In Bella Alarie’s household in Bethesda, sports always were looked at as an educational tool, not an endgame. It didn’t matter that Bella’s father, Mark, had gone to Duke and played five seasons in the NBA, four of which were with the Washington Bullets. Nor did it matter that Bella, the eldest of three children, seemed to have a preternatural talent for just about any game she picked up.
Alarie excelled at lacrosse and soccer, played baseball when she was little and fell in love early with basketball. She had a dad who saw how the game was trending, and she was of average height as a kid, so the first position she learned on the court was guard. She excelled at that, too.
“She could catch anything you throw at her. She can hit a golf ball 250 yards with minimal instruction. It’s a little bit of a hand-eye coordination thing,” Mark Alarie said. “But no, going pro was not really on anyone’s mind.”
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Then came the nine-inch growth spurt.
Alarie has been through a world of change since she walked into National Cathedral School as a freshman standing about 5-foot-7. Now a 6-4 post player who, because of her length and skill set is often compared to Breanna Stewart and Elena Delle Donne, Alarie is poised to be a top-10 pick in Friday’s WNBA draft, which is being held without players, guests or media in attendance in New York because of the novel coronavirus pandemic.
Her journey up the draft boards is like few others. Alarie didn’t dedicate herself to basketball until she was a sophomore in high school. She didn’t come from a college basketball powerhouse like Oregon’s Sabrina Ionescu, Friday’s presumptive No. 1 pick, or Baylor’s Lauren Cox; she went to Princeton and dominated the Ivy League for four years.
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But on Friday, 34 years after her father was drafted, Alarie will carry on a family legacy she was never expected to fulfill.
“She didn’t grow up with everyone telling her how good she was, because she hasn’t been in environments where that’s necessarily most important,” said North Carolina Coach Courtney Banghart, who coached Alarie for three years at Princeton. “Her parents want her to be well educated, to be kind, to be curious and to follow her passion, which has become basketball. I don’t think she was a star out of high school. She’s become a star.”
Bigger, faster, stronger
About 10 practices into Alarie's freshman year at Princeton, Banghart called Mark Alarie with some good news and a question.
“She's our best player, but what gives?” Banghart asked. “She's got no post game."
A former coach at Episcopal High, Banghart had used her familiarity with the Independent School League to pluck Alarie out of NCS, seeing nothing but upside in a lanky player who was still growing and was named D.C.’s Gatorade player of the year as a senior.
Alarie’s roots as a guard meant she was an efficient shooter and could bring the ball up the court, but Banghart set to drilling her post moves right away. The Princeton staff taught her the proper footwork, made sure she could go over both shoulders in the low and medium post and built up an aggressiveness to match her height before pushing Alarie back out to the perimeter. She also added about 20 pounds to her frame.
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“I didn’t really learn how to be a back-to-the-basket post until my sophomore year in college, when my coach wanted to use my length around the basket more,” Alarie said.
While her post moves came courtesy of Princeton’s coaching staff, Alarie’s confidence surged after she was invited to play on Team USA’s under-19 World Cup squad the summer after her freshman year.
It was there, starting games and playing significant minutes amid the country’s top talent in her age group, that Alarie heard for the first time that she was generating interest at the pro level. Playing in the WNBA morphed from a hazy dream to a concrete goal.
“Hearing that my sophomore year just opened my eyes, kind of just made that seem more real, seem like a possibility,” Alarie said.
At Princeton, Alarie continued to grow and develop into an unstoppable point forward. She led the Ivy League in scoring this past season, averaging 17.5 points and becoming the first player in the conference named a two-time all-American. She was named the league’s player of the year for three straight years after being named rookie of the year as a freshman.
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Now her height, perimeter skills and mobility could make Alarie the Ivy League’s first first-round WNBA selection in 22 years (Harvard’s Allison Feaster went No. 5 in 1998).
“She has length and size and shooting ability that people crave in this league,” ESPN WNBA reporter Holly Rowe said. “ ... She’s somebody that people are going to get excited to know more about because we haven’t seen her so [often] on the national scene.”
With the NCAA tournament canceled because of the coronavirus, Alarie didn’t get one last breakout moment to draw attention.
But it helps her draft stock that Alarie didn’t come into her own until relatively late — in the eyes of pro scouts, developing so much in college speaks to both natural talent and work ethic.
“All of it was advantageous to her,” Mark Alarie said. “You don’t think of being a late bloomer as providing advantages, because you’re always getting beat by those who are bigger, faster, stronger. But if you can stay the course and compete, eventually you get your size. You get your bigger, faster, stronger features.”
New family tradition
While Alarie expects to hear her name called in the first round Friday, she knows her draft night won’t look much like her dad’s.
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When the Denver Nuggets drafted Mark Alarie with the 18th pick in 1986, Mark and his roommate, current ESPN college basketball analyst Jay Bilas, simply cracked a few beers with friends in their apartment at Duke.
This week, Alarie received a call from WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert with a formal invite to Friday’s virtual draft. With equipment sent from ESPN, Alarie is expected to be video conferenced into Friday’s broadcast. She plans on dressing up — nothing too fancy — watching with her family and doing the best she can to make Friday feel as special as it would have been to sport a party dress and travel to New York for the event in person.
Alarie will make do, as she has been for the past month living at home with her parents and younger brothers. She uses the hoop in her backyard to get shots up and has been doing body weight exercises and running to keep fit for whenever WNBA training camps open. She also has been working on her senior thesis and has been so excited about the draft that she hasn’t had time to fret about the uncertainty facing the WNBA season.
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Alarie doesn’t know how she will feel when she finally hears Engelbert call her name. A once far-off dream became a goal that required such intense focus over the past three years that she hasn’t had a moment to dwell on her ascent. On Friday, Alarie only hopes to represent Princeton well and make her family proud.
“It shows that sometimes these mid-major schools, you know, expectations aren’t as high, they aren’t Power Five teams, and they’re sometimes underestimated,” Alarie said. “But I’m proud to be coming out of the Ivy League with the potential of being a first-round pick in the draft. I will carry the family legacy with a lot of pride — I picked the number 31 at Princeton because that was my dad’s number. Following in his footsteps in that sense, I’m proud. I just want to prove myself.”
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