Competitive fire, nostalgia duel in Natasha Cloud, Kristi Toliver’s D.C. homecoming

“She pretty much closed this building down,” Mystics head coach Eric Thibault told reporters on Tuesday.

That buzzer-beater immediately came to mind for Cloud when she reminisced on Tuesday about playing there for the Mystics. And in her first game in Washington since leaving this winter in free agency, the point guard threatened to make history again in Capital One Arena. Playing for the Phoenix Mercury, she finished one rebound short of the first triple-double there in a WNBA game.

“The universe has a weird way of working things,” Cloud told reporters after the Mercury’s 96-87 win. “… To come in and my first time back, be back in this building … you can’t help but feel that nostalgia.”

The Next, a 24/7/365 women’s basketball newsroom

The Next: A basketball newsroom brought to you by The IX. 24/7/365 women’s basketball coverage, written, edited and photographed by our young, diverse staff and dedicated to breaking news, analysis, historical deep dives and projections about the game we love.

Cloud spent the first nine years of her career in Washington, won a championship in 2019 and is the Mystics’ all-time leader in minutes played. She also holds the franchise career, single-season and single-game assists records. She and the Mystics have shared differing versions of what happened in free agency: Cloud has said she didn’t want to leave but the Mystics didn’t want her back. General manager Mike Thibault has countered that Cloud wanted to test free agency and the Mystics respected that.

The Mercury, meanwhile, were eager to sign Cloud. Head coach Nate Tibbetts told reporters Tuesday that Cloud was their first target in free agency: “We just needed a shot of life and energy and a vibe, and Tash has filled that for us.” And she got to team up again with former Mystics guard Kristi Toliver, who is in her first year as the Mercury’s associate head coach and also got a homecoming on Tuesday.

Toliver came to the Mystics in 2017 in free agency, and the arrival of a veteran who’d already won a WNBA title seemed to signal that the future would be bright. “It felt like we had a real championship pedigree to us all of a sudden,” Eric Thibault said pregame.

Toliver stayed in Washington through the championship season and returned in 2023. But after a torn ACL ended her 2023 season prematurely, she took her first WNBA coaching job. It was a natural fit after several years of working for the NBA’s Washington Wizards and Dallas Mavericks during the WNBA offseason. (Asked about her knee on Tuesday, Toliver told The Next that it’s “still attached” and that she’s back to playing golf, one of her favorite hobbies.)

Cloud said that Toliver’s presence has helped her adjust to the cross-country move. On Tuesday, Toliver was the coach who fed Cloud passes as she got shots up about 90 minutes before tipoff.

“Panda is ready for a head coaching job if she wanted it,” Cloud said pregame, using Toliver’s nickname from her time with the Mystics. “We’re gonna lock her in. I’m gonna lock her in my room. She ain’t going nowhere.”

Toliver — who has had a few homecoming games in her career, including one in Washington in 2021 in which Cloud guarded her — said she and Cloud had talked well in advance about Tuesday’s return.

“It’s not always easy coming back to a place that you love so much and you were committed to and we won championships in,” Toliver said. “My biggest advice for her is let your play be the loud noise and … not [get] caught up in the moment, in the emotions. … Just stay focused on the task at hand.”

Order ‘Rare Gems’ and save 30%

Howard Megdal, founder and editor of The Next and The IX, released his latest book on May 7, 2024. This deeply reported story follows four connected generations of women’s basketball pioneers, from Elvera “Peps” Neuman to Cheryl Reeve and from Lindsay Whalen to Sylvia Fowles and Paige Bueckers.

If you enjoy his coverage of women’s basketball every Wednesday at The IX, you will love “Rare Gems: How Four Generations of Women Paved the Way for the WNBA.” Click the link below to order and enter MEGDAL30 at checkout.

Cloud and Toliver’s return coincided with the Mystics’ annual Camp Day game, which drew over 12,500 fans. Camp Day was the reason the game was at Capital One Arena instead of the Mystics’ usual home, the Entertainment and Sports Arena, and children from local summer camps flooded the stands. Wearing neon T-shirts, they screamed indiscriminately for the two teams and clapped red thunder sticks with “Let’s go Mystics” printed on them.

Though Cloud didn’t love the 11:30 a.m. tipoff to accommodate camp schedules, Camp Day was in some ways a fitting tribute to Cloud’s personality and legacy in Washington. As Mystics guard Shatori Walker-Kimbrough told The Next on Sunday with a laugh, “She brings the energy. … She is who she is: Loud.”

Cloud had a relatively quiet first half, not taking a shot until midway through the second quarter. But she ended up stuffing the stat sheet, finishing with 12 points on 5-for-10 shooting, 10 assists, nine rebounds, two steals and two blocks.

“Tash played well,” Eric Thibault said postgame. “She’s gonna find open teammates when they’re there, whether it’s bigs rolling or shooters on the perimeter. So I thought we had a decent game plan and did it well for a while and then went off the rails.”

In the second half, Cloud seemed to live at the rim. She wasn’t afraid to challenge the Mystics’ forwards using her 5’10 frame. On one such drive in the third quarter, 6’5 center Stefanie Dolson successfully contested Cloud’s shot, but a young fan shrieked, “That’s a foul!”

Cloud hit double figures on another drive to the rim in the fourth quarter. This time, she got around 6’3 forward Aaliyah Edwards and made a layup high off the backboard, and Eric Thibault called timeout. Cloud turned toward her teammates waiting to celebrate near midcourt and broke into a skip as she passed the Mystics’ bench.

Defensively, Cloud guarded almost everyone, from Dolson to Mystics point guard Julie Vanloo. That list also included three Mystics Cloud played with for years: Walker-Kimbrough, forward Myisha Hines-Allen and guard Ariel Atkins.

“It’s always weird to go against the people that you played most of your career with,” Cloud said postgame. “But if anything, that gives me an advantage because I know them like the back of my hand. So even when [Atkins] was coming off one of them ball screens, I’m like, you’re not getting this reject to your left hand against me, I promise you that!”

As the clock wound down on the Mercury’s win, Cloud was hunting for her 10th rebound and positioned herself near the basket. “Everyone was yelling at me,” she said of her teammates, who knew a triple-double was within reach. But the last Mystics shot was airballed out of bounds, leaving no rebound available.

Cloud’s competitive fire burned hot all game. She’d had the date circled on her calendar for months. Toliver said Cloud was more focused in warmups than she’d seen in any of the Mercury’s previous 24 games. She locked in defensively, beginning the second half by standing on the Mystics logo at center court as she waited for Vanloo to bring the ball up. And after the Mercury got the win, Cloud went up to each teammate in the visitors’ locker room and gave them a hug.

Yet at the same time, Cloud fully embraced the nostalgia of the moment. She spoke about how it felt to practice at the Entertainment and Sports Arena earlier in the week, pass places she used to take her dogs, and visit her favorite local restaurants again. “I will always call D.C. home,” she said postgame.

The Mystics played a tribute video for Cloud during the game’s first timeout. It began with Mike Thibault officially selecting Cloud in the 2015 WNBA Draft and then her 2018 buzzer-beater. It featured several clips of her community service work with a voiceover by Dawn Staley, whose eponymous WNBA community service award Cloud won in 2019. Naturally, the video finished with highlights from the 2019 championship.

The Mercury broke their huddle in the middle of the video, and Cloud hugged Toliver as the video continued to play. Then she ran downcourt to where the ball would be inbounded, waving to the crowd nearly the whole way.

“Y’all was trying to get my thug tears today,” Cloud said, “and you definitely got some.”

Cloud also hugged the Mystics starters before tipoff and seemingly every player on the court after the buzzer. She shared particularly long embraces with Hines-Allen, Walker-Kimbrough and guard Brittney Sykes.

Cloud said postgame that she watches a lot of WNBA games as a fan and had kept tabs on how her former teammates had been playing. A few weeks ago, as the Mystics found their footing after an 0-12 start, she texted Hines-Allen, “Confidence looks great on you, and it looks great on this team, too.” It was a similar story when Cloud hugged Walker-Kimbrough on the court on Tuesday.

“In that moment, she was being who she was, and that’s a leader,” Walker-Kimbrough told reporters afterward. “… She was saying, ‘You’re playing well, I see what you’re doing and good job.’”

For Toliver, too, there was some nostalgia about returning to Washington. She took note of the Mystics’ championship banner hanging in the rafters and recalled plenty of memories at Capital One Arena with both the Mystics and the Wizards.

“I wish we came back again,” she said. “I’m mad this is the only trip that we’re making this summer.”

“That’s my OG,” Walker-Kimbrough said on Sunday about Toliver. “She took me under her wing. … I love her for everything she’s done for me, just being a role model, being a coach within a teammate.”

For Eric Thibault, it was nice to catch up in person with Toliver, who he’s bonded with in a different way now that she’s a full-time coach and not his player.

“[The] coach-player relationship always has a certain boundary to it, even though we were always on really good terms,” he said. “And now that she’s fully in the other side of the profession … I’m just proud of her. It’s fun. I’m glad she’s in our league. I’m glad our league is benefiting from her abilities and her experience. I hope we’re competing against her for a long time.”

On Tuesday, after the buzzer went off and hugs were exchanged, Cloud lingered on the court. As she slowly headed to the tunnel leading to the visitors’ locker room, she waved to the crowd and put one hand over her heart. Leaving the community and the fans, she said, was the hardest part about moving west.

“I love this city,” she said in the final answer of her postgame press conference. “I’m gonna keep saying it again. I will always claim this city.”

Then she quipped, with a broad smile at the end, “Y’all [are] tattooed on me, so I can’t really erase y’all or anything like that.”