When Sky forward Rickea Jackson tore her ACL earlier this season, her former Unrivaled teammate Paige Bueckers offered some advice.
If Jackson wanted to make it through rehab, Bueckers told her, she needed to give her knee a name.
“Even if it’s just a knee, you have to make that knee feel loved,” Bueckers said while discussing injury recovery on the “Bird’s Eye View” podcast. “I’m a huge believer in the power of the tongue. How you speak to yourself really manifests.”
Jackson took the advice and, with her usual charm, came up with the perfect name: “Ricknee-a.”
The break from basketball also has forced her to pick up new hobbies. Her favorite: bedazzling. She finds it therapeutic, but it also helps when her motivation starts to wane.
Take the ice machine she uses on her Ricknee-a. It’s red and ugly, and Jackson hates icing in the first place. So she and Sky basketball operations manager Maggie Maloney came up with an idea: Maybe Jackson would use it more if they bedazzled it.
Now that the machine looks cute, Jackson does.
It’s all part of the process. Jackson is committed to putting in the work, day after day. That doesn’t mean she finds it particularly thrilling.
“My trainer and my strength coach, they’re always telling me where I PR at,” Jackson said. “They’re more excited about the little gains than I am. I just be like, ‘OK, I can bend my knee. Woohoo.’”
One can understand the lack of enthusiasm for a knee bend given what Jackson had been doing on the court before the injury. She averaged 22 points in the three games before tearing her ACL, maybe on track for her first All-Star appearance.
According to assistant coach Latricia Trammell, who’d coached her with the Sparks, Jackson looked at peace in Chicago. A much-deserved turn after an incident involving her ex-boyfriend, Falcons defensive end James Pearce Jr., who was charged with battery and stalking after allegedly ramming his car repeatedly into hers as she drove toward a police station.
Jackson was in a better place, personally and professionally. Then basketball was taken away.
It hasn’t been easy, but she’s trying to see the good in the interruption. Like the chance to wear her nails longer and get more mileage out of her hairstyles. Oh, and some space to discover who she is off the court.
“Since seventh grade, everything has literally been basketball,” Jackson said. “When I go out of the country, it’s basketball.
“God felt like I needed to take a break from basketball. He felt like I needed to really feel everything that I was going through off the court and handle things like that.”
The time away also has allowed her to see the game from a different vantage point.
From the sideline, she’s studying teammates, picking up defensive skills she wants to incorporate: DiJonai Carrington’s active hands and the way Natasha Cloud navigates screens.
She also has relished the breakout of undrafted rookie guard Sydney Taylor.
“I called it,” Jackson said, cheesing at the mention of Taylor. “I told y’all in training camp: ‘I don’t know who this woman is, but she can dunk.’
“I’m so excited for her. She’s truly getting the fruits of her labor. I feel like people are truly starting to know who Sydney Taylor is, and I’m so happy for her.”
That the Sky fell short of their playoff goal hasn’t shaken Jackson’s belief in what they’re building. She thinks the team is better than its record suggests and sees herself, Taylor and Kamilla Cardoso as the young foundation of a future championship contender.
Asked what she envisions for the franchise, Jackson did not lack ambition.
“I see a hardworking team, a gritty team,” she said. “I see a flow state of wins strung together. I feel like it could be a dynasty.
“We want to get back to the 2021 championship ways. Rome wasn’t built in a day, so it’s going to take time. But I’m willing to do my part to make sure the Sky turn into a dynasty.”
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