not to basketball completely, but to playing basketball. 

She was comfortable because of the “people waiting for (her) when the applause end(ed).”

Here’s the full quote from the end of her speech given at Symphony Hall in Springfield, MA on Saturday night:

Tomorrow the lights will fade, we’ll trade our formal clothes for athleisure, the speeches will be over, and life will return to a beautiful, ordinary day. And after everything basketball has given me, I think that’s my favorite part. Because somewhere along the way I learned that life’s greatest moments aren’t celebrated in the standing ovations, but in the people waiting for you when the applause ends.

Delle Donne thanked her wife, Amanda, her parents, her brother, her sister-in-law, her niece, and her aunts and uncles. The most emotional part of her speech came when she talked about her sister, Lizzie. 

Lizzie was born deaf and blind, and has cerebral palsy. Delle Donne is extremely close to her. They communicate through hand over hand sign language. Toward the end of her speech Delle Donne dedicated some of her words to Lizzie, offering:

For a long time, I thought greatness looked like moments like this. Hall of Fame ceremonies, awards, championships. Then I realized, the bravest person I know has never experienced any of those things.

Lizzie changed the way I define greatness.

She taught me that greatness isn’t measured by applause. It’s measured by courage, by joy, by showing up for another difficult day without asking, ‘Why me?’ She taught me that some of life’s greatest victories happen quietly. No cameras, no trophies. Just extraordinary strength hidden inside ordinary days.

Delle Donne, who is from Wilmington, DE, chose to play for both the University of Delaware and the Washington Mystics to be closer to family. 

She is probably best known for her 2019 season. That year, spent in DC, she didn’t just win MVP, but also became the first WNBA player to go 50-40-90 (shooting at least 50 percent from the field, 40 percent from 3 and 90 percent from the free throw line). She made great memories with Natasha Cloud, Emma Meesseman, Kristi Toliver, Ariel Atkins and head coach Mike Thibault as the Mystics went on to win it all after finishing the regular season with the top record in the league. 

In all, Delle Donne was a Mystic for seven years, though she missed the entire 2020 season as a Lyme disease-related precaution amid the COVID-19 pandemic and all but three games of the 2021 season as she was recovering from back surgery. She is currently a special advisor to Monumental Basketball, so she is still with the Mystics in retirement.

But she also showed love for her Chicago Sky days on Saturday, inviting Sky teammate Sylvia Fowles on stage with her as a presenter. Delle Donne thanked Fowles for “treating (her) like an equal from Day One” and got emotional in the process.

Delle Donne won the 2015 MVP award as a member of the Sky, the team she was drafted by in 2013. She was in Chicago for four seasons.

Her other presenter was Marianne Stanley, her position coach on the Mystics from 2017-19. Delle Donne thanked Stanley for her preparation, attention to detail and consistency.

Delle Donne also shouted out four of her Delaware teammates who were in attendance. In four seasons with the Blue Hens, she scored 3,039 points (26.7 per game), and led the team to two NCAA Tournament Round of 32 appearances and one Sweet 16. She was part of all three of the Big Dance wins that Delaware currently has in their history and scored at least 30 points in each. She also had 30-plus points in her two career tourney losses.

As a Delaware freshman, Delle Donne took a year off from basketball to play volleyball. She mentioned that in her speech, joking:

I’ve spent my whole life in love with (basketball)—minus the little breakup where I left UConn after 48 hours, quit the sport entirely and decided to play collegiate volleyball, but we will not get into that tonight.

I do realize my proximity to Storrs, CT right now.

Yes, she was originally another No. 1 high school prospect that had signed with UConn. She would have played with Maya Moore and Tina Charles on the 2009 and 2010 national championship-winning teams and maybe could have lifted the program to titles in 2011 and 2012 as well, which would have given the Huskies eight-consecutive titles (they went on to win it all every year from 2013-16).

But, as she wrote in The Players’ Tribune in 2015, Delle Donne has no regrets.

No regrets, because by playing at Delaware and requesting a trade to the Mystics in 2017, Delle Donne got to be with the people most important to her even before the applause ended.

And they were there for her once again, as she was inducted into the Hall of Fame.