Angel Webb Reese was fed up.
It was the mid-2010s, and for the past few years, her daughter, Angel, and son, Julian, would go outside their home in Randallstown, Maryland, to play one-on-one basketball in their single-car driveway.
But getting through a game became difficult.
Tempers flared between the siblings, and the games got physical. Even when kids from the neighborhood joined in and they started playing five-on-five, the games would turn into one-on-one sibling battles, with the other players turning into spectators, watching the Reeses go at it.
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“We would fight a lot,” Julian says now. “Especially when people were around.”
Webb Reese ultimately took the hoop and put it in the neighborhood dumpster after years of bickering between her kids.
“I did not realize how competitive it would become with the both of them,” she said. “They would nearly kill each other out there.”
The lessons from those one-on-one matchups have been on display for the Reeses throughout the year. Julian made his NBA debut with the Wizards this past year and opens the season with the New Orleans Pelicans. Angel is a star on the Atlanta Dream, which is currently in the WNBA Finals.
The family is one of seven who have a son and a daughter playing in the NBA and WNBA, along with the Williams, Ruperts, Salaüns, Prospers, Jaquezes and Coffeys.
More professional sibling duos could be on the way. Mystics center Lauren Betts has a younger brother, Dylan, who is a top 10 recruit nationally. Atlanta Hawks rookie Kingston Flemings, a Virginia native, has a younger sister, Bella, who was one of the nation’s top recruits a year ago and is now a freshman at Duke. (Pacers guard T.J. McConnell’s sister, Megan, spent the preseason with the Indiana Fever but didn’t make their opening-night roster.)
The NBA does not officially keep track of families who have competed in both leagues. (If the league is looking for a way to feature them, Sixers wing Rayan Rupert, whose sister Iliana plays for the Golden State Valkyries, suggested that the NBA create an event at All-Star weekend where each active sibling duo competes to see who’s No. 1.)
But there have been a few significant sets over the years. Houston Rockets coach Ime Udoka and his sister, Mfon, were the first siblings to play in both leagues in 2003. Hall of Famer Candace Parker and her older brother, Anthony, now the Orlando Magic GM, are another notable pair. (Perhaps the most famous basketball sibling duo doesn’t qualify for this distinction, as Cheryl Miller was a star before the creation of the WNBA, while little brother Reggie went on to a legendary NBA career.)
What are the secrets to these families’ success? Genes are certainly a factor. Six of the seven families with kids in both leagues have at least one parent who played in college or beyond. But there are also many basketball values that these families share — and those lessons rival the bloodlines that produced professionals in both leagues.
Lesson No. 1: Hustle Matters More Than Skill
Before she became one of the DMV’s most famous basketball mothers, Webb Reese was a star at Maryland-Baltimore County, where she played beyond her frame.
A 5-foot-11 forward, she averaged 13.2 rebounds per game in her senior year at UMBC. She passed that rebounding trait on to her kids. Angel Reese led the WNBA with 12.1 rebounds per game in the regular season and recently became the fastest player in league history to grab 1,000 boards. Julian averaged nine or more rebounds in his last two seasons at Maryland and averaged 10.5 rebounds in 13 games with the Wizards this past season.
But Webb Reese never gave her children any formal lessons in rebounding. Or shooting. Instead, she harped on hustling. Julian can still hear her voice shouting at him whenever he wasn’t sprinting down the court.
“She told us if we run the floor, play as hard as we can, everything is going to come to us,” Julian said.
“I was aggressive, tenacious. I had a high motor, which I think both of my kids both have,” Webb Reese said. “I always just said ‘box out,’ because I think a lot of times rebounding has to do with your effort.”
Olivier-Maxence and Cassandre Prosper’s parents took a similar approach. Gaetan and Guylaine Prosper met playing college basketball at Concordia University in Montreal, then proceeded to coach their kids when they became parents. According to Guylaine, they stressed knowing “the why of things”: emphasizing their rationale for how something like sprinting versus jogging for a loose ball could make a difference.
Olivier-Maxence Prosper, now a forward with the Memphis Grizzlies, struggled to recall a game in which his parents were upset with him because of a bad shooting night or foul trouble.
“They really only got us for mistakes on effort,” Prosper said. “If we didn’t put in effort, that’s when they got mad.”
The Prosper children have become the first Canadian siblings to play in both leagues, and they still get texts full of feedback from their parents after every game. Olivier-Maxence said most of his mother’s comments will be about plays where he failed to crash the boards or didn’t hustle hard enough.
“To this day, they’re always coaching effort,” Cassandre Prosper, who now plays for the Mystics, said.
Lesson No. 2: Versatility Over Specialization
Before he was the father of two professional basketball players, Larry Parker was a small forward at Iowa in the 1970s trying to get more playing time. Parker had a good feel for the game and could pass but wasn’t an elite shooter or playmaker, which hindered his ability to regularly get on the court. His oldest son, Anthony, said his father used his reputation as a defensive stopper as a ticket to more playing time.
Larry went on to have three kids, and when they took up the game, he wanted their careers to look different from his.
“He was determined to make us versatile enough to where no matter what situation we ran into, we wouldn’t just fall back into one thing,” Anthony Parker said.
Larry trained all three kids the same way — prioritizing fundamentals and teaching them a little bit of everything, from shooting to post ups to ballhandling. The goal was to ensure they didn’t have a weakness, giving their coaches little reason to take them out. Anthony grew to be 6-foot-6, his dad’s height, and played nine years in the NBA before becoming a front office executive.
His sister, Candace, had a much different career. Considered one of the greatest women’s basketball players of all time, she won three WNBA championships with three different teams and two NCAA titles at Tennessee, excelling with a skill set rarely seen in a player of her size.
“She’s 6-foot-4 and basically the height of a center in the women’s game,” Anthony said. “But you add in the fact that she can do all of the things guards and wings can do, and that’s what set her apart.”
One summer, Candace Parker recalled her dad coming up to her with a simple message: “You should get better with your left hand.”
So Candace spent her summer doing a little bit of everything with her left hand.
“I can remember eating with my left hand one summer,” Candace said. “I remember brushing my teeth with my left hand, doing [left-handed] push-ups during commercials.”
Gaetan Prosper posed a question to his kids that was similar to Larry Parker’s.
“How can you always be an asset on the court?” he would ask them.
The Prospers had their kids play every position on the court when they were growing up, even if it wasn’t a natural fit. At minimum, they would understand the roles and responsibilities each position required and know how to play off it.
At Notre Dame, Cassandre Prosper was one of the most multidimensional players Niele Ivey ever coached. In her senior year, she averaged 13.6 points, 6.5 rebounds, 1.6 assists, 1.6 steals and 1.1 blocks per game, stuffing the stat sheet while leading the Irish to their first Elite Eight in years. Ivey said Prosper operated like a professional and understood the game at a level few college players can relate to.
“Having parents who played at the highest level, they understood what it takes to be a separator,” Ivey said.
In 1997, Angela Jaquez tried out for the upstart Los Angeles Sparks ahead of the WNBA’s maiden season. Her professional dreams ended there, but this past spring, she became the latest parent to have a kid in each league after her daughter, Gabriela, was drafted by the Chicago Sky. She joined Jamie Jr., who plays for the Bucks after starting his career with the Heat.
Both Angela and her husband, Jamie Sr., were standouts at Concordia University Irvine and coached Jamie Jr. and Gabriela as kids.
“You need to be able to pass and dribble, to be able to run a play, so that was what we focused on,” Angela Jacquez said.
She said they started having their kids watch film as early as elementary school to teach them about the flow of the game and show them ways they could move without the ball to help their teams win. They didn’t begin teaching the kids proper shooting form until they thought they were strong enough — a practice that NBA Finals MVP Jalen Brunson’s father, Rick, a former NBA player himself, also applied.
“Doing the little things is going to lead to big results,” Angela Jaquez said. “Everybody wants flashy plays. Those can happen, but you have to do the basics.”
Lesson No. 3: Competition Helps Everyone
When Elizabeth Williams was at Duke, she made history as the first player ever to win ACC Defensive Player of the Year four consecutive years.
But when she came home to Virginia Beach, her defensive genius within her family was waning. Elizabeth is eight years older than Mark, which put him in middle school during his older sister’s historic run. Around that time, he outgrew her 6-foot-3 frame en route to his current height of 7 feet. (He now plays center for the Phoenix Suns.) Their one-on-one games ended shortly after.
“She would play me when I wasn’t the player I am,” Mark said in a joint interview with his sister last year. “She knew she was gonna win.”
“He was probably 6-8 [when he won],” Elizabeth replied. “Let’s be real.”
That competitive dynamic prevailed across every set of siblings interviewed for this story. While parents emphasized different aspects of the game, their kids applied the teachings against each other until one sibling outgrew the other.
“It was even in the beginning,” Julian Reese, who is 6-foot-10, said. “But towards the end I was just winning.”
Lauren Betts is one of the tallest players in the WNBA at 6-foot-7. She dominated games against her brother when he was little.
“Dylan, when he was small, the girls would kind of beat him up,” Michelle Betts, Lauren’s mother, said. “And it was really upsetting for him. But as he got bigger, I feel like it was three or four years ago where they were like, ‘We can’t beat Dylan anymore.’”
The shift in competitiveness against her brother has given Betts a new perspective. Given her height, she was always used to being the tallest one on the court.
“I feel like going against my brother is crazy to see how other people feel going against me,” Betts said. “It’s kind of like karma.”
But the matchups have borne fruit as the siblings’ careers have advanced. Unlike Betts, Angel Reese regularly goes up against players taller than her, and her mother sees her using the same moves against opponents that she tried on Julian years earlier. That was on display in September at the FIBA World Cup when Reese was matched up against China center Zhang Ziyu, who, at 7-foot-3, is a footer taller than her.
“Going against her brother and his strength allowed her to use that to her advantage now,” Webb Reese said. “When she’s in the league now going against women who are stronger and taller than her, she uses what she learned when she was playing against her brother.”
Reese, who briefly played on the same team as her brother and his friends growing up, said that playing with him ultimately benefited her — even if it wasn’t the most enjoyable experience.
“He definitely helped me get tougher,” Angel Reese said. “I was the only girl on the team, and he worked me up a lot and told me I wasn’t good. He was definitely my biggest critic but also helped me a lot.”
That help continues for many of the siblings to this day. While their parents may have provided the lessons that helped get them to the pros, the siblings now have the perfect confidante to help manage the challenges of playing pro basketball.
That is particularly true for the Williamses, who are the only NBA-WNBA family without a parent who played at a high level. Alex works as a gastroenterologist and Margaret was a nurse. When Elizabeth expressed interest in basketball as a kid, they bought her “Basketball For Dummies,” given their lack of experience with the game.
As both kids have become professionals, the parents have seen them go to each other for help, which is exactly the way they want it.
“If Mark has anything basketball related, he will talk to Elizabeth before he talks to us,” Alex Williams said. “Which is good, because we can’t be that.”
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