Alyssa Thomas and the Connecticut She Helped Build
There is something special about watching a player get the recognition they deserve while they are still playing. We spend so much time in sports waiting for the final chapter of an athlete’s career before we stop and tell them what they meant to us. Alyssa Thomas didn’t have to wait for that.
You could see how much AT still means to Connecticut before she ever said a word last Friday night. Her jersey was everywhere at Mohegan Sun Arena. Fans who had watched her for eleven seasons were wearing her number while she stood on the court in Phoenix purple, and when the Sun honored her as a franchise legend, the reaction was immediate. Thomas may have left Connecticut, but the love this fan base has for her clearly didn’t leave with her.
And that’s what makes her story here so special. None of this was supposed to happen quite this way. Thomas didn’t choose Connecticut in the 2014 WNBA Draft. She was selected fourth overall by New York and traded to the Sun, arriving as a player who had simply been sent somewhere else. Eleven seasons later, it’s hard to imagine the Connecticut Sun without her.
The Engine
The numbers are almost overwhelming when you put them all in one place. Alyssa Thomas left Connecticut as the franchise’s all-time leader in points, rebounds, assists and steals — 3,889, 2,396, 1,463 and 494 respectively. She played 319 games in a Sun uniform, more than anyone who has ever worn one. Eleven seasons, four franchise records, and more basketball than most players could fit into an entire career.
But if you watched AT in Connecticut, you know the numbers were never really the best way to explain her.
She was the answer to almost every question the game could ask. She could bring the ball up the floor, defend a five, stay in front of a point guard, grab a rebound, make the extra pass or find a way to keep a possession alive. It didn’t really matter what the Sun needed in a particular moment; somehow, Thomas usually found a way to be the person who could provide it.
She was a point guard in a power forward’s body who could rebound like a center and defend almost anyone on the floor. As the league evolved and positions became increasingly difficult to define, Thomas seemed to exist somewhere outside of all of them. She didn’t need a position. She just needed a job to do.
And Connecticut fans knew she would do it.
That’s where The Engine came from. It wasn’t just a nickname given to a player because it sounded good. It was an accurate description of what Thomas was to the Sun. She was the player who kept things moving, who embraced the physicality, who was willing to do the work that didn’t always show up in the box score. When the game got hard and the Sun needed one more play, you knew AT was going to be somewhere in the middle of it.
That kind of basketball didn’t come without a cost.
Thomas tore her Achilles in January 2021 and somehow made it back to the court that same season, returning in time to help the Sun reach the WNBA Finals. She played through torn labrums in both shoulders and had to change the way she shot the basketball because of what her body would allow. There were plenty of reasons to slow down, to protect herself, to take a night off. But she didn’t. She kept finding a way back onto the court, and she kept doing it for Connecticut.
That’s an important part of the Alyssa Thomas story. She wasn’t just there for one version of the Sun. She was there through coaching changes and roster changes, through the evolution of the league and the growing pains of a franchise constantly trying to find its way to the next level. She watched teammates come and go, saw coaches change and the league grow around her, but through all of it, AT remained the constant.
For a fan base that values loyalty as much as Connecticut does, that mattered. They watched Thomas give everything she had to this franchise, year after year, and eventually she became much more than the player wearing No. 25.
She became one of the people who made the Sun feel like the Sun.
Why Connecticut Loved Her
There is a very specific kind of basketball player Connecticut fans tend to fall in love with, and Alyssa Thomas fit that mold almost perfectly. She was tough and physical, she played through things most people probably wouldn’t have, and she never seemed particularly interested in being told what she couldn’t do. But I think the connection between Thomas and this fan base went deeper than that.
Fans watched her grow from a young player who had been unexpectedly traded to Connecticut into the face of the franchise. They watched her play for multiple coaches, alongside countless teammates and through different versions of the Sun. The roster changed, the expectations changed and the league around her continued to evolve, but AT remained the constant. For a fan base that had watched so much change over the years, there was something comforting about knowing she would still be there.
You could see that connection Friday night. AT jerseys were still scattered throughout Mohegan, even though Thomas now plays in Phoenix. Fans were wearing the number of a player who had left the franchise, but clearly hadn’t left them. Those jerseys haven’t disappeared because the uniform changed. If anything, they feel like a reminder of how deeply Thomas became woven into this place.
She wasn’t from Connecticut. She didn’t choose the Sun on draft night. She was sent here. But somewhere over those eleven seasons, this became her place, too, and Connecticut fans made sure she knew it.
That’s what happens when a player gives a franchise so much of herself for so long. Eventually, she stops feeling like someone who played here and starts feeling like someone who belongs here.
A Night 11 Years in the Making
There was something especially meaningful about seeing Thomas receive this recognition while she is still an active player in the WNBA. Too often, these moments come after careers have ended. A player retires, some time passes, and then a franchise looks back and decides it is finally time to honor what that player meant. Sun fans didn’t have to wait for that with Thomas. They got to see her walk back into Mohegan as an active player, still competing and still very much a part of this league, and hear an entire building remind her what she meant to Connecticut.
There is something powerful about getting to see that happen in real time.
And the timing made it even more meaningful. The Connecticut Sun are in the middle of their final season in Connecticut before relocating to Houston in 2027 and reviving the Comets. The Sunset Season has become a celebration of the people who helped build this franchise, with Tina Charles, Jonquel Jones, Jasmine Thomas, Curt Miller and Mike Thibault among those being recognized along the way. The organization is making sure the history is remembered before it turns the page.
Thomas’s night felt different, though, because she was the throughline. She was here for so much of that history. She was here through the coaching changes, the roster changes, the success and the heartbreak, and all of the seasons in between. She was one of the constants that made the Connecticut Sun feel like the Connecticut Sun.
“This will always be home,” Thomas said when the honor was announced.
There is something complicated about that sentence during a season like this one. Home is a complicated word when the place you called home has a moving date. But maybe that’s also why this night felt so important. Before the Sun leave Connecticut, the franchise had a chance to tell Thomas what she meant to it, and the fans had a chance to do the same.
She may be playing in Phoenix now, but on Friday night, Connecticut reminded Alyssa Thomas that some homes stay yours long after you leave them.
Cover photo by Jessica Rosario
