DENA HEAD SAT on her couch in sweats, staring at a boxy TV waiting for the phone to ring. It was Feb. 27, 1997, and Head was in Mirande, France, waiting for her name to be called in the elite player draft ahead of the inaugural WNBA season.
Head was 26 years old and playing her second season in France. She lived in a house owned by the neighbors, tucked away near a small body of water. Mirande is a small community in southwest France, nearly 500 miles from Paris, nestled between the Garonne River and Pyrenees mountains. The closest major city is Toulouse.
Since graduating from Tennessee in 1992, Head’s only viable professional basketball opportunity was overseas, and she had made previous stops in Hungary and Italy. Alongside Dawn Staley, Sheryl Swoopes and Lisa Leslie, she had represented Team USA at the 1994 world championship in Australia. Now, the launch of the WNBA meant the opportunity to come home for good. The 5-foot-11 guard could play in front of her family and friends — and see them and talk to them.
“You didn’t call home every single day,” Head, now 53, said earlier this month from her home in West Bloomfield Township, Michigan….
