DeLisha Milton-Jones

DeLisha Milton-Jones won two gold medals in basketball with the US Women’s National Team at the 2000 and 2008 Olympic Games. Milton-Jones also added gold medals at the 1998 and 2002 World Championships (World Cup) and the 1997 World University Games, adding a bronze medal at the 2006 Worlds.

A 3 / 4 combo forward Milton-Jones played at the University of Florida, graduating in 1997. In 1997 she was a First Team All-American, was named the Southeastern Conference (SEC) Player of the Year, and won the Wade Trophy and the Honda Sports Award as the nation’s top female collegiate player.

Milton-Jones played from 1997-98 with the Portland Power of the American Basketball League (ABL). In 1999 she was the fourth overall pick of the WNBA Draft by the Los Angeles Sparks. She played with the Sparks until 2004 and then went to the Washington Mystics from 2005-07, returning to the Sparks and playing with them from 2008-12. She finished her professional career with single seasons with the New York Liberty (2013/14) and Atlanta Dream (2014/15), although she was briefly with the San Antonio Silver Stars in 2013. Milton-Jones won two WNBA titles with the Sparks, in 2001 and 2002. She was a three-time WNBA All-Star, earning the honors in 2000, 2004, and 2007.

Milton-Jones also played overseas. She was with UMMC Ekaterinburg (Russia) in 2002-03, Gambrinus Brno (Czechia) in 2005-06, and Ros Casares Valencia (Spain) in 2006-09. While playing she was an interim coach of the Los Angeles Stars in the American Basketball Association in 2005, only the second woman to coach a men’s professional basketball team.

As her playing career ended Milton-Jones entered the coaching ranks. She was an assistant at Pepperdine University from 2016-19, then was an assistant coach at Syracuse University in 2019-20. In 2020 she was named the head coach at Old Dominion University. Milton-Jones was inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in 2022.