Jewell Loyd’s growing leadership is a key part of Storm’s return to prominence

LOS ANGELES — A quiet storm has been brewing for Seattle for well over a year. The storm in question: Seattle guard Jewell Loyd.

Coming off her fourth game this season scoring 30 or more points and helping Seattle to an 89-83 victory against the Los Angeles Sparks on Tuesday, it’s clear there’s nothing quiet about Loyd’s offensive ability on the court. What is quiet about Loyd, who is in her 10th WNBA season, is her leadership.

It’s a style that has been under development for years as she was able to take more of a backseat as a leader behind WNBA legend Sue Bird and superstar Breanna Stewart as they won championships together in 2018 and 2020. But with Bird retiring in 2022 and Stewart leaving Seattle in the 2023 offseason, Loyd was thrown headfirst into leading the squad.

“Last year was a huge sample size for her [as a leader]. Being the leader in ways that she hadn’t been previously in Seattle because she’s played with Sue and Stewie,” Storm head coach Noelle Quinn said pregame. “For her to be able to perform at a high level on the court, but also learn about herself in a leadership voice was very important to get reps with that.

“I just point to last year being a very good learning year for her to just get that under her belt. It’s still learning at a high level right now and on the fly as we log minutes with this group, as we log gains with this group. And so she’s adjusted. She’s finding ways to be impactful, not only like on the basketball court, but with her voice.”

Loyd had a rocky start, as the Storm went 11-29 and missed the 2023 postseason for the first time since her rookie season. The guard had her best season as a pro as the No. 1 option, scoring nearly 25 points a night.

Amid the team’s dismal season, Storm center Ezi Magbegor saw Loyd develop as a leader.

“She has to lead us both on the floor and off the court. And I think, you know, that probably didn’t come natural to her,” Magbegor told Yahoo Sports. “I think she’s more like a lead by example [leader], but she’s found her voice in the last couple of years. So it definitely continued on into the season as well.

“I think she’s really personable. She tries to get the best out of all of her teammates, so she makes that effort to get to know us off the court. She has expectations of us. So I think when she knows we’re not playing our best or doing our best, she is really good at getting that out of us. And I think we just are a team that wants to play well for Jewell. She’s a great leader.”

For much of Loyd’s career, she didn’t need to be that main leader on the floor because she had one of the greatest guards and leaders in the history of the game in Bird. Sami Whitcomb, a member of Seattle who played with Bird and Loyd, says that Loyd may have picked up some leadership traits from Bird. In particular, two things stood out to Whitcomb.

First was Loyd’s ability to lead quietly.

“I think [Loyd] has a real sense of when it’s like a pick-me-up moment instead of when you don’t need to just shout at people or you know, like it’s not always a yelling moment to get through to people,” Whitcomb told Yahoo Sports.

Second was understanding when to take a backseat and give others the opportunity to lead vocally.

“[Bird] knew when to sort of concede to like an Alysha Clark, who was also a really important leader for us,” Whitcomb said. “Jewell, it’s not a concession necessarily, but Jewell knows when Nneka [Ogwumike] wants to talk and when she has something really important and vital to say maybe from her experience and Jewell, her job as a leader in that instance is to like back her up and then to go and do exactly what, you know, Nneka is saying and asking about. So I think sometimes it’s just knowing when to speak and when not to.”

Loyd’s leadership caught the attention of WNBA free-agent stars Ogwumike and Skylar Diggins-Smith this past offseason. The two players arrived in Seattle with many qualifications to lead on their own. Ogwumike was a WNBA MVP and won a championship with the Sparks in 2016. Diggins-Smith has been a member of the All-WNBA First-Team four times in her career.

They both knew what drew them to this iteration of the Seattle Storm, who at 17-8 have the most wins of any Western Conference team through Tuesday.

“Both Skylar and Nneka play basketball at such a high level,” Quinn said pregame. “And they came to Seattle for a purpose. One of those purposes was to play with Jewell. And they, from Day 1, they said this is Jewell’s team.”

When asked about what she wants her legacy to be, Loyd thought back to a conversation she had with Kobe Bryant.

“Be epic and create forever. Those are the last two things that Kobe said to me,” Loyd said postgame. “So I look at what I’m doing on court, off the court as, is there a way to be epic and is there a way to create forever. I think for me, it’s finding just the next generation and helping the next generation of hoopers, but also people who want to invest in entrepreneurship and things like that.

“Those are the two things that I kind of live by day by day.”