Tina Thompson (2012) - USC Athletics Hall of Fame

Tina Thompson

Induction:
2012
Class:
1997

Tina Thompson was one of the world’s greatest women’s basketball players. A four-year (1994-97) starting frontcourt player at USC, she earned 1997 All-American first team honors and was a three-time (1995-97) All-Pac-10 first teamer. She was the 1994 Pac-10 Freshman of the Year. In her USC career, she averaged 19.7 points and 10.2 rebounds while scoring 2,248 points and getting 1,168 rebounds. She led the Women of Troy to 3 NCAA tournament appearances. She was the first-ever player drafted in the WNBA, where she was a nine-time All-Star in her 17 years with the Houston Comets (1997-2008), winning four consecutive WNBA titles (1997-2000), Los Angeles Sparks (2009-11) and Seattle Storm (2012-23). The only player to play in all of the WNBA’s first 17 seasons, she became the WNBA’s all-time leader in scoring and games played. She was the MVP of the 2000 WNBA All-Star Game and was named to the WNBA’s All-Decade team in 2006 and 25th Anniversary Team in 2021. She averaged 15.1 points and 6.2 rebounds in her WNBA career. She won a pair of gold medals with the U.S. team at the 2004 and 2008 Olympics (she was an alternate on the 2000 gold medalists) and she won a bronze medal at the 2006 World Championships. She also played 20 years professionally in Italy, South Korea, Russia and Romania (she won Russian and Romanian National League titles, as well as the 2007 EuroLeague championship), retiring in 2014. She was inducted into both the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame and the Nasmith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2018. In 2016, he was named to the Pac-12 All-Century Team. She won an NCAA Silver Anniversary Award in 2022. She became an assistant women’s coach at Texas and then the head coach at Virginia (2018-22), before joining the Portland Trailblazers as a scout.