Moore will be the fifth player in Lynx history to have her jersey hung from the rafters.
The Minnesota Lynx announced that they’re going to retire the number 23 jersey of WNBA star Maya Moore, who led her team to four WNBA championship titles and won two gold medals at the Olympics. “I hope people saw me as someone who gave all but also somebody who looked beyond the craft that I pursued,” Moore said in the announcement of her retirement last year. Moore stepped away from basketball in 2019 to help her now-husband, Jonathan Irons, overturn a 22-year old wrongful conviction. She officially retired in 2023.
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Moore, who is 34, was named National Gatorade Player of the Year, the Gatorade Female Athlete of the Year, and a McDonald’s All-American in high school. She attended the University of Connecticut and led the Huskies to a 150-4 record over her four-year career, including four Final Four appearances and two National Championships.
Moore joined the Lynx as the number one draft pick in 2011 and won Rookie of the Year in her first season. In her eight seasons with Minnesota, she averaged 18.4 points, 5.9 rebounds, and 1.7 and was the league MVP in 2014. Moore was a five-time All-WNBA first-team selection, and she is also the only player in WNBA history with four 40-plus point games.
In addition to being a basketball star, Moore is also dedicated to civil rights and social justice. In 2017, Moore started Win with Justice to advocate for prosecutorial reform. She is also part of the End it Movement, which seeks to end slavery in modern times. In 2019, Moore shifted her focus from basketball to helping a family friend, Jonathan Irons, who’d been serving a 50-year prison sentence after being wrongfully convicted of a non-fatal home invasion and shooting in St. Louis when Irons was just 16 years old. Moore drew attention to the case, and in 2020, Irons was released. Moore and Irons wed a few months later. The couple published a book about their love story in 2023, Love and Justice: A Story of Triumph on Two Different Courts.
Moore will also be inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame this April. The Lynx plan to retire Moore’s number 23 jersey at a home game against the Indiana Fever on Aug. 24.
Cover photo: The Minnesota Lynx Set To Retire Jersey of Four-Time WNBA Star Maya Moore / Photo credit: Minnesota Lynx