Former LI star Arella Guirantes finds new home with Seattle Storm

It’s a moment she will long remember.

A little more than a minute after coming off the bench in the third quarter of the Seattle Storm’s season opener last weekend, Arella Guirantes rose up and knocked down her first WNBA basket in more than a year — a 24-foot three-pointer that served to be one of the few highlights of her team’s 105-64 loss to the Las Vegas Aces.

“It felt great,” Guirantes told Newsday in a recent phone interview. “It just felt so good to see all the work I had put in translate on the floor. It’s like everything I went through made me stronger.”

Guirantes, a former Bellport High School standout, is the only Long Islander on a WNBA roster. Sue Bird retired at the end of last season and Bria Hartley is out with a knee injury. Guirantes, 25, described her path to Seattle’s 12-woman roster this season as having “a few U-turns.”

At this time last year, Guirantes was struggling to come to terms with the fact that the Los Angeles Sparks — the team that had drafted her out of Rutgers the year before — had cut her just days before the start of the 2022 season. Guirantes was out of basketball for the first time in her life, living back on Long Island with her parents and trying to figure it all out.

“It was a slice of humble pie and she was very upset,” said Robert Guirantes, her father and trainer. “It was very hard for her. What we had to do was come up with a purposeful plan. What was the next move?”

Guirantes, whose grandfather was born in Puerto Rico, had been invited to be a part of their national team in the FIBA World Cup in Sydney. Guirantes decided that not only would she go play for the team but her goal was to be a star at the tournament.

Guirantes comes from a basketball family. Her mother, Demetria, played high school basketball with former Liberty star Sue Wicks at Center Moriches and played college basketball at Stony Brook. Robert used to help coach the varsity and junior varsity boys teams at Bellport before taking over his daughter’s training.

For a month and a half before heading to Puerto Rico, Guirantes hit the gym with her father every day, training at Bellport High and the Bellport Boys and Girls Club. She said she worked hard and slowly got her confidence back.

“I came back home and went to my roots,” Guirantes said. “I went to where I grew up and they welcomed me with open arms. They told me how proud they were of me. I could see a lot of love in my community and they were there for me.”

The work paid off. Guirantes averaged 18 points per game to lead all scorers in the tournament in Sydney. She also led Puerto Rico, which had finished last in its most recent two international competitions, to its first ever quarterfinals appearance.

Her performance caught the eye of Seattle Storm coach Noelle Quinn, who was an assistant coach on the Canadian national team that played a scrimmage against Puerto Rico.

“I was able to see her be a shotmaker and creator and scorer,” Quinn said Wednesday. “I really liked the fact that she had worked on her game from the time she was a rookie in Los Angeles. There was this sense that this was an athlete who really wanted to turn her mindset and body into being the best it could be.”

After Sydney, Guirantes went played in the Euro League for DVTK Miskolic in Hungary and was signed by Seattle as a free agent in February. Having lost Bird to retirement and Breanna Stewart to the Liberty, the Storm are in prime rebuilding mode. That offers plenty of opportunity for a player like Guirantes.

It’s an opportunity that this time she is ready for.

“I think nothing happens to you. It happens for you,” she said. “Just because my path isn’t just straight and I had to make a couple of U-turns, it isn’t discouraging to me anymore. It’s made me stronger. 

"I really embrace this opportunity.”

By Barbara Barker

barbara.barker@newsday.commeanbarb

Barbara Barker is an award-winning columnist and features writer in the sports department at Newsday. She has covered sports in New York for more than 20 years.