Broomall native Natasha Cloud wins WNBA All-Star Skills Challenge
Cloud led wire-to-wire in the challenge, posting the best time in the first round to advance to a final against crowd favorite Erica Wheeler.
INDIANAPOLIS — New York Liberty guard Natasha Cloud may not have been named to a WNBA All-Star team, but she still made her presence felt at All-Star Weekend. The Broomall native took home the All-Star Skills Challenge crown, and a $57,575 cash prize, on Friday.
Cloud, who graduated from Cardinal O’Hara and St. Joseph’s, led wire-to-wire in the challenge. She posted the best time in the first round to advance to a final against crowd favorite Erica Wheeler, who played for the Indiana Fever from 2016 to 2019 and in 2023 and 2024.
“I knew that was a definite for me. I was going to hit my passes,” Cloud told ESPN post-challenge. “I wanted to be as fast as I could on that so I could get into my shots and take my time, but also I felt like I was missing and I was getting those second and third shots up, but that’s the name of the game. Once I got to the last one, I looked up and saw I had three seconds and just went ‘Don’t smoke this layup.’”
Cloud’s girlfriend, teammate Isabelle Harrison, joked pre-challenge that Cloud needed to win so they could put a down payment on a house. After winning, Cloud told ESPN’s Holly Rowe she was making it happen.
» READ MORE: The WNBA is growing faster than ever. How will that affect union negotiations?
“You’re going to get that house,” Cloud said.
Fellow Liberty guard Sabrina Ionescu won the three-point contest, beating out defending champion Allisha Gray (Atlanta Dream) in the final round with 30 baskets. It was her second win in the three-point challenge.
The skills challenge was Cloud’s All-Star weekend debut, and the 33-year-old, who was the league’s assist leader in 2022 and is a three-time All-Defensive Team member, said that seeing her and Wheeler in the final was a win for the league’s “middlewomen,” the role players who make up the majority of league, and a sign of her growth as a player.
“I’m meant to be here,” Cloud said. “I’m meant to be on this level. I’m confident in who I am. I know who I am, whether I get the flowers or not.”