Underrated Spotlight: The Wrong Gym
Jonquel Jones has spent a decade making WNBA history, even when the larger conversation has struggled to keep up.
In 2021, Jones wrote about a banner.
It was hanging in Washington, D.C., in the arena where the Mystics play, and every time she walked in for a road game, she had to look at it. The 2019 WNBA Championship. The one the Connecticut Sun came within a game of winning. The one that followed a Finals series where Jones had already delivered one of the greatest performances the league had seen, finishing Game 2 with 32 points and 18 rebounds to become the first player in WNBA Finals history with at least 30 points and 15 rebounds in a game.
The one that got away.
Jones later wrote about seeing that banner and believing it belonged somewhere else. The disappointment of that Finals loss hadn't disappeared. If anything, it became part of the motivation behind everything that came next.
That idea, the wrong gym, feels bigger than one championship series.
Because so much of JJ's career can be understood through that same feeling. The performances have been there. The records have been there. The individual recognition eventually arrived. But circumstance, market size, playoff endings, and sometimes even the stars surrounding her have made her greatness easier to appreciate quietly than discuss loudly.
Jones has spent a decade building one of the most complete résumés in the WNBA.
The larger conversation has not always kept pace.
Knowing Where She Was Going
Jones grew up in Freeport, Bahamas, one of seven children, with a basketball court her father built in her grandmother's backyard. Basketball was already part of her life before it became a plan, but seeing someone else make that plan possible helped change what she believed she could do.
Yolett McPhee-McCuin, a family friend who became the first Bahamian woman to earn a Division I basketball scholarship directly out of high school, gave Jones an example of where the game could take her.
At 14, Jones left the Bahamas for Maryland. She moved in with coach Diane Richardson, who eventually became her legal guardian, and enrolled at Riverdale Baptist School in Upper Marlboro. It was an enormous decision for someone so young, but it also revealed something that would continue showing up throughout her career. Jones was willing to move toward what she wanted, even when getting there required leaving something comfortable behind.
At Riverdale Baptist, she developed into one of Maryland's best high school players. By her senior season, she was averaging 15.7 points and 15.6 rebounds for a team that finished 35–2 and won a national championship, while Jones earned Gatorade Maryland Player of the Year honors.
Clemson came next, but the fit did not last. Jones eventually transferred to George Washington, following Richardson to Washington, D.C. It wasn't one of the programs dominating national television every week, but Jones didn't need the biggest stage to become a dominant player.
She led the NCAA in rebounding during her senior season, earned Atlantic 10 Player of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year honors, and became the first George Washington player selected in the first round of the WNBA Draft.
The production was already telling people exactly what kind of player she could become.
You just had to be paying attention.
Greatness in a Smaller Market
The Los Angeles Sparks selected Jones sixth overall in the 2016 WNBA Draft and immediately traded her to Connecticut.
Uncasville was an unlikely place for one of the league's future superstars to build a national profile. The Sun played in one of the WNBA's smaller markets, away from some of the visibility that naturally came with franchises in cities like Los Angeles and New York. Connecticut itself eventually leaned into the feeling of being overlooked, adopting its “DisrespeCT” identity during the 2019 postseason.
Jones built something substantial there anyway.
By her second season, she had become one of the league's most productive rebounders. In 2017, she averaged 15.4 points and 11.9 rebounds while collecting 403 total rebounds, then a WNBA single-season record, and was named Most Improved Player. A year later, her role changed and she responded by winning Sixth Woman of the Year.
Those two awards tell an important part of her story. Jones had already proven she could thrive as one of Connecticut's most productive starters. When the team needed something different, she adapted without allowing a different role to define the limits of her game.
By 2019, the Sun were playing for a championship.
Game 2 of the Finals showed exactly what Jones could do on the biggest stage. She finished with 32 points, 18 rebounds and a Finals-record nine offensive rebounds as Connecticut beat Washington 99–87. It was the first 30-point, 15-rebound performance in WNBA Finals history.
Connecticut won that night.
Washington won the series.
The banner went to the wrong gym.
Then came 2020. Jones opted out of the WNBA season during the COVID-19 pandemic, and when she returned the following year, she didn't ease herself back into the conversation.
She took control of it.
Jones averaged 19.4 points and 11.2 rebounds in 2021 while anchoring a Connecticut team that finished 26–6 with the league's best regular-season record. She received 48 of 49 first-place votes for MVP, completing the progression from Most Improved Player to Sixth Woman of the Year to the most valuable player in the league.
But once again, the ending didn't match everything that came before it. Chicago eliminated Connecticut in the semifinals, leaving another dominant Sun season without the championship that might have changed how people remembered it.
That loss captures the contradiction of Jones' Connecticut years better than almost anything else. Her greatness was never invisible on paper. The rebounding records were there. So were the individual awards, the Finals performances, and eventually an MVP. What remained missing was the championship ending that tends to make people look backward and appreciate everything that came before it.
Jones had already done enough to establish exactly how good she was.
She just didn't have the banner.
The Cost of Being Herself
Jones' career has also required her to navigate challenges that had nothing to do with what happened on the court.
As an openly gay Bahamian athlete, she has spoken candidly about becoming more comfortable with who she is while recognizing that greater visibility could also carry consequences.
In 2022, Jones said she believed her endorsement relationship with the Bahamas Telecommunications Company ended because she was openly gay and had begun presenting herself more authentically. BTC disputed that characterization, saying the company did not discriminate against the LGBTQ+ community and that its endorsement agreements were executed for defined periods.
The disagreement opened a larger conversation around something athletes aren't often asked to quantify publicly: what authenticity can cost when identity, culture and marketability collide.
That conversation followed Jones home again in 2024. During a celebratory trip to the Bahamas following New York's championship, the presence of her fiancée during a school visit became the subject of public debate. Jones later said the welcome she received during the trip was still “second-to-none,” even as the controversy generated a wider discussion about LGBTQ+ visibility in the country.
For Jones, visibility has therefore meant more than simply being recognizable. Her career has given young people, particularly those from places like the Bahamas, an opportunity to see someone succeeding at the highest level without hiding parts of herself to make other people more comfortable.
Basketball asked Jones to become one of the best players in the world. Life outside of it has sometimes asked her to navigate what being fully herself in that position would mean.
She has continued doing both.
The Star Inside the Superteam
By the end of her Connecticut tenure, Jones had accomplished nearly everything except win the championship whose absence had followed her since 2019.
In January 2023, she requested a trade and landed in New York.
The Liberty were assembling one of the most talented rosters in the league. Breanna Stewart arrived in free agency. Sabrina Ionescu was already becoming one of the WNBA's most visible young stars. Courtney Vandersloot joined the backcourt. Jones entered that environment as a former MVP with Finals experience and a résumé substantial enough that calling her simply another piece never fully captured what New York had acquired.
What made her particularly valuable was that she didn't need the offense to revolve around her to change it.
Jones could punish smaller defenders inside and pull larger defenders away from the basket. She could screen, roll, pop, rebound, facilitate from the middle of the floor, protect the rim and stretch beyond the three-point line. Her versatility allowed New York to change how it attacked opponents without constantly changing personnel.
That became particularly clear during the 2023 Commissioner's Cup championship. Jones finished with 16 points and 15 rebounds as New York defeated Las Vegas, earning Commissioner's Cup MVP honors and adding another piece to an already unusual collection of individual awards.
Then came 2024.
The Liberty returned to the Finals, this time against Minnesota, and finally broke through to win the first championship in franchise history.
Jones was named Finals MVP.
Throughout the series, she became the stabilizing presence New York repeatedly needed when possessions became uncomfortable. When shots weren't falling cleanly elsewhere, Jones could still give the Liberty something dependable through her size, efficiency, rebounding and ability to force defenses into difficult choices.
The championship changed something else, too.
There was finally no missing ending attached to the résumé.
That may also be one of the reasons Jones can still feel overlooked even on a roster filled with stars. Her versatility makes everyone around her easier to use. She doesn't need every possession to begin with her to influence where it ends, and she doesn't need to dominate the ball to force a defense to account for her.
Sometimes the player holding everything together isn't the player receiving the most attention.
Jones has spent much of her career proving how valuable that kind of player can be.
When History Finally Becomes Impossible to Miss
On July 25, 2026, Jones added another trophy.
She came off the bench in the WNBA All-Star Game in Chicago and finished with 22 points, 13 rebounds and eight assists while knocking down four three-pointers. She was named All-Star Game MVP, completing a collection no other WNBA player had assembled before.
Regular-season MVP.
Commissioner's Cup MVP.
Finals MVP.
All-Star Game MVP.
Together, those honors say something bigger than four trophies ever could. Jones has been able to dominate under completely different circumstances: across an entire regular season, in a standalone championship game, throughout a Finals series and on a floor filled almost entirely with stars.
Her 2026 season has only added another chapter to that versatility. At 6-foot-6, Jones remains one of the league's most unusual problems because there is no simple answer for defending her. She's big enough to punish mismatches inside, skilled enough to facilitate offense and comfortable enough on the perimeter that leaving her alone there creates another problem entirely.
For years, the basketball told the story long before the attention caught up.
Now the résumé has become almost impossible to talk around.
The Right Gym
Jones has been doing this since a basketball court in a backyard in Freeport.
Her journey has taken her through Maryland and Washington, D.C., George Washington and Uncasville, overseas basketball and eventually Brooklyn. It has included the season she stepped away, the Finals she lost, the MVP she won and the championship she eventually found.
For years, perhaps the easiest image for Jones' career was the one she gave us herself: a championship banner hanging in the wrong gym. It represented everything she had gotten close enough to touch without being able to keep, a performance worthy of a championship ending without one. In some ways, it also reflected a career where recognition sometimes seemed to arrive one step behind the basketball.
That banner still belongs to Washington, but Jones no longer needs it.
The championship that belongs to her is part of New York's history now, sitting alongside a résumé that includes regular-season MVP, Commissioner's Cup MVP, Finals MVP and, as of 2026, All-Star Game MVP.
For years, the conversation around JJ may not always have been as loud as her résumé deserved. That is becoming increasingly difficult to justify.
The history was never missing.
You just had to know where to look.
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