Glamorous former WNBA star Kysre Gondrezick has opened up on the horrifying Achilles tear that left her foot ‘hanging’ off and her basketball career in the balance.
Gondrezick, still only 28, previously played for the Indiana Fever and Chicago Sky, but her life on the court was derailed by a brutal injury suffered in January – just days before she was due to report for the next season.
‘I was just backpedaling and went to go take off and it just popped,’ she explained in an interview with Fanvue, exclusively obtained by the Daily Mail.
‘It felt like someone had thrown the ball at me or kicked me in the back of the foot, and I turned around and yelled at the whole gym like ‘who just did that?’ and no one was right there.
‘I didn’t believe that I was hurt initially until I took my shoe off and my foot was just hanging. I wanted to believe it was a partial tear until [they] said it was a clean split… I knew that there were two things: one was thinking, “am I going to get surgery?” and two, “was my basketball career over?”‘
Gondrezick was then faced with a new reality of waking up at 4:30am every morning, for a brutal regime of physical therapy, gym workouts, and recovery.
Kysre Gondrezick has opened up about the horrifying Achilles tear she suffered in January
The former WNBA star is currently a free agent and is still recovering from her brutal injury
Incredibly, she has revealed that what she expected to be the worst six months of her life instead turning into the most rewarding.
‘It’s been the healing of my mind, changing the perspective of the way I think, how I approach things, being able to take care of myself, not just from an exterior but from an internal standpoint,’ she revealed.
What’s next on the basketball court remains unclear, but off it she stunned fans back in May by launching a new subscription account for her fans.
The Fanvue page – which was initially teased with a spicy social media snap – is to ‘share a facet of Kysre that people haven’t seen yet’, according to the WNBA icon.
Gondrezick bared all when she modeled for Playboy in 2025; she is pictured at a Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show in 2024
Gondrezick revealed her subscription page on Fanvue with a spicy social media snap
‘I solely just want people to focus on the light that comes through me, the favor that I have on my life, the mercy at the hands of who I serve,’ she explains.
‘That’s the narrative I hope people talk about a lot more in my basketball career and my entrepreneurship beyond that as a businesswoman.’
Gondrezick, who played college basketball at Michigan and West Virginia, was previously romantically linked to Boston Celtics star Jaylen Brown.
In her WNBA career so far, she has played 24 games, averaging 7.9 minutes and 1.7 points.
