Svetlana Abrosimova Finds Fun Again in Seattle

Svetlana Abrosimova was simply not feeling it.

She was playing in Europe. She was playing for the Russian national team. She was playing in the WNBA. She was playing all the time.

And it was becoming less and less fun.

"I felt like it was getting to be too much for me," Abrosimova said. "It wears on the body and mentally I was getting very tired."

In 2008, the Seattle Storm reserve guard played six games with Connecticut before leaving to prepare for the Olympics. She chose to skip the 2009 WNBA season. She traveled and went scuba diving. Most importantly, she rested.

"I need new things and new experiences. For a while I wasn't having fun, it was more like a job," Abrosimova said. "It was hard for me to come back. I kept thinking 'Why are you doing this if you are not enjoying it?' "

But almost two years later something pulled her back to the States.

"I only have so many years left in my career. I had unfinished business," Abrosimova said. "I want to win a championship. I want to be part of something special. All the years I played in the league, I hadn't done that. I never won a title or a conference title. That was the No. 1 reason I wanted to come back."

Abrosimova, who turned 30 earlier this month, is playing a key role for the surging Storm this season. She is coming off the bench to provide a spark on both ends of the floor. She's also adding a dose of experience, one of the factors that is putting Seattle at the top of the league by a wide margin.

"Without question, she could be a starter for us," Seattle coach Brian Agler said. "She's a versatile player and there's a little swagger to her."

Agler jumped at the chance to coach Abrosimova again after he got word through her former Connecticut teammate Sue Bird that she was interested in coming back to the league. Agler first coached Abrosimova in Minnesota early in her WNBA career.

"In all honesty, I tried to get her a couple of times (in Seattle)," Agler said. "In this instance, she looked for us. It's not that we weren't interested, but she's the one who reached out to us. I was not hesitant to follow through."

Agler said he was not concerned that she'd lost her desire to play.

"She wanted to play with some people she was familiar with and she wanted to be in a city," Agler said. "She wasn't concerned about starting."

And so Abrosimova comes off the bench, averaging 6.7 points in 18.5 minutes a game. She is playing good defense and distributing the ball to people she knows well, such as Bird and former Connecticut teammate Swin Cash and Australian star Lauren Jackson, who has played in Russia for many years.

She said she is rejuvenated. Winning certainly helps that. Seattle is 19-2 this season with a perfect record against Western Conference opponents and just six games away from matching Houston's league-record 25-2 start back in 1998.

"It's like having a regular job and you go on vacation and you come back and you feel better," Abrosimova said. "This has worked out perfectly for me. I knew the coach, he knew me. I wanted to be on a team where I was familiar with the players, where we could compete for a championship.

"I feel like there's something special going on here, but we're not getting overly excited. There's a very good atmosphere here. The only reason for this team not to win is if we don't stay healthy, we are too tired or we stop being mentally hungry, but I think that's the really good thing about this team. I don't think that will happen."

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