What was Sydney Colson thinking in the back of her mind ahead of the Las Vegas Aces winning the WNBA championship?
Retirement.
"'This (is) probably going to be my last year.' Like, that was what was in my head," Colson tells TODAY.com. "'I might retire and just be done.'"
Stuck behind a stacked roster of standout players such as A'ja Wilson, Chelsea Gray, Alysha Clark and Kelsey Plum, the 34-year-old guard didn't see much game time until Game 4 of the WNBA Finals against the New York Liberty on Oct. 18. The Aces clinched the victory in that game, 70-69, to secure back-to-back league titles.
Colson, a veteran of eight-plus years, played 15 minutes in Game 4 and was on the court during the last play of the game, when the Aces led by a single point and the Liberty had a chance to win. It was a big deal, given that she's usually an energizer cheering on her team from the bench.
"That's crazy because I felt just like in my spirit some days leading up, (but) I had no idea what the circumstances would be for me to have to play," she explains. "But I just felt the nervousness that I typically don't feel."
Gray and Kiah Stokes, two starters, did not play in the closeout game due to injuries. Candace Parker, a previous starter, hasn't played since having season-ending foot surgery in July.
Colson says she "definitely didn't want" injuries to be the circumstance under which she saw the court, "but that kind of is the situation in pro sports and in a lot of facets in life when somebody is down or somebody is made unavailable.
"Other people have to rally around, you got to step up," she says. "It was a really good feeling to be out there on the last play, to be able to just contribute whatever in the minutes that I was in. I always go hard for my team."
Colson rising to the occasion when her number was called didn't surprise her. It actually confirmed her faith in knowing an opportunity would present itself.
"I know the work that I put in," she says. "I know what I do in practice to prepare myself. Like our team, I never lose confidence. I'm just unsure when a moment will be or if I'll get a moment. It's very much like how a lot of us probably go about our lives: If you stay prepared, stay ready so you don't have to get ready, essentially, to sum it up. And for so many of us, if you have faith, then a lot of times you're inclined to believe that, yes, God will make a way, but also (I) have to do the work."
"So stay prepared, stay working," she encouraged. "You don't know when that opportunity will come. But if you're doing all the work, when it comes, you're gonna be ready."
When asked if she still plans on retiring this year, Colson says, “If the Aces want to bring me back, absolutely I’m coming back.” She re-signed with the Aces for the 2023 season in February.
With the season now over, Colson's schedule has opened up, giving her more time to continue pursuing her passion for acting, which she plans to do full-time one day. She currently stars in "The Syd + TP Show" with her best friend and former teammate Theresa Plaisance. The comedy series airs Mondays at 9 p.m. ET on Fubo platforms. Ryan Reynolds' Maximum Effort produces alongside Fubo and Togethxr, a media and commerce company founded by athletes Sue Bird (who retired last year), Alex Morgan, Chloe Kim and Simone Manuel.
Colson says she'll also be spending the offseason in the gym, training and playing with other professionals.
In the meantime, she's enjoying the aftermath of the championship. Despite her performance in the deciding Finals game, in which she contributed two points, Colson has been trolled on social media for not being a heavy-minutes player. She has a response for the negative commenters.
"People always talk and they want to talk about my averages over the years — I only score two points, all of these things — but they don't realize that I genuinely do not care," she says. "I'm willing to do whatever for my team and a lot of times it ends up being defense. And that's where I hang my hat anyways. I'm the kind of person I would much rather stop somebody from getting their average than score a lot of points."
One of the Liberty players whom Colson guarded while in the game was Sabrina Ionescu, who averaged 17 points a game during the regular season but only scored 13 in Game 4.
The best-of-five series included a lot of trash talking, including when Ionescu did a gesture dubbed "night night" in Game 3, laying her head on her hands to demonstrate how the Liberty planned to send the Aces home. Plus, in the regular season, Colson says a Liberty player told her to "go back to the bench" when she was in the game. (Colson played for the Liberty during her rookie WNBA season in 2011.)
Colson famously repeated Ionescu's gesture immediately after winning the league title in an on-court postgame interview.
"I got two words to say: Night night!" she cheered at the time.
Critics online have described what Colson did as unsportsmanlike conduct.
"Looking back, I really could have not done that," she says. Colson then references how a lot of players perform better when there's a chip on their shoulders, and the Aces used the Liberty's trash talk as fuel to energize them for the game.
"For me, it was that (sleep gesture) coupled with the disrespect during the regular season," she says. "And people are mad at my response. But I'm like, it's always the response that gets the bigger reaction and there's also the added layer of when it's a white person and it's a Black person who responds because that is what we saw with Iowa and LSU. It became much bigger than I think it would have with two same-race players, whether that's white and white or Black and Black, whatever it was. Because it was white and Black, something else fueled people to be just super triggered about it."
Colson was referring to the criticism LSU's Angel Reese received for repeating a hand gesture Iowa's Caitlin Clark did to another opponent leading up to the 2023 women's college basketball championship.`
Colson says contrary to what online trolls think, there's no bad blood between her and Ionescu or their teams.
"There's no beef," she says. "We don't even know each other like that. This is just the same way that men go out and talk and do all that. People have to give women space to trash talk in professional sports. Like, it's going to be OK. We're not so fragile that you have to handle us with kid gloves."
The Liberty were also criticized after the Finals for some players, including Ionescu, skipping required postgame interviews. Colson says she empathizes with why they may have opted out, but says she doesn’t have all the information regarding what went into their decision.
With the 2023 WNBA season in the books, Colson hopes all the fanfare fires fans up to tune in next season.
"I love it because it should get people excited about the next WNBA season," she says. "They're going to be very excited to see these two teams match up again. For me, this is just another way to keep growing the W."
