In a bizarre coincidence — one they attribute to a blessing in disguise — Kayla and Veronica Burton were back home together between May and June.
Veronica had just been cut by the Dallas Wings on May 12, two days before the start of the WNBA season. She packed her bags quickly and returned to her family in Newton, Mass. Kayla was also in a transition period, had moved to the Boston area, and would soon join the NBC Sports Boston coverage team. At that time, they both thought long and hard about Veronica's murky professional future.
Kayla would rebound for Veronica at the Newton YMCA. She saw her baby sister, the seventh overall pick in the 2022 WNBA Draft and perhaps the best active women's basketball player from New England, surrounded by pickleball courts while her former teammates played in arenas.
"There's this one time where I was playing hardcore defense on her, and you could see the pain of just, this whole moment hitting her, because she was still working through it, still getting shots up, not knowing if she was going to be playing overseas or getting picked up, or what the scenario was going to be," Kayla said.
