EDMONTON — Edmonton Oilers defenseman Darnell Nurse is taking a back seat to his younger sister Kia Nurse for the WNBA Canada Game featuring the Seattle Storm and Los Angeles Sparks at Rogers Place on Saturday.
Kia Nurse is in her first season with Los Angeles, having played with Seattle last season and Phoenix prior to that. The preseason game will be the first time Kia Nurse plays in a WNBA contest in Edmonton.
“It’ll be exciting to have my sister here,” Darnell Nurse said Friday. “Anytime I get to see her play it’s a lot of fun to see her do her craft at the highest level. It’ll be cool to have her here in Edmonton.”
A member of the Canadian women’s national basketball team, Kia Nurse, 28, began her WNBA career with New York, drafted out of the University of Connecticut. She averaged 5.9 points per game and 2.3 rebounds per game with Seattle last season. Darnell Nurse, 29, is in his ninth season with the Oilers.
“You try to get to a couple of games per year and last year in the summer we didn’t just with my wife being pregnant,” Darnell Nurse said. “It’s a lot of fun with her being in LA and us being in Edmonton, maybe there’s an opportunity to go down there once their season starts and check out some games there. It’s a lot of fun seeing her play.”
The Oilers are currently awaiting their opponent for the Stanley Cup Playoffs Western Conference Second Round after defeating the Los Angeles Kings in the opening round. Edmonton won the best-of-seven series in five games.
“She came to Game 3 (in Los Angeles) and then her training camp started on the day of Game 4, so she didn’t come to that game,” Nurse said. “She’s a big Oilers fan.”
Darnell and Kia Nurse come from an athletic family. Their father Richard Nurse played in the Canadian Football League for Hamilton, while mother Cathy was a basketball player at McMaster University. Their older sister Tamika Nurse, 36, played basketball for Oregon and Bowling Green Universities.
Former Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb is their uncle and their cousin Sarah Nurse played hockey for the Wisconsin Badgers and is a member of the Canadian women’s national hockey team.
“When we were growing up, we all wanted to play pro sports obviously, and the first thing is that it’s hard to get there and harder to stay,” Darnell Nurse said. “She’s a great example of getting to the peak and one of the highest levels of her sport and able to maintain the high level of play and all the stuff that she does playing Canadian basketball and playing for Team Canada on that world stage.
“It’s a lot of fun, very inspiring and I’m very proud as her brother. She’s had so many different accomplishments in her career, and it continues to drive me of things I want to do too.”
Along with being a professional basketball player, Kia Nurse is also a basketball analyst on TSN in Canada, working on NBA, WNBA and NCAA games. Darnell Nurse said having his sister work for the national sports broadcaster gives him a new appreciation for the media.
“She was the big personality of the family, she’d sing and dance, she was always the one that was entertaining at each family gathering,” Nurse said. “And her knowledge, she was so dedicated to basketball all of her life, so her knowledge of the game, even me growing up, all we did growing up was spend time at basketball gyms and play.
“If I wasn’t at my hockey practice, I was following around my big sister with my little sister, and we were always at basketball games. She’s been travelling for basketball her whole life, so her knowledge of the game is a lot of fun, especially when we’re just sitting around the family table and we’re breaking down games and whatnot.”
