Dietrick has chance for bigger role
Atlanta has two guards sitting out WNBA season
Blake Dietrick didn’t know what was to come. But with uncertainty swirling around her, Dietrick knew she had to do something. She isn’t wired to sit back and stay idle.
She’s been like that for as long as she can remember. The 2011 Wellesley graduate kept busy as a three-sport star in high school and once at Princeton, Dietrick took on the challenge of being a two-sport athlete in basketball and lacrosse.
Dietrick found comfort not in putting her legs up on the sofa, but embracing the grind of constant workouts. It’s a mentality that served her well especially over the last three months preparing for a WNBA season with the Atlanta Dream that she wasn’t certain would come to fruition.
Even when a season wasn’t on the horizon, Dietrick kept up her fitness and lifted weights. Not having a basketball hoop in her driveway — she normally would spend time at Wellesley College shooting — she worked on her ball-handling. A recent trip to San Diego to visit her boyfriend could have been a vacation, but it turned into finding outdoor courts to play on.
While it was a much different offseason, Dietrick stayed ready for whenever the future became clearer and it did a couple weeks ago when the WNBA announced it will start a 22-game regular season in late July.
“There’s just a self-discipline that has come from playing sports my entire life,” Dietrick said. “You have to have that discipline to succeed and that’s been ingrained in me since the beginning.”
With the COVID-19 pandemic halting the professional sports world and leaving a WNBA season in doubt, Dietrick, who signed a training camp contract with the Dream in late February while playing professionally in Spain for Lointek Gernika Bizkaia, was frustrated by the unknown circumstances until some answers came in mid-June when she learned she will get a chance to play a fourth WNBA season.
But it will be in an environment that harkens back to her AAU days as all 12 WNBA teams will be sequestered at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida, and games will be played with no fans in attendance.
“I’m a little bit nervous, but I think the league is doing everything they can to keep us safe and I trust that they’re doing everything possible,” Dietrick said. “We’re going to be tested so many times – before we enter the bubble, while we’re in the bubble. I really do think they’re doing everything possible.”
Two of Dietrick’s Atlanta teammates, Renee Montgomery and Tiffany Hayes, will not join the team in the bubble environment, with Montgomery sitting out to focus on social justice reform. Dietrick said she respected the decision of both Montgomery and Hayes.
Dietrick’s itching to play again though and end the longest stretch of her life without any meaningful game action.
“I just want to play,” said Dietrick, who flew to Atlanta recently for voluntary workouts before teams are expected to report to Florida by July 6. “I’m ready to go and I hope the rest of the team is as well. I think it’s still going to be a great season.”
The absence of Montgomery and Hayes opens up an opportunity in the Dream’s once crowded backcourt for Dietrick. The 5-foot-10 guard, who will turn 27 on July 19, has been an end-ofthe-bench role player during her time in the WNBA, never averaging more than 7.2 minutes per game in a season.
Dietrick, who owns school records for 1,440 points on the hardwood and 511 career points in lacrosse at Wellesley, wasn’t considering a professional basketball career until her senior season at Princeton. That’s when she got on the WNBA’s radar by recording 15.1 points and 4.9 assists per game en route to being named the 2014-15 Ivy League Player of the Year.
But it still wasn’t enough to get her drafted, so Dietrick played overseas in Italy, Australia and Greece as she tried to catch on with a WNBA franchise. She appeared in just three games combined for the San Antonio Stars and Seattle Storm in 2016.
Dietrick kept getting shots due to her success abroad and she enjoyed her first full WNBA season in 2018 with Atlanta before playing in 17 games for the Storm last year. Dietrick admits her professional basketball career has come with ups and downs, but she has also benefited from her pinball journey.
“I think I’ve seen it all. I’ve been the star player overseas and I’ve been the last kid on the bench in the WNBA and it gives me a really great perspective and so much appreciation that I get to play this sport for my job,” she said. “At the same time, I have worked so hard to get to where I am.”
Dietrick isn’t expecting to be handed a bigger role than she’s ever had on a WNBA court despite Atlanta’s last-minute roster changes. Dietrick’s ready to prove that she’s worthy of it. But most of all, she just wants to go to work.
“I know I have to work my butt off to get anything and I’m ok with that,” Dietrick said. “I think that’s how life should be. If you work hard, you are rewarded.”