Rebecca Allen calls time on remarkable career

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Decorated Australian women's basketballer Rebecca "Bec" Allen is retiring at the end of the WNBA season.

Allen, 33, is 288-game WNBA veteran, has played almost 40 games for the Opals at the Olympics and World Cup, multiple seasons in the WNBL before heading to Europe. She is playing her last season for the New York Liberty, where she first played in the WNBA.

"I just feel like this is my moment of closing a beautiful chapter," Allen told Under the Sportlight.

"And I'd like to close everything at once when I am done. So that's me sort of making that decision and having that peace within it as well.

"So for me, it's nice to know and feel peace with the decision of it."

Everything at once. Not just the WNBA.

The Opals part was already over, and she had not said so

Allen played 12 years for Australia. She has not been in the squad since Paris, including the 2026 FIBA Women's World Cup team, and she has decided that is the end of it.

"So for me to have had 12 years amongst the Opals is something to be proud of," she said.

"And it's my time to be out of it now as well."

She was blunt about the distance she has kept.

"I've stayed away from the Australian team, in all honesty, but in a healthy way.

"You need your time to process it, because it's also realising that, okay, it's no longer my time.

"I think I've given everything that I can give to a team, and it's time for someone else to be able to give what they're wanting to, into someone else's dream and their moment."

Paris heartbreak never fully healed

Allen made Australia's roster for the 2024 Olympics. She tore her hamstring the day before the opening ceremony and was replaced.

"That was maybe, well, definitely the hardest moment of my life," she said. "I wouldn't even just say career."

Two years on, she was asked whether it still hurt. She smiled and laughed as she answered.

"A smile and a laugh is covering up a lot of hurt.," she admitted.

"It's obviously gotten better. It's been like two years now. And just to get to that point where it's not something you think about most days."

"I don't think I'll ever look at that moment in a positive light.

"But I can look at my entire Australian career in a positive light, for sure."

The man who sat with her that night was the reason she started watching

Asked which player she loved watching growing up, Allen named Australian Boomers legend and retired NBA veteran Joe Ingles.

"I remember when he was playing for a team in Melbourne," she said.

"They don't exist anymore, the one that he played for. And I would go just to watch him."

That team was the South Dragons. Ingles played 102 games for them between 2006 and 2009, won Rookie of the Year in 2007 and the championship in 2009, and the club folded that year.

Years later a coach put the two of them in the same workout.

"I swear to God, I did not sleep the night before. I was that excited about it. It was ridiculous," she revealed.

And then Paris.

"Even with the Olympics that just passed where I got hurt, when I was in the village, he was the one that I called.

"He was the one that came and sort of consoled me in that moment.

"So it's sort of funny how things go. I've got the utmost respect for him as a player and as a person."

Ingles signed with Melbourne United this off-season, 12 years and more than 800 games after he left the NBL.

Eleven seasons that were not supposed to happen

Allen went undrafted in 2015. She was not bothered, because she was recovering from a second shoulder reconstruction and the WNBA was not the plan.

"I'm undrafted, and so to be in the WNBA for 11 years being undrafted is pretty cool."

Bill Laimbeer signed her off her first tour with the Australian team.

"You never know who's watching," she said.

Her debut lasted two games. She tore her knee, flew home, had surgery and spent seven months rehabilitating it.

"I was devastated, because I thought this was going to be my one opportunity," she added.

She played 11 seasons.

The last one has been the strangest

"I've never had so many DNPs in my life (but then I) played 30 minutes, because there's so many injuries," Allen said.

Four days after the episode was released, Allen had 13 points and eight rebounds on 5-from-7 shooting as the Liberty beat Las Vegas 111-71, scoring or creating all seven points of the third-quarter burst that ended it.

She wants one thing from the rest of it.

"Coming to New York, I want to win a championship. This is the last part of my career," she declared.

What she will not do

Asked about coaching: "Oh, no. That's an emphatic no."

Commentary is the plan, and she has already started. She does special comments and studio work on the NBL, called the Asia Cup, and left the biggest one open.

"We'll see if I'm going to commentate the World Cup. We'll see," she hinted.

Allen arrived in the WNBA as an undrafted Australian recovering from shoulder surgery. She leaves more than a decade later as one of the most respected Australians to play the game, hoping to add one final championship before walking away from basketball for good.