Dominique Malonga: The Rising Star of the Seattle Storm
In a hot night of July 4th in a Brooklyn hotel, young Dominique Malonga, with her imposing height of 1.98 meters, settles into a chair. The rookie of the Seattle Storm, recently arrived from Atlanta after a training session at the Barclays Center, enjoys a moment of calm. At only 19 years old, Malonga, who played professional basketball in Europe for four seasons, became the youngest player to be selected by the Storm, chosen with number 2 in the April draft. Her height and agility have generated comparisons with the French player Victor Wembanyama. In May, she moved from Nanterre to Seattle, and in her first training session she already demonstrated her potential with a dunk.“She’s a unicorn. Unique,” said Storm coach Noelle Quinn. Her teammate, Gabby Williams, added: “She’s going to be a star.”
Noelle Quinn and Gabby Williams
However, Malonga started on the bench, and largely remained there. In her first 18 games, she averaged 4.4 points and 2.3 rebounds in 9.1 minutes. The night before, she didn’t score against the Dream, while Nneka Ogwumike and Ezi Magbegor hogged minutes in the paint. “It’s frustrating, of course”, Malonga confessed.
Overcoming the emotion, Malonga focuses on the future. He refuses to be carried away by sadness. “Never have this negative mood that could affect the team or the bench,” he says. “That’s not what I want to contribute.” Malonga explains how he encourages from the sidelines and focuses on Ogwumike and Magbegor, seeking to improve their game. “I want to breathe that energy,” he says. He yearns to turn expectations into something tangible, studying videos, learning the complexities of American basketball, and training harder than ever. “I am not a dreamer, I am a realist,” he states.
Two months ago, predicting that Seattle’s playoff hopes would rest on a 19-year-old rookie who was struggling even at the supermarket was unthinkable. But in the final weeks of the regular season, it became clear that the Storm needed Malonga to keep their title aspirations alive. After being defeated by the Aces in the first game of the best-of-three playoff series, Seattle needs a home win on Tuesday or their season will end.
Malonga scored 12 points and had 11 rebounds on Sunday night, but struggled with the Aces’ pace and aggressiveness. The Storm need Malonga now, they need the promise of the last decade to be fulfilled.
Her black Louis Vuitton suit is perfectly tailored, and her large, transparent, thick Sabine Be glasses gleam under the bright lights of the auditorium. Her table is filled with family, her father and older sister to her right, her younger brothers to her left. But she looks towards the back of the auditorium, where her mother is, and approaches her. Agathe smiles as Dominique, without saying a word, embraces her. “Je suis fier de toi”, Agathe whispers in Dominique’s right ear. I am proud of you.
Dominique returns to the table, high-fives his siblings, and hugs his sister before wrapping his father in a strong embrace. On the table are the flags of three countries: Congo, Cameroon, and France. He made sure his family brought the three flags to one of the most important nights of his career in a country where he hopes to dazzle. He goes on stage and receives a Seattle Storm jersey from WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert. “I come from a long journey,” she tells ESPN’s Holly Rowe in a televised interview. “My family is here and they are witnesses to the work I have put in to be here today. I am happy to represent France, but also Cameroon and Congo. I am a multicultural person. I have a lot of people behind me, and I am very proud to be here representing them all.” Her sister, Talancia, looks at her father and they share a smile. Talancia gets goosebumps. “We tend to forget, there is a lot of raw diamond in the homeland,” says Talancia. The Storm take the court for warm-ups before the inaugural game of the 2025 season in Phoenix. The stands are almost empty. From the arc, Malonga dribbles once, takes a step with her right foot, then her left. She raises her right arm above her head and dunks. She goes to the bench. Coach Quinn sends her into the game midway through the first quarter. Seattle is down by five. The Storm are losing by 14 when she scores her first points in the WNBA, a layup assisted by Diggins. She returns to the bench until 4:02 remaining in the game. Seattle is losing by 21. She gets fouled with about two minutes left. Seattle is losing by 25. The buzzer sounds on her WNBA debut.
Dressed in a gray sweatshirt with the word “WNBA” in orange on the side, Malonga sits in a chair on the front patio of her new apartment in Seattle. She places her laptop on the coffee table in front of her. She plugs in her headphones and connects to Zoom. It’s a cloudy May morning in Seattle, two weeks after the start of the WNBA season, and Malonga has signed up to mentor for Voice in Sport, an organization focused on promoting gender equality in sports. On her Zoom screen are 60 high school girls from a basketball club in France. Malonga smiles and waves, and the girls smile back. Today she is leading a session on self-confidence.
She introduces herself and tells the girls that she chose the topic because, like everyone else, she struggles with self-confidence from time to time and has had to work hard to change the narrative in her head. Speaking in French, she begins to tell the story of her life. “My early years were driven by a mantra: If you don’t excel at what you do, don’t do it.” As a child, Malonga was much more interested in books than in baskets. She loved the learning process and dreamed of going to university in the United States. Her father, Thalance, who played for the Republic of Congo’s national team and became a politician and then a doctor, instilled the values of discipline and hard work in his four children. Dominique would wake up at 5 in the morning, make her bed, study before school, and learn from a tutor after school. “If we don’t work hard,” says Talancia, “it feels weird, you know?”. Agathe, who represented Cameroon in international competitions as an old-school pivot of 1.90 meters, remembers her daughter working hard even before she was born. Agathe played until she was five months pregnant, and remembers Dominique kicking her in the belly almost every time she scored, as if it were her way of contributing. After Agathe retired, she ran a basketball club. Sometimes, after Dominique finished studying at night, she would go to her mother’s club, mainly to be close to her while she coached other children. When Dominique turned 10, the family moved to France because Thalance thought that was where her children could shine. He established his medical practice in Nanterre, a suburb of Paris. When Dominique was 12, and measured 1.85 meters, Thalance and Agathe enrolled her in basketball at a Paris club called Mont Valérien. Coach Jean-Christophe N’Zambi watched her with disbelief. She was so agile and so fast. She could dribble with both hands, and dribble to the right and to the left. “An exceptional case,” says N’Zambi. N’Zambi rejected the idea of putting her in the paint because of her size. He saw her athleticism and skill and knew he needed to nurture it all. N’Zambi remembers seeing his team messing around one day after practice when Dominique was 13. She grabbed the ball, dribbled towards the basket, rose with the ball in her right hand and, with the grace of a ballerina, dunked it in the basket.“My talent is nothing compared to Dominique’s,” says Agathe. “I had to work very hard to create the few opportunities I had, but Dominique’s potential, her IQ, her skills… are immeasurable”.
Agathe
Former NBA player Tony Parker first saw Malonga when she was 15 years old. She was 1.93 meters tall and trained at the National Institute of Sport, Expertise, and Performance (INSEP). Parker, president of ASVEL Féminin, a team in the French women’s basketball league, introduced himself to her parents. “It’s like she’s playing with children,” they recall him saying. He told them she was ready to turn professional and urged them to send her to ASVEL. Malonga was torn. She dreamed of studying computer science at Harvard, MIT, or Stanford. That way, she could still play NCAA basketball. But Parker’s offer was too good to refuse. At 15, Malonga turned professional.
She had been playing for five years when she began sharing the court with the best players in France. Her inexperience was noticeable, and at first she spent most of the matches on the bench. She wondered if she should have remained a child for longer. She worried that she wasn’t ready yet. What helped her the most during that time was focusing on the process. She told herself that the coaches would have no choice but to give her a chance if she kept improving. So she put all her energy into deciphering the movement and flow of the game and working on her skills. “When you coach her, she looks you in the eye, she shows you that she’s listening and she shows you that she’s trying to apply it directly on the court afterwards,” says Yoann Cabioc’h, head coach of ASVEL Féminin. “She goes step by step very quickly.” In June 2022, Malonga led France in the U17 world championship. In the bronze medal match against Canada, she finished with 28 points and 17 rebounds. In 2024, she was named to the French Olympic team, which won the silver medal. Although she spent most of her time on the bench, she followed the veterans, asking them questions and nodding vigorously as they answered. “She wants to be great all the time”, says Marine Johannes, her French Liberty teammate. “She wants to learn everything, and then she’s ready to go in”. Malonga brought the Olympic knowledge back to ASVEL Féminin and led the team in points (18.5) and rebounds (11) and helped them reach the EuroCup semifinals. “She keeps everything: any advice you give her, it’s in her brain,” says Cabioc’h. “That makes her potential limitless.” Back on Zoom, a girl raises her hand and asks Malonga how she is adapting to the league in the United States. Malonga nods and pauses. “Here I play much less,” she says. She pauses again. “Sometimes I wonder: ‘Am I not playing because I am mediocre in training?’ Sometimes I do very well in training and I wonder why I don’t get playing time, what am I doing wrong?” She sits up straighter and smiles. “But I know I’m working,” she says. “I’m very happy to be training. That’s how I keep going.” Malonga has accumulated less than an hour of playing time on a WNBA court when she finds herself alone on the perimeter against “Point Gawd” Chelsea Gray. It’s late and the situation is tight in the final quarter of a June 1st matchup between Malonga’s Storm and Gray’s Aces. The rookie, who has matched her personal record with eight points, needs a stop against the shrewd 5’10” veteran who has the ball and the advantage. Fans at Climate Pledge Arena are screaming: “Defense, defense.” Gray crosses over, passes between her legs, trying to find an inch of space. Malonga takes a step with her right foot. She raises her arms. With nowhere to go, Gray crosses over. Again, Malonga is in her face. She dances in front of her, moving her feet with speed and rhythm. Her outstretched arms dissuade Gray. Again. Gray is running out of time. There are two seconds left on the shot clock. She needs to find space. She only has one option: She releases a high jump shot. Malonga turns around, following the trajectory of the ball. The ball finds the bottom of the net and ends Seattle’s momentum. Malonga shakes her head back and clenches her fists. She claps her hands. “Shit, I almost had it,” she thinks to herself. Almost. “I got angry because I did everything I could,” says Malonga. “It was a good ‘Welcome to the league’ moment.”
If Malonga had a welcome committee to the WNBA, Ogwumike would be the president. The MVP of the Storm, a 14-year veteran and 10-time All-Star, has become Yoda to her young teammate during the first weeks of the season. The questions don’t stop. “How did you approach your career from the beginning?”, “How do I build a lasting career in the WNBA?”, “What were the differences when playing in clubs abroad?”, “Who did you play with and what lessons did you learn during your time outside the United States?”. Ogwumike finds her teammate’s curiosity admirable. And her experience, remarkable. “She may have a bit more world experience than even someone like me,” says Ogwumike, 16 years older than her. But it is the wisdom that comes from curiosity and experience that separates Malonga from all rookies, more or less, says Ogwumike. “Lean into that,” she tells her younger and taller shadow. “Dom is very mature,” says Ogwumike, despite her teammate’s budding obsession with applesauce. “The way she behaves as a professional is very mature. There is a lot of preparation that is needed to be available on the court every day, and she does it every day.”
Ogwumike marvels at how quickly Malonga has absorbed the Storm’s playbook and her understanding of where to be on the court and when. After all, Malonga has only been in the United States for 38 days. “That maturity also extends to how quickly she is able to grasp things as she learns this new system,” says Ogwumike. Just wait.
