Third-round draft picks in the WNBA are only guaranteed an opportunity

The WNBA was only two years old at that point. Orlando was an expansion team.

When McWilliams-Franklin’s agent told her about the WNBA combine earlier that year, she attended but kept her expectations realistic.

“I had a few conversations with people saying they’re going to draft me,” she said. “I didn’t even think about it.”

McWilliams-Franklin had been playing in the American Basketball League — a predecessor to the WNBA that showcased stars such as Dawn Staley and even Olympic track star Jackie Joyner-Kersee — but the league folded the year before. McWilliams-Franklin also had been playing overseas for six years.

That call from the Miracle was the start of a 14-year WNBA career — the longest run any third-round pick has ever had in the league. McWilliams-Franklin played 440 games for six teams.

“It wasn’t because they thought I was the fastest, the toughest, the roughest, I jumped the highest, or anything like that,” she said. “It was just because they heard I was good in the locker room. I didn’t cause trouble, I was a killer teammate, I set great screens, I rebounded a lot, I didn’t care who scored.

“Those were things back then that were rare because people were worried about those stats because they didn’t want to get cut. It was the W, you could get cut tomorrow.”

That’s as true today as it was in 1999. Of the 346 third-round picks in WNBA history, 135 played in games (39 percent).

The only third-round pick from last year’s draft that saw the floor in a WNBA game was Charisma Osborne, who played five seasons at UCLA, finished as the school’s No. 2 all-time leading scorer, and was a four-time All-Pac-12 player. The Phoenix Mercury took her with the 25th overall pick in the third round. She got in two games and played 10 minutes.

Harvard star Harmoni Turner achieved her dream when she was taken in the third round by the Las Vegas Aces. The moment brought a mix of excitement and anxiety, even though she was projected to be among the names called.

“Honestly, I thought I was potentially not going to be drafted,” she said.

She will start her WNBA career with the team that’s won two of the last three championships. She’ll also face the challenge of cracking a stacked roster.

What she has, though, is an opportunity.

“That’s something I’ve always wanted and valued, and they gave that to me,” Turner said.

One of the last calls Turner received on draft night was from Harvard coach Carrie Moore.

“I was coaching her even on the FaceTime,” Moore said. “I was like, ‘You better go there and you’re going to be a sponge, you hear me? You’re going to soak it all up and you’re going to listen to your vets and you’re going to listen to Coach.’ ”

Moore knows how challenging the road can be. She led the country in scoring for Western Michigan in 2006-07. When the draft came around, her name wasn’t called. But she landed a training camp opportunity with the Mercury. Ultimately, she played overseas in Poland. Along with getting Harvard back to the top of the Ivy League and into the NCAA Tournament this past season, Moore made it her mission to help Turner realize her dream.

“I knew this had to be her best year and we had to win, and that can feel a lot of pressure at times,” Moore said. “But I think it really allowed me to attack it all with the same sense of urgency that she had to attack it with every single day, too.”

After the draft, Turner returned to Cambridge to finish classes but also got back in the gym with Moore, who also stressed the mental preparation.

“It’s just how she’s going to approach that mental pressure of, ‘I’ve got to go here and I’ve got to perform and I’m trying to earn a spot on this team,’ ” Moore said. “It’s not easy.”

Turner took that mind-set into training camp.

“Just going in there with a fearless mentality, going in there with a dog mentality,” she said. “Learning from the best.”

Another potential precedent is also the only other player drafted out of Harvard.

Temi Fagbenle was taken by the Minnesota Lynx in 2016 with the penultimate pick in the third round. She’s played 91 games and, since she was drafted, no third-round pick has played more. She’ll open the season with the expansion Golden State Valkyries.

Fagbenle had first-round talent, but she told teams ahead of the draft that she had no plans of playing. She was set on getting her master’s degree at Southern Cal, and even though the Lynx selected her, she stuck to it.

“From jump, I believed that I should have been first round,” she said.

She joined the Lynx in 2017 after she finished her master’s. Like Turner, Fagbenle walked into a locker room full of legends, including Maya Moore, Sylvia Fowles, and Lindsay Whalen. The Lynx won the title that year.

“I was able to see firsthand what it takes to be a champion,” Fagbenle said. “I learned everything from there.”

She played two more seasons, but when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, she decided to step away again to pursue business ventures.

“Once you kind of step out of the league, I didn’t realize at the time, but it was kind of hard to get back in,” she said.

Fagbenle played in Poland, Turkey, Spain, Italy, and the Czech Republic. She didn’t get back to the WNBA until last year, when she signed with the Indiana Fever.

“I’m just really grateful for the journey — in and out of the W,” she said. “The advice I would just give to [Turner] is just to hold her head high.”

About 150 of the 230 players invited to training camps will have roster spots when the season starts.

Those are the players McWilliams-Franklin is focused on now. After she retired in 2013, McWilliams-Franklin worked for the NBA and the WNBA in player relations and development.

In April, former WNBA president Donna Orender called her to pitch a position with an upstart league, the Upshot League, backed by names including Hall of Famer Cheryl Miller and former WNBA executive Ann Meyers Drysdale and Zawyer Sports & Entertainment to create opportunities for women’s basketball players, coaches, and front office staff in the United States.

Orender was tapped to be Upshot’s commissioner. McWilliams-Franklin left her role with the WNBA after the draft to join her as Upshot’s vice president of basketball operations. The league will base teams in Jacksonville, Fla.; Charlotte and Greensboro, N.C.; and Savannah, Ga., and debut next May.

“Everyone has these dreams, but there’s not enough space,” McWilliams-Franklin said. “We’re building this league to basically develop not only our players but the coaches, give them all their shot at moving up, which is what Upshot is actually meant to be.”

Julian Benbow can be reached at julian.benbow@globe.com.