When Courtney Vandersloot thinks about basketball, she thinks about her mom.
Jan Vandersloot was the ultimate WNBA fan — and not just because she raised one of the greatest point guards to ever play in the league. She was a basketball junkie who taught her daughter to love a slick pass and a smooth jumper. She broke down salary caps as fervently as any executive. And she did her best to never miss a game — not when Vandersloot was at Gonzaga or in Chicago or even half a world away playing for Ekaterinburg in the EuroLeague championships.
It has been just over a year since Jan died after a two-year battle with multiple myeloma, a rare form of incurable blood cancer. And Vandersloot still doesn’t know how to love playing basketball the same without her mom watching.
“I don’t think basketball will ever feel that way again,” Vandersloot told the Tribune. “She was my No. 1 fan. It will always feel like something’s missing.”
Basketball has always been the driving purpose in Vandersloot’s life. But after her mother’s diagnosis in 2022, life shifted around two new goals. The first was fighting for more time. The second is finding a cure.
Vandersloot is dedicated to a lifelong partnership with the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation, a nonprofit funding research and awareness for the disease. For Vandersloot, the crux of her advocacy for multiple myeloma research starts with sharing her mother’s story.
The first sign of a problem began with back pain — something Jan, an active retiree who loved to hike and travel, had never suffered from before.
The pain quickly spread to her hip. In response, her doctor prescribed physical therapy. But the pain never went away. Instead, it spread to her ribs. At that point, Jan knew something was seriously wrong. She underwent a final round of testing — X-rays and blood work — and finally received the diagnosis of multiple myeloma.
Much of the last two years and two months is a blur to Vandersloot, but not July 19, 2022. It was the day after the final of the Commissioners Cup, which the Sky lost to the Las Vegas Aces. Her parents delayed the call long enough to allow their daughter full peace of mind in the championship game, but the news couldn’t wait any longer.
Every piece of that FaceTime remains etched in Vandersloot’s memory as if it happened yesterday. What she remembers most is how her mother spent the entire call giving her daughter reassurances. Even in that moment, Jan just wanted her kids to be OK.
For the Vandersloot family, those early weeks felt impossible.
By the time Jan received her diagnosis, the cancer had spread to affect 70% of her bone marrow. A month later, she was hospitalized for the first time. Within weeks, she began to lose the ability to walk.
“We had no idea how to attack this,” Vandersloot said. “Like, none.”
Hospital transfers from emergency care to specialized services were unwieldy. Waitlists for primary consults stretched out for months. Internet research only made the ordeal feel more overwhelming. And during it all, the Sky were having the best season in franchise history and bearing down on a second straight title run.
In her spare seconds during the playoff series against the Connecticut Sun and New York Liberty, Vandersloot crammed into the corners of training facilities and hotels and arenas, holding the phone to her ear to consult with her family and plead with medical providers.
Vandersloot called in every favor she could find, contacting the Sky’s medical sponsors at the University of Chicago and the Seattle Storm’s medical partners at Providence Swedish. Those connections helped her to create a more stable and expedited plan for Jan’s care, but they couldn’t solve every problem.
“Things kept slipping through the cracks,” Vandersloot said. “It felt like an uphill battle and meanwhile my mom was really struggling. It wasn’t like, ‘Oh, we have this time.’ When she was diagnosed, it hit her really, really hard. Every minute, every day mattered. We didn’t have three months. We didn’t have a month. I can’t even imagine how we would get her in if I didn’t know these people.”
Vandersloot refused to tell her Sky teammates before the end of the season. She leaned on her sister, father and wife, then-Sky co-captain Allie Quigley. She called her mom every day. And when it was time to play basketball, she lost herself on the court.
Looking back, Vandersloot wishes she let her teammates in. Even with Quigley at her side in Chicago, it was probably too much to carry on her own. But at the time, Vandersloot didn’t know how to survive unless basketball was completely separate from the rest of her life.
“I didn’t want to be — I don’t want to use the word distraction, but I didn’t want to be a charity case,” Vandersloot said. “I didn’t want people to feel bad for me every time I walked in. I wanted it to be about the basketball. I wanted that to be my safe space.”
And then, basketball was over. The Sky collapsed in the semifinals against the Sun. Less than two months after receiving Jan’s diagnosis, Vandersloot boarded a plane back to Seattle trying to figure out how the rest of her mom’s life would look.
Typical remission doesn’t exist for multiple myeloma patients. While the cancer can be maintained and even reduced, it never enters the full retreat of a curable disease in remission. Still, treatment can offer time. On average, the National Cancer Institute reports that 62.4% of multiple myeloma patients live for at least five years after their diagnosis. The median life expectancy of patients aged 65 and older falls between four and six years, according to the NIH.
Jan entered this diminished stage of remission that winter. She was released from the hospital before Thanksgiving and began the laborious process of regaining mobility with a walker.
It wasn’t quite hope that Vandersloot felt during this time. She knew multiple myeloma wasn’t curable. She knew what was going to come next. But Jan was strong. She had always been healthy. And the Vandersloots felt confident that with the disease under control, they still had years left together.
During this time, Quigley discovered the MMRF. After warding off the crisis of initial treatment, the Vandersloots were beginning to shift their long-term focus. The family wanted to connect with a community that could provide support and resources. Courtney also wanted to use her platform as a WNBA star to promote advocacy and awareness for the disease.
Early detection significantly improves the quality and longevity of a patient’s life. And intensive research studies — including the sequencing of the myeloma genome and the testing of new antibody treatments — are necessary in ultimately establishing a cure for multiple myeloma.
“We want to give somebody more time with their family,” Quigley said. “More time that we wish we had.”
New York Liberty guard Courtney Vandersloot moves the ball against the Seattle Storm on May 30, 2023. (AP photo)
Life changed after that winter. Vandersloot left Chicago for the first time in her career to sign with the Liberty. Quigley quietly stepped away from basketball. The couple began to tell friends and teammates about Jan’s diagnosis and what that meant for the future. In May 2023, Vandersloot publicly acknowledged Jan’s diagnosis for the first time, opening up on social media ahead of the MMRF Five Boro Bike Tour in New York.
Nothing was easy that year. Jan did her best to maintain her trademark good nature through chemotherapy treatments. Courtney did her best to stay focused on basketball. The family found renewed purpose through advocacy work with MMR.
And then it got worse again.
In the summer, Jan’s health began to decline. On June 5, 2024, Vandersloot stepped away from the Liberty to be with her family in Washington. Jan died on June 15, less than two years after receiving the initial diagnosis. She was 67.
There are no words to describe that loss. Vandersloot doesn’t try. She doesn’t need to explain the gaping hole left in her life by her mother’s death or the pain that rose up to fill it. Anyone who has experienced that loss understands. Anyone who hasn’t, can’t.
Two weeks later, Vandersloot was back on the court with the Liberty. She didn’t return because she felt ready. Or because she wanted to win another championship. She went back to New York because she needed basketball.
“It’s impossible,” Quigley said. “If you don’t play, it’s the worst feeling in the world. If you do play, you just have to find a reason. She found the reason was for her mom. It took so much strength. It was impossibly hard every single day to just put one foot in front of the other. I know that her mom wanted her to keep playing and I know how proud she was of her.”
Even after she returned with a commitment to play through the rest of the 2024 season, Vandersloot knew she wasn’t herself. On her best days, she felt numb. But the nonstop cycle of training and games and recovery offered a handful of hours each day in which the loss of her mother wasn’t the primary focus in her mind.
“Not having her around, not having her watch the games, not being able to talk to her about the games — all of those things made that part really hard and challenging. But it also gave me something to focus on every day,” Vandersloot said. “When I was in the gym, I could put everything else aside. And then when I got home, I was a freaking mess. I was a wreck. And no one had to know that.”
Vandersloot wants to get back to enjoying basketball — not just for herself, but for her mom. Jan loved to watch her daughter play with joy. That’s what Vandersloot hoped to do this season in Chicago, where she hoped that playing like herself again would serve as another memorial to her mother.
Instead, she tore the ACL in her right knee seven games into the season. It happened almost a year to the day after Jan’s death. Vandersloot doesn’t know if that timing is supposed to mean something, if there’s some lesson she’s supposed to learn from any of this. She just knows that it’s hard. That her mom would make it easier if she were still here.
Jan’s absence has left more questions than answers. Vandersloot can’t help but wonder about those early months when the cancer went undetected — a commonality among multiple myeloma patients, which can present with symptoms such as anemia that are common enough to go overlooked.
“If we would have known months earlier, what could this medicine have done? Could we have gotten more time?” Vandersloot said. “There’s people that have lived a long time with this. It just wasn’t the case for my mom.”
Those questions only drive Vandersloot’s dedication to the legacy she hopes to create for Jan — giving families like hers more time.
Vandersloot still talks about Jan in the present tense. Each day, she and Quigley share memories of her mother with their baby daughter, Jana, who was born in April. It’s easy to talk about Jan — her smile, her nurturing kindness toward her daughters and her family. And it’s easy to build a future shaped by her memory.
“If we can help save one person’s life, extend one person’s life, that’s enough,” Vandersloot said. “That’s the great thing about MMRF — the work they’re doing impacts people now. That’s the one thing that drives me. It’s the reason I want to be so connected with them.
“I know that my mom wanted to help people. She understands more than anything what they’re going through. We’ve seen it, we’ve been through it and we know that we can help. That’s the legacy that she would want.”