Alana Beard talks about the timing of her off-season surgery:

The smart move financially would have been to have the surgery at the start of the WNBA season so that she could do her usual trips abroad, with the additional bonus of being healthy in plenty of time to make her case to be chosen for the U.S. Olympic team this summer.

"A lot of people were in my ear: 'AB, you have to think about your future, you have a bright future ahead of you,"' Beard said. "And I said, 'Yeah, but I also have a team that's working their butts off to play this game and to win, and I couldn't give up on that.