Erin Phillips calls time on basketball career for AFLW, a new job and family

OPALS great Erin Phillips has called time on her extraordinary basketball career and will put all her energies into AFL and a new job as a coach.

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OPALS great Erin Phillips has called time on her extraordinary basketball career just months before the Commonwealth Games, with one of Australia’s most successful code-hoppers to now put all her energies into AFL and a new job as a coach.

The former WNBA player and multiple Olympian, who also led Adelaide to victory in the inaugural AFLW, confirmed on Tuesday she will step back from playing basketball but has taken up a role as an assistant coach at the Dallas Wings.

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“You know those stories where an athlete announces their retirement and rides off into the sunset, happy and content with how it all finished? This isn’t one of them,’’ two-time WNBA champion Phillips wrote in a piece for Players Voice.

Erin Phillips at the Rio Olympics before the Opals were knocked out.

“It’s time for me to close the door on my career as a basketball player. It has been the most incredible journey — but this wasn’t the ending I’d hoped for.’’

Phillips said she is disappointed her last game for Australia — the Opals’ unexpected loss to Serbia in the quarter-finals at the Rio Olympics — is one that still haunts her.

“I had never really considered that the last game I’d play for Australia could be the one that hurt most,’’ she wrote.

“I can still hear the Serbian girls scream with excitement at the final siren. I remember the faces of my teammates. The silence and disbelief in the locker room. The tears and the sobs.

“I was incredibly down after Rio. I felt ashamed, humiliated and even lost. I didn’t know if I had the energy or the passion to keep pushing myself through more camps, more tours, more time away from my family.

Happy times.

Erin Phillips and Tracy Gahan.

Phillips, the AFLW’s best and fairest in 2017, said after one of the “darker moment of my career” things turned when wife Tracey gave birth to twins Brooklyn and Blake.

“The combination of becoming a mum and then fulfilling my dream to play footy saved me in a way,’’ she said.

After a conversation with new Opals coach Sandy Brondello, Phillips said she knew her time in basketball was at an end.

“Sandy reiterated the fact that I couldn’t be considered for selection if I wasn’t playing,’’ she said.

“I completely understand that and it was probably wishful thinking on my part that I’d somehow manage to make the squad.

“Going to the Commonwealth Games would have been great. But if I’m honest with myself, it was probably a selfish motivation because I simply wanted to finish on a better note than the Olympics.”

Originally published as Erin Phillips calls time on basketball career for AFLW, a new job and family