Tiana Mangakahia on her bright future and NBL1 wizardry
The Northside star has formed a deadly one-two punch with WNBL teammate Shyla Heal
Credit: Northside Wizards
For a player who believes she is only now getting back to full fitness after a gruelling journey through breast cancer, Tiana Mangakahia’s form this year has been positively ominous.
Currently leading all women in scoring in the NBL1 North conference, the 27-year-old has been on a season-long tear for the Northside Wizards. She’s putting up a dazzling 28.9 points per game and is also second in the league for assists with 7.4 per game, behind only Steph Reid.
This individual dominance has been crucial for the Wizards, currently placed fifth in the north and augurs well for Mangakahia’s first WNBL season since she appeared for the Townsville Fire as an 18-year-old back in 2013/14. Next season she will suit up for the University of Sydney Flames.
Forming a deadly duo with Shyla Heal
Mangakahia has been playing in the backcourt alongside Shyla Heal; the pair will team up again in the next WNBL campaign. She says the duo, an unusually high-profile backcourt pairing at the NBL1 level, have struck up a chemistry. “It’s been amazing. I’m enjoying it a lot, and I think we can both help each other.
“It was kind of hard at first because there was so much hype around us, and that put some pressure on us. I’ve known Shyla since I was young, but I’ve found as we as got to know each other off the court, it’s helped us perform better.”
Rather than either of Mangakahia and Heal settling into the point guard role and the other playing off the ball, the Wizards have a more fluid system where either player can be the primary ball-handler on any given play. “It helps because if I’m a bit tired, or I’m getting denied or double-teamed, that’s when Shyla can take it against the player that’s guarding her. It helps both of us.”
As the two players with the most experience in elite basketball on a team that skews young, Mangakahia and Heal (averaging 19.1 points per game) have been trusted to take the lion’s share of the shots. Neither are shy to hoist shots from well behind the arc, and when they’re both in rhythm, it’s a freewheeling sight to behold.
Despite finishing her college career as Syracuse’s all-time assist leader, Mangakahia says scoring is the strongest aspect of her game and believes having a multi-faceted skill set has opened up scoring opportunities. “Because I pass a lot and I drive a lot, teams have been reading that, and they haven’t been up on me as much, and that gives me the opportunity to shoot a lot more.” Opposition teams find themselves having to pick their poison: “Now, (teams) are coming up on me and not giving me the opportunity (to shoot), and that’s where I can use my passing ability.”
Still, she expects to transition into a pass-first mentality when her first season with the Flames rolls around. “At NBL1, (Shyla Heal and I) have to perform for us to win, but at the next level, if I’m not having a good game, or Shyla isn’t having a good game, there are other players who can have a good game, and we can still win,” she explains. “I don’t think my role in the WNBL will be what it is here, where I’m (playing) more of a scoring game.”
When Heal was out earlier this season, Mangakahia took her scoring up another level, reeling off successive games of 40 points in a win against the South West Metro Pirates and then dropping a cool 45 points (and collecting five steals) against the Ipswich Force.
So, what’s it like to be on that kind of hot streak? “It feels really good, but you don’t realise during the game you’ve got quite that many points,”Mangakahia says. “After the game, you feel pretty good because you’ve trained all week. You’ve trained your whole life, and when you have a game like that, it feels like all that hard work and all that effort has paid off.”
Tough times in Russia
Prior to the current NBL1 season, Mangakahia was playing in Russia for Dynamo Moscow in a strong league with the likes of Arike Ogunbowale, Breanna Stewart and the now-detained Brittney Griner among her opponents. Mangakahia says it was a good basketball experience that helped her rebuild her cardio levels.
“After my breast cancer journey, I wasn’t in the shape I wanted to be in going into the WNBA camps. When I went to Russia, I started to get back to the fitness level I wanted to be at…Russia really helped with that process.”
Playing under a coach who isn’t a native English speaker may seem daunting but Mangakahia says her team had a good interpreter and a healthy basketball culture that made it relatively easy to fit into the system. Off-court, however, she highlights a common but often overlooked challenge that international athletes face when they land in a new country – the lack of a social support network. Jetting around the world to play basketball may seem exotic and fun, but for a family-first person like Mangakahia, the absence of loved ones can be trying.
“Socially, it was very difficult because often people didn’t speak English,” she explains. “There often wasn’t much to do. I went to Red Square a lot, which was amazing, but I often didn’t have anyone to go with. A lot of my teammates were married and had kids, so it was just hard socially.”
“There was another girl on my team that I was with the whole time, but it was very lonely. I’d be at her house a lot, but it’s not the same. It was really hard.
Now back in Australia and able to play in front of family, Mangakahia is happier, thriving on the court and looking forward to her first season getting big minutes in the WNBL. She’s spoken openly and movingly about her debilitating time living with breast cancer. While that illness is now hopefully firmly in the rearview mirror, she won’t shy away from revisiting that time in the hope it can help others.
“It’s so important to share that story for people out there and to tell people that you’re going go through things, and it’s going to take a long time to really come back from it,” she says. “When I was going through it, I thought: ‘Well, after chemo, I’ll be back at training’, and I was back, but I still had to take medicine and stuff. It took me a long time to be even close to where I wanted to be, so I want to share that experience, raise breast cancer awareness and show people they can get through it, even when they think they can’t.”
Excited to see what she can do in the WNBL this season. There's an Opals spot for the taking and she's as good a chance as anyone if those cruel health gods can stop messing with her for a while.