Sabrina Ionescu and her twin brother hustled adults at basketball courts as kids to win money for Slurpees
- As kids, Sabrina Ionescu and her twin brother would hustle old men at basketball courts for 7-Eleven Slurpee money.
- In an interview with ESPN, the presumptive No. 1 pick in Friday's WNBA Draft said "I would try to act like I had no idea how to play" while her brother made bets with other players at a local gym.
- "I definitely didn't look like I belonged," Ionescu said. "I was very small, probably had a bow in my hair... If [my brother and I] played two-on-two it was game over every time."
- "We basically did that every day in order to get a Slurpee from 7-Eleven," the Oregon Ducks standout added. "Every day, it was just sweeter and sweeter when we would win."
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In recent years, basketball phenom Sabrina Ionescu has used her talent to lead the Oregon Ducks and become the face of women's college hoops.
But when she was a kid, she and her twin brother, Eddy Ionescu, would channel the future Oregon Duck's on-court flair for a far less righteous end goal.
In an interview with ESPN, the presumptive No. 1 pick in Friday's WNBA Draft said she and her brother would swindle old men at a local gym to win 7-Eleven Slurpee money.
"My brother would make bets with a bunch of the guys that would come in for money so that when we got hungry, we could cross the street and go to 7-Eleven and get our Slurpees," Ionescu said. "I definitely didn't look like I belonged. I was very small, probably had a bow in my hair."
"I'd sit there and try to act like I had no idea how to play so that they had betted money," she added. "And then it was game on."
The NCAA all-time leader in triple-doubles and the only Division I player — male or female — to record 2,000 points, 1,000 assists, and 1,000 rebounds recalled taking down her opponents in P-I-G, H-O-R-S-E, and one-on-one.
But she said she was most dominant when she teamed up with her twin.
"If we played two-on-two it was game over every time," Ionescu said. "We basically did that every day in order to get a Slurpee from 7-Eleven. Every day, it was just sweeter and sweeter when we would win."
The crafty 22-year-old point guard has been a known entity in the basketball world for quite some time, but she reached a new level of fame after choosing to return to Oregon for her senior season. And when NBA icon Kobe Bryant and his daughter, Gigi, tragically died in a helicopter crash on January 26, Ionescu — who had a close personal relationship with the Bryants — was asked to eulogize them at the televised memorial service held at the Staples Center a few weeks later.
She dedicated the remainder of her career with the Ducks to Kobe and Gigi. And though the 2019-2020 NCAA basketball season was cut short due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, Ionescu is primed to continue carrying on the Bryants' legacy at the next level. The New York Liberty are widely expected to take her with the first overall pick in the 2020 WNBA Draft, which will be held remotely and televised on ESPN Friday at 7 p.m. ET.
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