Sabrina Ionescu and her entourage sat on a couch in her mother’s California living room Friday night while they waited for the WNBA Draft to begin. Ionescu’s mother, Liliana Blaj, and father, Dan Ionescu, sat on either side of her; her older brother Andrei, his wife and her twin brother Eddy filled in the rest of the couch. Behind them sat Kelly Sopak, Ionescu’s youth basketball coach, and Bill Duffy, a family friend and Ionescu’s newly appointed agent.



While Ionescu and her day-one supporters patiently waited, they almost missed the moment they’d all gathered for. During the first-ever virtual sports draft, a technical glitch made it difficult for them to hear WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert announce Ionescu as the first-overall pick of the New York Liberty.



“The connection was kind of off … so we really couldn’t hear when they said my name,” Ionescu said during a Zoom call with reporters on Monday. “I...