One way WNBA players find an overseas path? Adopting a new citizenship

ISTANBUL, Turkey — Forty minutes before Teaira McCowan hits the practice court for a Monday evening workout in early December, the Dallas Wings center rises out of a gray wing chair located in the lobby of one of Istanbul’s five-star hotels and heads to the building’s parking garage. If traffic is ordinary, it will take McCowan, a member of a premier European club, Galatasaray, around 15 minutes to reach her overseas team’s facility. But in a city of more than 15 million people that, according to a recent report, has the world’s worst congestion, she knows she needs to leave some time to spare.

“Literally, (other drivers) are playing ‘Mario Kart’” on the road, says McCowan, who will drive herself there in a team-issued white Volvo. “But I’m from Texas, so …”

For more than a month this fall, McCowan got used to shuttling herself from her apartment to the nearby facility. All she could do was practice — both her driving and her basketball abilities. The reason: The 6-foot-7 center was awaiting confirmation that she would obtain Turkish citizenship. If she would have taken part in game play before learning of the government’s decision, she would have been registered as a foreigner for the remainder of the season, thus counting against the number of international players her club could roster and how many it can have on court during domestic action.

McCowan hails from Brenham, Texas, a town of about 17,000 people more than 6,400 miles from the city in which she currently resides. In college, she starred at Mississippi State, taking home Naismith Defensive Player of Year honors as a junior in 2018 and first-team All-American honors the following season. The notion then of one day being a Turkish citizen would have seemed outlandish. “I didn’t even think I would go overseas after college,” she says. Perhaps, she thought then, because of her love of caring for children she would spend her WNBA offseasons working at a daycare. Just over three years later, however, here McCowan is, wearing a black Galatasaray pullover, playing in Turkey, for Turkey.

Washington Mystics assistant coach LaToya Sanders was once in McCowan’s position. As a player, she obtained her Turkish citizenship following her third season in the country’s league, doing so at the urging of her club, Kayseri Kaski. Soon after, Sanders joined the national team, quickly becoming a centerpiece for it. “It kind of unlocked something in me that I didn’t even know I had,” she says. “I took the opportunity also to just embrace myself in the culture. … Once you embrace it unlocks so much for you.”

The two bigs are not alone. Naturalized professional athletes are relatively commonplace across global soccer and basketball, as obtaining dual citizenship often provides players with chances to take part in international competitions they otherwise wouldn’t have. There is also a financial benefit — consider the fact that McCowan, with a Turkish passport in hand, immediately becomes the top, and most desirable, Turkish center around. Plus, the decision helps a club gain on-court competitive advantages, as a foreign-born player counting as a local player allows the team to sign more international players, if it so chooses.

In the case of Turkey, specifically, forward Quanitra Hollingsworth, who played sporadically in the WNBA between 2009-2015 and now competes for Çukurova Basketball Mersin, is also a naturalized citizen. So too is Las Vegas Aces center Kiah Stokes, who has been with Istanbul’s Fenerbahçe for five seasons and in the country for seven. “It’s like my second home,” she says.

McCowan’s route to dual citizenship was not as simple as Sanders’, who eventually played nine years in the country. The Texas native debuted in China after her first WNBA campaign concluded. In the offseason following her second WNBA season, McCowan, 26, suited up for OGM Ormanspor, a club based in Ankara, Turkey’s capital.

Last spring, McCowan’s agent, Eric Fleisher, of Assist Sports Management, floated to her the idea of possibly representing Turkey in future competition. She was open to it, considering she hadn’t played with Team USA since turning pro, and because the economic benefits were significant.

By the summer, Fleisher says, conversations picked up substantially. Still, uncertainty remained: Numerous pieces of paperwork needed to be completed, and McCowan needed approval from both USA Basketball and FIBA to play with the transcontinental country going forward.

In mid-September, McCowan arrived in Istanbul, preparing to begin her third season abroad, not knowing exactly how the situation would play out. “Maybe something’s going on,” she says she wondered as the process dragged. “Maybe I’m not going to get it.” She actively tried to reframe her thinking to stay positive. In late November, just ahead of a pair of Turkish EuroBasket 2023 qualifying group stage games, she had finally been cleared.

“When I got it, I was like, all right, what are you going to do now?” she says. “I had to perform.”

Ekrem Memnun has been coaching in Turkey since he was 19. His basketball influences are varied — in terms of age, gender, and geography — and throughout his decorated career overseas, he has worked with some of the world’s top players: Ruthy Bolton, Katrina McClain, Ann Wauters, Sancho Lyttle, Lindsay Whalen, Sylvia Fowles …

Memnun, 53, agreed to become the coach of the Turkish national team two months ago. But he previously coached the women’s national team for three years, including at the 2016 Rio Olympics, where Turkey lost on a buzzer-beater in the quarterfinals to Spain, the eventual silver medalist. “He was very direct and he knew what he wanted,” says Sanders, who played for Turkey in the 2016 Games. “But at the same time, he was such a sweetheart. I have nothing but good thoughts. He was a great basketball mind.”

Turkey is trying to continue a relatively successful decade-plus of international play. It placed second in EuroBasket 2011. Then, at the 2012 London Olympics, it fell in the quarterfinals to Russia, when Becky Hammon — she’s a naturalized citizen there — broke a 62-all tie with 13.8 seconds to play in the contest. It took home bronze in EuroBasket the following year, placed fourth in the FIBA world championships in 2014, and finished fifth at EuroBasket 2015, all before its Rio heartbreak and all with having only one player born in the country on its roster compete in the WNBA.

Although it has struggled to produce similar results since, McCowan hopes to change that. It’s early, of course, but the No. 3 pick in the 2019 WNBA Draft’s impact has already been felt. In her national team debut in late November, McCowan scored 28 points and hauled in 17 rebounds in only 21 minutes of action as her team blew out Albania, 140–44. A few days later, in a six-point win over Slovenia, she finished with 26 points and nine rebounds, while also adding four assists and one block.

“She’s big. She has very good hands. … She’s an intimidator in the paint and also she understands the game,” Memnun says. “And we need (to) understand this, in order to play good, the team needs to help her. The team needs to pass the ball to her at the right time and the right place. So spacing must be there. It’s not only her problem to score or create.”

Key to Memnun’s philosophy is the importance of creating an inclusive environment. He says it’s integral “for (McCowan), for us, for everybody to build a culture together.” Other players, he adds, need to recognize McCowan is “new, that’s she’s here, that she’s part of the team, and make her feel included.” He says he does not coach his American players any differently than his Turkish ones. “(For) good and bad,” Sanders says. “No special privileges. No nothing.” However, Memnun does communicate to his team in English, an acknowledgement of wanting to make sure everyone is on the same page.

Throughout Sanders’ career in Turkey, she became so fond of the culture that she eventually gave her son a Turkish name, Semih, meaning worthy and great. She also learned the language. She recalls once attending a Turkish national team camp in Italy when she was with her compatriots at a restaurant and she laughed at a joke, much to their surprise. “They were like, did you understand what we’re saying?” Sanders recalls. “I was like, yeah, I do understand.”

McCowan is not there yet linguistically. While sitting in the Istanbul hotel, she voices the Turkish words for “hello” and “thank you,” then chuckles a bit. “I don’t know, I can’t be put on the spot,” she says. She’s excited, nevertheless, to try to integrate more fully into her new culture. “You have to adapt,” she says. “We’re the most adaptable players. You literally pick up your stuff and move across the world and you have to figure it out.”

She wants to one day, hopefully in the not-so-distant future, return Turkey back to a similar level of on-court success. For now, though, she’s more focused on an upcoming EuroCup club game against Poland’s InvestInTheWest Enea Gorzow. But even more pressing is safely weaving through Istanbul’s traffic, where a cacophony of rush hour sounds awaits.

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(Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic; Photo of Teaira McCowan: Cooper Neill / Getty Images)