Breanna Stewart Breaks Down How Failure Evolved Her Mindset, Names the Toughest Loss of Her Career

Few players in basketball history have had success like Breanna Stewart. The song All I Do Is Win might as well be about Stewart, because everywhere she’s gone, results have followed.

In college, Stewart led UConn to four national titles in a row from 2012 to 2016. On the international stage, she’s been a major part of three straight Olympic gold medals for Team USA (Rio 2016, Tokyo 2021, and Paris 2024). Out of her 3 WNBA championships, two came with the Seattle Storm (2018 and 2020) and one with the New York Liberty in 2024.

Stewart did all of this while also collecting two MVPs, two Finals MVPs, and a scoring title, like they were side quests. Needless to say, she is not used to losing. What’s her secret? Well, it’s not about winning, apparently. The 3-time WNBA champion asserts that the trick lies in embracing the losses.

Even though her Liberty were beset by injuries this year, including her knee issues at the end of the season, it was still a shock to see them go down in the first round of the playoffs to the Phoenix Mercury. Now they face an uncertain future after head coach Sandy Brondello was fired.

Stewart is a free agent and said that she was planning on running it back, but who knows if the coaching situation changes that.

Stewart sat down with Sean Evans of Hot Ones for the premiere episode of his new show, One More Round. Evans is known for asking incisive questions, and after listing off her accolades, he asked her, “What has been the most heartbreaking loss or moment? What was the hardest L to shake?”

There was no hesitation as Stewart answered, “The hardest hardest was when we lost in the Finals to Vegas, my first year with New York. Game 4 [is] playing back at Barclays. We just won one game; we need to win this one to keep ourselves alive, and I missed a game-winning shot.

“Just because of our back and forth and history and all the emotions with Vegas, it was hard to get over that one. Getting back and working out after that was not easy,” Stewart made a point to add.

Most athletes, even the very best ones, experience failure long before they reach the pros. Stewart is a rare exception to that, but when she did finally go through some adversity, such as when she tore her Achilles while playing in the EuroLeague championship game in 2019, she used it as inspiration to get even better.

“Listen, I don’t ever want to fail, that’s the number one thing that I don’t ever want to do, but it happens,” Stewart said, adding, “And it’s almost embracing that, embracing failure, because you can’t win ’em all.”

“You can’t do everything that you want to do, and sometimes there’s gonna be the adversity of an injury, or missing a game-winning shot or a free throw, but the way that I grow from that is what’s gonna separate me from anybody else,” the Liberty star concluded.

Stewart will be entering her 10th season in the league next year. And the 31-year-old will be hungry to bounce back after this season’s disappointing finish.