Antonia Delaere isn’t a star player.
She isn’t a leading scorer or the best rebounder. Delaere isn’t the tallest or most physical player. She doesn’t play the most minutes, and doesn’t have the flashy plays. She also isn’t the most outgoing member of the team.
However, Antonio Delaere has a firm understanding of who she is and how she affects winning. It’s a skill that people rarely celebrate because it often comes with the designation of being a role player. Early in a player’s career, the ability to drive winning can indicate a player is developing a valuable skill set. Conversely, it can be a position that an aging star must embrace after coming to terms with their new past-prime reality.
However, that’s not the case with Delaere. She’s always been a role player who has built an 18-year career that spans the globe by knowing how to fit into a team. Delaere spoke with me about this skill on media day before the season started.
“It’s something I grew into with the national team, like they call me the glue,” Delaere said on media day.
“I don’t need to be the star because people recognize it, and that’s the most important for me. I love to win, and if that’s the thing that can help the team win, then I will do those things, and I know that our staff, our players, see this kind of work, so I don’t need all the highlights.”
People can use career role player as a derogatory term. It’s often used to describe a player past their prime who never reached the heights of the league. It’s a player that maybe never started, or when they did, it was as a fourth or fifth option. They never make All-Star Games. Teams often use them as filler in trades to bring in a bigger name, and fans rarely hear their voice breaking down a hard-fought victory after the game.
The reality of career role players is much different, though. They aren’t a negative asset to a team, nor should people see them that way. They do the dirty work, run hard, play to the best of their ability, and often give up shots and possession for the betterment of the team. Players like Antonia Delaere make a career out of doing the jobs that often require the most calories to perform, like defense and rebounding, all for little to no recognition.
It’s a position the Lynx have always valued highly, and in 2026 they struck gold with Delaere.
Delaere is the perfect encapsulation of the type of player who is often a staple of a championship team’s role player. At age 31, she is in the middle of her rookie season for the Lynx. However, she’s been playing professionally since debuting with the Kangoeroes Boom in the Belgian professional league in 2010-11 at age 16.
After five seasons with the club, she signed with Belfius Nemur for the 2015-16 season. That team made the finals in the Belgian league and won the Belgian Cup before Delaere arrived. After one season with Belfius, she signed with Mithra Castors Braine (BC Castors), the team that bested her in the championship.
Delaere won the Belgian championship in 2017, 2018, and 2019, and won the Belgian Cup in 2017 and 2019.
After three championships and three cups in the Belgian league, she moved to France and played one season with Nantes. Then, she headed to Spain, playing for San Sebastian in the Liga Femenina in 2020-21 and Casademont in 2021-22. Delaere helped Casademont reach the quarterfinals two years after they became an expansion team.
A year later, she joined the Italian league for Reyer Venezia, where she played with former Lynx center Jessica Shepard. Reyer finished 6-0 in Eurocup group play before losing in the semifinals.
Antonia Delaere returned to Spain for the next two seasons, playing for CB Avenida, where she played with former Lynx forward Sika Kone both seasons. With Delaere, Avenida finished 48-12 in the Spanish league and 22-8 in the Euroleague. Last year, Delaere played for Emlak in the Turkish league.
Internationally, she has been a member of the Belgian national team since 2011. She helped Belgium place fourth in the FIBA World Cup in 2018, won a Bronze medal at FIBA Eurobasket 2021, and finished fifth in the FIBA World Cup in 2022. A year later, she helped Belgium win their first Eurobasket tournament, then repeated as champions in 2025.
In 2025, she decided to join the WNBA after 15 years of basketball experience in Belgium, the EuroLeague, and FIBA play.
With all this basketball experience before going pro, one may assume that Delaere is a European star player who’s coming to the WNBA to take the league by storm. However, the truth is that Delaere is a seasoned role player. She averaged 8.6 points, 3.1 rebounds, and 1.5 assists with the Belgian youth national team. Not much changed when she joined the senior national team, where she averaged 7.0 points, 2.5 rebounds, and 2.5 assists.
Delaere was the same player across 11 tournaments playing in the Euroleague. She put up averages of 6.9 points per game, 2.7 rebounds, and 2.4 assists. Her averages have remained the same with every club she has played for: 8-10 points, 2-4 rebounds, and 2-4 assists.
Even last year in Turkey, Delaere averaged 9.8 points, 3.5 rebounds, and 4.3 assists. She played as little as 19 minutes per game and as many as 36. Playing for Belgium in Eurobasket last season, she averaged 5.7 points, 1.5 rebounds, and 3.8 assists. However, Delaere hit the go-ahead baskets in both the semifinal and final.
Antonia Delaere has a similar role with the Lynx to what she has become accustomed to over the past 15 years: she’s the glue player. In 28 games, she’s averaging 12.6 minutes per game, 3.1 points, 0.8 rebounds, and 1.3 assists.
If you average it out to account for 36 minutes of play – like Delaere typically plays in Europe – her averages would be 8.7 points, 2.1 rebounds, and 3.6 assists, exactly in the range of where she always has been. Her shooting has been fantastic with the Lynx, where she has shot 46.5% from three. Her 2.76 assist-to-turnover ratio is among the best on the team.
Cheryl Reeve calls on Delaere when she needs to bring connectivity to the Lynx lineup, including 17 minutes in the second half of Minnesota’s 90-89 loss to the Connecticut Sun on July 6. In Delaere’s 25 total minutes that game, she had 8 points, 2 rebounds, 1 steal, and 0 turnovers.
“She’s steady,” Reeve said regarding her decision to lean on Delaere. “Not going to turn the ball over. Open threes, she’s a threat. I thought she was pretty solid.”
Delaere spoke about what Cheryl Reeve is asking her to do for the Lynx. To nobody’s surprise, it was the same thing she had spent years developing. She didn’t score in bunches or lead the team in assists. Instead, she was the role player that binds the team together.
“I think Cheryl asks me to bring energy, especially for defense, and that’s something where I can still grow,” said Delare. “I think that’s my main goal, and then on offense, like in Belgium we like to play together, I love to get the easy, small plays to run as fast as I can to the corner to open up the game, and then I have to take my shots.”
For Delaere, being a role player has brought her success around the world: In Belgium, Spain, Europe, and in national competition. Coming to the WNBA, she averaged around 8 points, 3 rebounds, and 3 assists over 15 years of play. She was never meant to be a star acquisition or the next big thing to hit the WNBA from Europe. She was signed to be exactly what she has always been: the glue that holds the team together.
