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Originally Published: October 9, 2009

Catchings' hoop dream put on hold

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By Mechelle Voepel
Special to ESPN.com
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PHOENIX -- When Indiana's Tamika Catchings is flying around the court seeming to be in about three places at once, she seems superhuman.

But then you hear her talk about balancing pro basketball and life, and you empathize with how she's facing the same decisions as so many other people.

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Barry Gossage/NBAE/Getty ImagesWin or lose, Tamika Catchings put in one of the best WNBA Finals performances in league history.

"I want to have a family, have kids," said Catchings, 30. "I look at Lisa [Leslie] having [daughter] Lauren near the end of her career, and Candace [Parker] having a child at the beginning. It's like, you never really know when is a 'good' time.

"Especially for a working woman -- whether it's in sports or as a businesswoman. For me, I'm getting to the point where, I love playing basketball, but I look at my little nephew and say, 'I wish my kids would have been able to grow up together with him.' But …"

Lest there be alarm bells going off that Catchings is contemplating imminent retirement, that's not the case.

"No, no, no," she said, smiling. "That's false. I want to play at least through the 2012 Olympics."

What Catchings hopes, though, is that sometime in the next few years she can get the one thing she still wants most in basketball: a WNBA championship.

On Friday, she came as close as she has in eight seasons in the WNBA, but Phoenix took its second championship with a 94-86 victory at US Airways Center. While Phoenix -- led by Diana Taurasi, Cappie Pondexter and Penny Taylor -- was on the court celebrating, Catching was sitting in the quiet Indiana locker room shedding a few tears.

But then she dried her eyes and instead focused on the family time she'll have in the next few months, going back to play overseas in Poland in January, and what she hopes will be an even more successful 2010 WNBA season. Not to mention that next year will also be the World Championship, in which she would like once again to play for Team USA.

As the saying goes, Catchings was down Friday, but definitely not out.

"At this point right now, if you're not a champion, there's not a consolation prize that you want," she said. "But the biggest thing I take away from this season is I'm very proud of and excited about the way our city embraced the Fever.

"Just looking at that and thinking about each series -- the Washington series, the Detroit series, the Phoenix series. Just the progress. I look at my team, and everybody put it all out there.

"You can't really be too disappointed. You have to say Phoenix got us. They played a great game [Friday] -- Cappie, Diana, Penny, everybody stepped up and did their jobs. As a team, that's what you do. When every role is filled, that's how you win."

Catchings struggled with her scoring in the first game of the Finals, and she fouled out. Upset with herself after that game, she came back and nearly had a triple-double in Game 2 -- 19 points, 11 assists and nine rebounds -- and continued that kind of superstar play the rest of the series.

In the fourth and fifth games, Catchings somehow seemed to find an even higher gear to go to, so much so that Taurasi had to shake her head in admiration.

"She got a rebound tonight where I think she was in row 110, ran the baseline, got it with one hand, got pushed," Taurasi said of how it does sometimes appear Catchings is playing with expandable arms as though she were Elastigirl from "The Incredibles."

"She'll get a WNBA title just by her sheer competitiveness and wanting it more than other people."

The thing is, Catchings hasn't been surrounded by a team that was quite good enough to help her win a title until this season. But the 2009 Fever ran into a Mercury team that proved just a little better.

Still, it has been a terrific postseason for Catchings. When Indiana won Game 2 of the Finals and headed back to Indianapolis with a full head of steam, Catchings knew she'd have some special people in the crowd for Game 3 at Conseco Fieldhouse: Pat Summitt and her Tennessee assistant coaches.

"The biggest thing for me after I finished school and have gone overseas, is that Pat has always remained constant as far as communicating with me and checking on me," said Catchings, who played at Tennessee from 1997 to 2001. "Once I knew we were going to play in the Finals, I said to Pat, 'I'd really like you guys to be here, it would mean so much to me.' And she said, 'We're going to try to get the plane; we're going to get there.' It's a blessing, the relationship that we continue to have."

Summitt said: "I wanted her to know the city of Knoxville was pulling for her. What's not to love about Tamika Catchings?"

At Tennessee, Catchings won an NCAA title as a freshman playing alongside Chamique Holdsclaw in 1998. But then Tennessee lost in the Elite Eight in 1999; in the NCAA title game in 2000; and then, without an injured Catchings, in the Sweet 16 in 2001.

Catchings suffered a torn ACL in her senior season, and was selected No. 3 in the WNBA draft in 2001 behind Lauren Jackson and Kelly Miller. Indiana didn't have Catchings that 2001 WNBA season as she rehabbed, but she has been a stalwart for the team ever since.

That ACL tear, though, isn't the toughest injury that Catchings has been through. That was the ruptured Achilles tendon she suffered in the 2007 Eastern Conference finals, in which the Fever lost to Detroit.

"I talk about the things that I dealt with growing up: having a hearing problem and a speech problem," Catchings said. "Then you look at injuries, which every athlete has to deal with at some point in time. But having two of the major injuries in basketball … the knee was bad, but the Achilles? Oh, my goodness. I don't wish that on my worst enemy.

"It was the worst pain. When it happened, I don't know how many pain pills they gave me, but it wouldn't go away. Being able to come back from that and play on the Olympic team last year and now in the Finals this year -- you really have to want it. The journey is long and hard, but it's worth it."

Catchings would have loved, of course, to add a WNBA championship to that journey this season. Game 4 in Indianapolis, she was so pumped up that she couldn't nap beforehand, eager to try to close out the title in front of a sellout crowd that included her grandmother, who was visiting from Abilene, Texas.

Instead, Catchings' quest will have to wait another year, but she said the fire inside her will be just as strong, if not stronger. It has been there for such a long time.

"When I'm driving home sometimes and I go past a basketball court, it's always cool when I see a little girl trying to shoot on that 10-foot hoop that's so much taller than her," Catchings said. "I remember when I was that girl. I'm sure there were people in cars who drove by and thought, 'Man, I wonder whose little girl that is? Who's she there with?' And it was just me by myself with my ball. It was my safe haven."

It still is, and once her body heals from its aches and pains over the next several weeks, she'll be back out on the court preparing as hard as ever for her next competition.

"They always say you play like you practice," Catchings said. "So I have to practice the way I want to be remembered as a player."

Mechelle Voepel, a regular contributor to ESPN.com, can be reached at mvoepel123@yahoo.com. Read her blog at http://voepel.wordpress.com.