Bond beyond basketball: Longtime friends Ogwumike, Diggins hope to extend Storm's season

It was a play astir 2 decades successful the making.

With 6.1 seconds remaining and the people knotted astatine 82, the Seattle Storm took a timeout. In the huddle, manager Noelle Quinn called a play for Skylar Diggins to instrumentality the past shot.

But arsenic the defender walked onto the court, she told teammate Nneka Ogwumike that the Washington Mystics had been aggressively defending pick-and-rolls. If Ogwumike went aboriginal and slipped the surface instead, she'd beryllium open.

That's however it played retired moments aboriginal successful the Aug. 24 victory. Diggins recovered Ogwumike, who freed herself for a winning jumper from the escaped propulsion line.

It was the benignant of play the longtime friends envisioned erstwhile they yet teamed up connected the Storm successful 2024 escaped agency. It was the benignant of play they'd done unneurotic years earlier astatine USA Basketball camps.

"Very potent pick-and-roll since teenage years," Diggins told ESPN.

Their pairing the past 2 seasons successful Seattle has helped some players enactment astatine an All-Star level successful their mid-30s. But arsenic the Storm look an elimination crippled Tuesday (9:30 p.m., ESPN2) against the Las Vegas Aces and erstwhile teammate Jewell Loyd successful the archetypal circular of the WNBA playoffs, Diggins and Ogwumike are inactive looking to construe their concern into the squad occurrence they expected.

"In the abbreviated clip that we've been together, we've been done a lot," Ogwumike told ESPN. "Going done those times of adversity, you extremity up leaning a batch connected each other, and I'm conscionable hoping that I tin supply immoderate enactment that is indispensable for america to not conscionable get done those times but to look guardant to having much accordant wins and the mode that we privation to feel."

DIGGINS AND OGWUMIKE don't rather retrieve erstwhile they archetypal crossed paths. There was a Nike campy successful Portland, Oregon, and they were some stars connected the AAU circuit. But they made a memorable people connected each different portion playing for USA Basketball.

"I was conscionable like, 'I gotta measurement my crippled up,'" Ogwumike said of her archetypal content of Diggins. "I don't deliberation I had ever seen anyone that competitive. ... With Sky, it's each oregon nothing. It doesn't substance who is successful beforehand of her. I conscionable retrieve being successful Colorado Springs and wanting to beryllium connected her squad each clip due to the fact that it's precise uncommon to find radical that privation to triumph astatine each costs."

Diggins had adjacent praise for Ogwumike.

"She conscionable played similar a pro," Diggins said. "She ever seemed similar a pistillate among girls, immoderate spot she was at. Not overmuch has changed successful 20 years. How she moved connected the floor, however electrical and dynamic she was arsenic a player. That's not thing you spot precise often."

They were teammates for the archetypal clip astatine the 2008 FIBA Americas U18 championships. A twelvemonth later, they helped the United States triumph the FIBA U19 World Cup successful Thailand arsenic starters, with Ogwumike putting up 22 points and 20 rebounds against Spain successful the final.

By then, their paths had already parted for college. Ogwumike, coming disconnected her freshman play astatine Stanford, was connected the cusp of becoming an All-American. Diggins was tempted to articulation her successful Palo Alto, wherever Ogwumike hosted her authoritative visit. All they'll stock astir that play is that it was a batch of fun.

Diggins got into Stanford, wherever Ogwumike said she "fit close in," but yet decided connected Notre Dame, saying she needed to enactment person to location successful Indiana.

"I loved [Stanford]," Diggins said. "If it wasn't truthful far. ... It was a cleanable concern for Nneka and past it was a cleanable concern for maine [at Notre Dame]. We did everything to the 11th hr to effort to marque it work.

"Ever since then, we had ever been trying to spot if th...