Cancer survivor Breland has WNBA dream

NEWARK

There she was, 32 seconds into her first WNBA game, and Jessica Breland had the ball in her hands and an open shot.

It was her moment, the one that she had been dreaming about almost her entire life. She had dreamed of it happening when she was a schoolgirl in Brooklyn, first learning how to play the game. She had dreamed of it when she was a junior at North Carolina, leading the ACC in blocked shots. And she had dreamed of it during her grueling, daylong chemotherapy sessions two summers ago, letting it take her mind away from her diagnosis of Hodgkin's lymphoma and the potent cocktail of medicine that was being force-fed through a port in her chest and into her veins.

Now it was here. Jessica Breland, cancer survivor and professional basketball player, took the ball, lifted her arms and hit an 8-foot jumper with a nice little arc for the first basket of her WNBA career.

"It was kind of a relief," the Liberty's 6-3 forward said after a preseason game last Wednesday. "On the bench, I was thinking: 'What if my first shot is an air ball?' But when I got in the game, I decided to think about it being just like college. And it happened."

The preseason can be stressful for players like Breland, rookies who are on the bubble of making a team. The cutdown date for the Liberty is Thursday. Yet, the stress of playing in the Liberty's 60-57 preseason loss to the Connecticut Sun is nothing compared with the stress that Breland has had the past two years.

All through her junior year at North Carolina, Breland knew something wasn't right. First she was diagnosed with asthma, then severe allergies. Finally, in May 2009, a few months after the season, she said she broke down in coach Sylvia Haskell's office, telling her she just couldn't breathe. Haskell sent her to an otolaryngologist at the university hospital who specializes in ear, nose and throat ailments. The next day, she was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma, a cancer of the lymph system.

"I just felt awful," Haskell said. "I had been hard on her because I knew her potential, and I didn't think she was working hard enough and wasn't in shape. And then we get this news."

Within days, Breland was receiving chemotherapy treatments, the side effects of which were brutal, she said. Her weight plummeted from 165 to 140 pounds. Her fingernails and skin started to turn purple. She said the drugs left a terrible metallic taste in her mouth, and she constantly felt achy and tired. "I went from someone who could practice two times a day to someone who was so exhausted that they couldn't even walk to class," she said.

Breland took a redshirt year in 2009-10, but continued to go to school full time, riding a bus to her classes. She had a tutor who sat with her during treatments to help her keep focused on her schoolwork. She said she also had an outpouring of support from teammates, friends and family.

Breland said she is now in complete remission, although she said she has been told that it takes five years without recurrence to be considered cancer-free. "I wasn't really a person who ever thought about dying," she said. "This put a lot of things in perspective."

She said the chemotherapy destroyed a lot of her muscle and left some scar tissue in her lungs, so coming back last season wasn't easy. Breland averaged 12.4 points and 7.1 rebounds as a senior and was drafted in the second round with the 13th overall pick by Minnesota, who then traded her to the Liberty.

Breland, who moved from Brooklyn to North Carolina when she was in grade school, was thrilled to be headed to New York. John Whisenant, the Liberty's new coach and general manager, said it's too early to say whether she will make the roster, though he was impressed by her first preseason game.

"She showed something today, and did some things that showed why we traded for her," Whisenant said.

Whether Breland makes the team, she has been an inspiration to many who have watched her career. Last Wednesday, she won the Honda Inspirational Award, given each year to the women's college athlete who has overcome adversity to triumph in her sport.