By Terry Boehmker
NKyTribune sports reporter
Two weeks ago, DePaul University in Chicago added an action photo of Lexi Held to a wall in the athletic department that celebrates former players who made it to the Women’s National Basketball Association.
Held, a graduate of Cooper High School, is a 5-foot-10 rookie guard for the Phoenix Mercury that’s off to a 10-4 start in the WNBA this season. Her team will play a nationally televised game in Chicago at 1 p.m. Saturday, but Held is sidelined with an injury.
On Thursday, Held suffered a rib injury while diving for a loose ball during the third quarter of Phoenix’s 89-81 win against New York Liberty, last year’s WNBA champion.
She left the court with some assistance and Mercury head coach Nate Tibbetts said she was “in a lot of pain” during the post-game media conference.
Held was averaging more than 21 minutes of playing time off the bench for Phoenix prior to Thursday’s game. The injury limited her to nine minutes on the court and dropped her season averages to 8.7 points, 1.7 rebounds, 1.4 assists and 1.5 steals.
She was a double-figure scorer in five of the team’s first seven games this month. On June 5, she netted a season-high 24 points, the most by a rookie player at that point in the 2025 WNBA season.
Held not being able to play in the WNBA game against the Chicago Sky that will be televised on ABC and ESPN+ must be disappointing to DePaul women’s basketball fans. She started 89 consecutive games over three seasons for the Blue Demons and those teams compiled a 64-26 record with her in the lineup.
After her final college season in 2022, Held accepted a training camp contract from the Chicago Sky, the defending WNBA champions at that time. She spent three weeks working out with the team before she was released prior to the start of the season.
Held had been playing professional basketball in Europe when she was invited to the Phoenix Mercury training camp in April. The 25-year-old guard was one of four undrafted rookies who made the roster and the team is off to its best start since 2018.
The Mercury has a game scheduled against the Indiana Fever on July 30 in Indianapolis that would give Held’s family and friends in Northern Kentucky a chances to see her play at a WNBA venue that’s not too far from home. The team will also visit the Chicago Sky once again on Aug. 3.
A 2018 graduate of Cooper High School, Held scored more than 2,430 points during her varsity career and finished her senior season with the state’s second highest scoring average at 28.3 points per game.