Unreal how quickly her basketball career disappeared. If she had invested her time and energy into training and possibly playing overseas, she might still be in the WNBA. How sad.
Good article though I don't really buy that she didn't get a fair break from the WNBA. After her time with the Dream 2 other teams gave her a chance, and she never tried again after that. The article also missed the fact that Shoni showed up out of shape in 2015 and only mentions her showing up out of shape in 2016. But it is a shame and tragedy that her life has come to this.
She was fun to watch when she was on, but she never developed the consistency to stick in the league and it sounds like she wasn't very compatible with the pro basketball lifestyle. Nothing wrong with that - it's clear that she was very community and family oriented.
The biggest problem, aside from her fitness issues, was she never could play defense. Opposing teams quickly figured that out and she ended up stuck on the bench a lot. This seemed to diminish her effectiveness and she became quite inconsistent. Cooper was more generous with playing time in her first season (2014), but after the extended period of time she had to sit out in 2015 to get into shape, he was less so. The unfortunate part is that Erica Wheeler was waived mid season that year, and was clearly outplaying Shoni at the time. While Wheeler has her issues (like dribbling too much), she obviously went on to have a much better career, and should have been the one kept by the Dream in 2015.
I was actually a Shoni fan boy. She was the only player (other than Izi) whose Jersey I bought. I do wish her well, and hope she gets whatever help she needs. It is odd, however, that the Times article seemed to minimize the seriousness of domestic violence.