Maya Moore, Nowhere Near Finished

At 29, Maya Moore has accomplished as much if not more than any other womens basketball player ever. Yes, you read that right: Ever. And shes nowhere near finished.

- Steve Marsh

NOBODY IS PREPARED to see a picture of their face blown up two stories tall, not even four-time WNBA champion Maya Moore. “I had heard they were going to do something big,” she says. But she didn’t know that for the Minnesota Lynx home opener against their hated rivals, the L.A. Sparks, Jordan Brand was going to glue a mural on the side of a building that stretched an entire city block in Minneapolis. “I was driving to the game with my mom,” she says, “turned the corner, and I was like, OK…there it is. And my mom was like, ‘Oh my goodness.’”

Weeks before, Moore posed for the shot: arms outstretched, right hand palming a basketball, left hand pointing toward 6th Street—an exact replica of Michael Jordan’s iconic “Wings” poster from 1985. Below the picture was a slightly edited proverb written by English Romantic poet William Blake. The adage is actually from Blake’s Proverbs of Hell, in which he twists old biblical proverbs into provocative, darkly energizing advice. Stuff like, “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom,” and “He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star.” And below the Maya mural, in italics, it reads: No bird flies too high, if she flies with her own wings.

So what did Maya, who’s been the only woman representing the Jordan Brand since she entered the league in 2011 and who also identifies as a deeply devout Christian, think when she saw herself on a mural that covered an entire city block? “I felt kind of like I was two people at once,” she says. “One side of me felt like the women’s basketball fan, the basketball fan that’s just been waiting for this sort of celebration of our game, of where we’re going.” And the other side? “Oh my!” she says. “That’s me.”