Former 2-Time WNBA Champion Kara Braxton Dies at 43

Kara Braxton, who won two WNBA championships with the Detroit Shock, has died at age 43.

The WNBA issued a statement on Sunday regarding her death. No cause of death was mentioned.

“It is with profound sadness that we mourn the passing of 2x WNBA Champion Kara Braxton,” the WNBA said in the statement. “Our thoughts are with her family, friends, and former teammates at this time.”

The Jackson, Michigan, native’s career developed as a high school star, first at Jackson High School and then at Westview High School in Portland, Oregon, for three seasons. Braxton became the Oregon Gatorade Player of the Year in her senior season.

She moved on to Georgia for college, where she became the SEC Freshman of the Year in 2002 and earned All-SEC first team honors. Her University of Georgia career numbers included 15.4 points and 7.3 rebounds per game from 2002 to 2005.

After Georgia, Braxton became the Shock’s No. 7 pick in the 2005 WNBA draft. That same year, Braxton gave birth to her son, Jelani Thurman, whose father is former Cincinnati Bengals linebacker Odell Thurman.

A 6-foot-6 center, Braxton made the WNBA All-Rookie team in 2005, and then helped the Shock win a WNBA championship in 2006 and 2008. During the Shock’s first title run with Braxton, she averaged five points and 2.8 rebounds per game. She averaged 8.6 points and 5.3 rebounds per game in the second title run in 2008.

Braxton played for former head coach and former Detroit Pistons great Bill Laimbeer during that period, along with other former WNBA stars Deanna Nolan and Katie Smith, now an assistant coach at Ohio State for women’s basketball.

Braxton’s son notably played football for Ohio State last season as a tight end but recently transferred to North Carolina. Jelani Thurman wrote “Imma miss my queen,” in an Instagram story after the news broke, and his story included photos of himself and his mother through different stages of life.

A member of Ohio State’s 2024 national championship team, Thurman shared a video of himself talking about Braxton during a media session that season. Thurman grew up in Fairburn, Georgia, and starred at Langston Hughes High School before he joined the Buckeyes in 2023.

“Man, she taught me always go hard,” Thurman told reporters. “There’s one goal, you know what you need to go to do.”

Braxton played for the Shock until 2010, which included the team’s move to Tulsa, Oklahoma, but left during the 2010 season when the team traded her to the Phoenix Mercury. Her time with the Mercury went well as she produced a career high of 11.1 points per game in 2010, but the Mercury traded her to the New York Liberty in 2011 amid her 10.6 points per game average that year.

With the Liberty, Braxton never scored more than 8.7 points per game in a season, but she hit a career high for rebounds with 6.6 boards per game in 2013, her second to last year in the league.

Braxton appeared in four games for the Liberty in 2014 before the team waived her. She finished with a career average of 7.6 points and 4.7 rebounds across a 10-year career that included one All-Star game appearance.

“I was totally surprised because there are so many good centers and players in the league,” she told WNBA.com about her All-Star selection in 2007. “I was grateful just to have my name amongst the other names on the ballot. But to be voted as a starter and to have the most votes at my position in the conference, I was really shocked.”

Braxton played internationally after her career with the WNBA in China, South Korea, Israel, and Turkey, until 2018. She is survived by her husband, Jarvis Jackson, Thurman, and son Jream Jackson.