There are many reasons why Laura Juškaitė’s road to the Toronto Tempo was difficult. Start with her being born in the small Lithuanian town of Skuodas with only 6,000 people and nowhere to practice basketball. Outside of playing one-on-one in a field with her brother, that is.
She didn’t start playing properly until the age of 14, when her track and field coach recommended her to a program in the capital, Vilnius. And even when Juškaitė swiftly ascended from beginner to “one of the main players,” her arduous path through what seems like every professional league in Europe was marred by injury and upheaval.
It wasn’t until a couple years ago that she even considered the WNBA to be a realistic possibility.
“Honestly, it was never on my radar because it looked too far and too big of a thing,” Juškaitė says in the hallways of Coca-Cola Coliseum after practice. “And I was like; I’m just a kid from a little town. Like, there is no way I will make it to the States, to the league.”
After playing her first six or seven years in Lithuania at a level she described as “not great,” her skill had reached the point where a move abroad was needed in search of stronger competition.
That took her to AZS AJP Gorzów Wielkopolski in Poland, Juškaitė’s first EuroCup team, and her first experience playing in another country. It was hard. The new language and people were so difficult to navigate that there were days when she cried and wanted to go home. But she was under contract; she lived through it.
Next came Valencia in Spain, where she won her first EuroCup title, but was also relegated to limited minutes off the bench.
“I was just, like, still (a) young player looking for myself at some point,” Juškaitė says. “And this year (in Spain) was probably the hardest because I wasn’t playing that much.
“But it shaped me mentally, I would say, to understand that I will not always be the main player, not the starter, and need to find my way to live in teams like that as well.”
Her basketball gauntlet across the European continent was far from finished. She went to France and experienced another difficult season rife with injury and coaching changes at Saint-Amand Hainaut Basket. Then came Italy and another injury, this time a collarbone fracture that stopped her from playing for over seven months.
She made a brief few-month stop back home to get her bearings then went to a Turkish club that went bankrupt and didn’t pay its players. Then she began her EuroLeague career with Czechia’s Žabiny Brno.
It was there, only two years ago, that the prospect of playing in the W moved from unfathomable to a real possibility in her mind.
“I started to play EuroLeague, and I started to see the players who come from W to play EuroLeague, that I am not that much worse than them,” Juškaitė says. “I am competing with them. Like, sometimes I kick their ass.”
Last season, she won another EuroCup championship on a much more reliable Turkish team, Çukurova Basketbol Mersin.
Still, it’s head-spinning simply trying to keep track of the myriad stops she’s made in her basketball career. Now imagine living it.
Back in Spain, Juškaitė learned the importance of humility, but now she’s back in a primary role, having started nine of the first 12 games in Tempo franchise history. Her outside shooting and aggressive driving have netted her four double-digit scoring games, including a new WNBA high of 19 points on only seven shots in Toronto’s most recent win over the Connecticut Sun on Wednesday. She’s averaging 9 points and shooting 41.9 percent from three while serving as an important play-finisher and active defender.
Bearing in mind how she’s constantly had to adapt throughout her career — to new countries, languages, roles, systems, climates and surely so much more — it makes sense that Juškaitė seems unfazed by her latest transition.
“I think it just toughened me up,” she says. “I was fortunate enough to always have my support system, like my personal trainer, who, like, a few days after my collarbone surgery, he said, ‘no, you are not staying at home. We go to gym. Maybe you can’t move your arms, but you can move your legs, so we will do something.’ So, I always had people beside me who helped me.
“And, yeah, I was always the shy kid in my young age and being in all the different situations and stepping out of the comfort zone in different countries with different people. Just, now I feel like I’m grown up. Like, I’m more brave.
“I have things to say. I have all experiences in my life that if something happens to the player, I know exactly how they feel. So, it helps a lot to be, like, good teammate and good person in general.”
On the court, she’s had to adjust to moving from the three to the four; a change head coach Sandy Brondello thinks is best for her and the team. The style of basketball is different from how she played in Europe, too. It’s more driven by individual talent and less team focused. In European basketball, self-creation is less prevalent, necessitating that shots be found via a concert of passing and player movement.
Her teammate Julie Allemand, a Belgian native and longtime European player, also expressed the same sentiments about the differences between North American and European basketball. She also praised Juškaitė’s ability to adapt.
“It’s not easy; we also have to think about that — how tough it is,” Allemand says at practice. “But I think she’s been doing well. The thing is that she stayed aggressive. As a three or as a four, she was aggressive. She was trying to go take rebounds, she was still pushing the ball. Going to the paint. That’s the most important. We want her to try to stay herself.”
“She gives great energy … we just want her to be who she is, play instinctively,” head coach Sandy Brondello echoed.
That energy is abundantly obvious on defence, where her arms are a blur, and despite being undersized for a frontcourt player, she can overwhelm opposing players with her physicality. We saw her emphatically block Nell Angloma on Wednesday and front the post for one of her four steals.
The mindset fuelling her aggressive and unwavering play stems from the same bravery she learned through her years bouncing from country to country, league to league.
“When I play, I never look to the scoreboard. I just try to play hard and compete every minute, every second,” Juškaitė says.
“It’s just in me. Like, maybe I was always quiet outside of the basketball court, so I wanted to prove a lot of things on the court.”
It’s evident in every facet of how she plays the game. From her frenzied defence to her hard-charging drives. When she turns the corner on keeper play with a full head of steam, it’s clear she’s giving her all. And that’s because she did to get here.
“I feel like I didn’t skip any steps in my career,” Juškaitė says.
“I’ve been in, like, lower leagues, better leagues, and lately in EuroLeague. So, I’m 28 years old. I really played basketball professionally for a long time. And as I said, I didn’t skip any level because sometimes players jump from here to the biggest levels, and they are missing something. And I feel I checked all the boxes, like, to be finally here.”