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The No. 30 overall pick of the 2020 WNBA Draft by the Chicago Sky, Japreece Dean is currently playing for the Adelaide Lightning of the WNBL. The former All-Pac-12 First Team selection at UCLA (2017-20) is a true floor general, who, despite her small stature, commands the respect of her teammates and rivals.

She talked to Swish Appeal about her crazy handles, the coaching change in Adelaide, her time at UCLA and starting off her pro career in Russia. Some highlights from our conversation include:

On being overlooked because of her size:

My agent tells me sometimes that teams decided to go a different way because of my size. I can rebound the ball as a guard. At my position, point guards can rebound a little bit more, because my man isn’t crashing [the boards], they’re getting back on defense, so I can get a few rebounds … I can rebound the ball well, but it is other factors, mostly defense is why they prefer to have bigger guards.

On the drills she did to develop her dribbling:

Shoutout to my coach back home, Shawn Hardeman, who has his own company, Ball Hard. A great place to train. That’s where I became elite at handling the ball. The consistency of doing it over and over again, you get better at it and it eventually becomes second nature … We did a lot of heavy ball, it wasn’t a normal ball, but a heavier one, and we’d just dribble that on grass or turf, so it was hard to get the ball back up.

A special thank you to Lorenzo Gallotti of Two Points agency for arranging the interview.