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The No. 14 pick of the 2023 WNBA Draft by the Los Angeles Sparks, Shaneice Swain is only 21 years old, but she’s been putting the basketball world on notice for a while now. Recently, she’s emerged as the star of the WNBL’s Sydney Flames, where she is the league’s second-leading scorer and shooting better than 40 percent from 3.

She spoke to Swish Appeal about what being Indigenous Australian means to her, the basketball youth system in Australia and how she was scouted by the Sparks, as well as how she developed from a natural scorer into a truly versatile player. Some highlights from our talk include:

On the WNBL’s Indigenous Round being about more than wearing different jerseys:

The guy that designed the jersey for us, he basically put his story through the jersey and then I also got some custom-made shoes, which were really cool. He basically asked me what I want and I told him, “Just keep it family-orientated,” because, obviously, my family plays a big role in my life and during that round I played for my family. In particular, my great grandmothers that had to go through all that, like all the stuff that they went through. And then just representing my last name, same thing, bringing it back to family and just giving back, I mean, just showing the kids out there that are in the communities or finding it hard to get out of where they are, that they can do it. Because I came from a small place like like Cairns and I’m here where I am now.

On being drafted into the WNBA while returning home from the Nike Hoop Summit in Oregon:

I was actually on the plane going back to Australia while the draft was happening, so I didn’t actually get to see my name get called out. But as soon as I got off the plane, I’ve seen it and I actually met up with the Sparks staff in LA, because I had a layover in LA, so I got to meet them quickly. They gave me two t-shirts and we filmed a little bit of content, and then that was it. And then I had to go back to Australia.

Thank you to Courtney Ward of Hoops Capital for arranging the interview.