Sports
Sandy Brondello
born 1968 · basketball player and coach
Australian basketball legend who was on the founding roster of the WNBA's Detroit Shock in 1998 and played in the league's first-ever All-Star Game the next year.
- Born
Mackay, Australia
age 58- Birth name
- Sandra Anne Brondello
- Also known as
- Swaggy
- Detroit years
- 1998–1999
- Field
- Sports
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Brondello, already one of Australia's greatest shooting guards after competing at multiple Olympics, joined the newly formed Detroit Shock in the WNBA's expansion draft in 1998, becoming part of the franchise's first roster in its inaugural season. In 1999, her second and final year in Detroit, she was selected to the first WNBA All-Star Game ever played. She went on to play for the Miami Sol and Seattle Storm before retiring and building a long coaching career, leading the Phoenix Mercury and New York Liberty to WNBA titles and becoming head coach of the Australian national team; in 2025 she was named the inaugural head coach of the WNBA's Toronto Tempo.
Highlights
- On the Detroit Shock's inaugural WNBA roster, 1998
- Selected to the first-ever WNBA All-Star Game, 1999, while with Detroit
- Four-time Olympian for Australia as a player
- Later a WNBA championship-winning head coach with Phoenix and New York
- Inducted into the Australian Basketball Hall of Fame, 2010