By sports reporter Terry Boehmker, NKyTribune
An action photo of Lexi Held was posted to a wall in the sports department of DePaul University in Chicago two weeks ago. The wall honors prior players who qualified for the Women’s National Basketball Association.
Held, a 5-foot-10 rookie guard for the Phoenix Mercury, who are off to a 10-4 start in the WNBA this season, attended Cooper High School. Held is injured and will miss her team’s nationally broadcast game in Chicago on Saturday at 1 p.m.
In the third quarter of Phoenix’s 89-81 victory over the New York Liberty, the WNBA champion from the previous season, Held sustained a rib injury while diving for a loose ball on Thursday.
During the post-game press conference, Mercury head coach Nate Tibbetts stated that she was in a lot of discomfort and that she needed some help leaving the field.
Before Thursday’s game, Held was averaging almost 21 minutes of playing time for Phoenix off the bench. Her season averages decreased to 8.7 points, 1.7 rebounds, 1.4 assists, and 1.5 steals as a result of the injury, which also limited her to just nine minutes on the field.
In five of the team’s first seven games this month, she scored in double figures. She scored the most points of any rookie in the 2025 WNBA season on June 5th, with a season-high 24 points.
Fans of DePaul women’s basketball must be disappointed that Held will not be able to participate in the WNBA game against the Chicago Sky, which will be broadcast on ABC and ESPN+. Over the course of three seasons, she started 89 straight games for the Blue Demons, and those teams finished 64-26 when she was in the lineup.
Held agreed to a training camp deal with the Chicago Sky, the reigning WNBA champions, following her senior year at college in 2022. Before being discharged before the season began, she worked out with the club for three weeks.
When Held received an invitation to the Phoenix Mercury training camp in April, she was already playing professional basketball in Europe. The team is having its best start since 2018, and the 25-year-old guard was one of four undrafted rookies to make the roster.
Held’s family and friends in Northern Kentucky will have the opportunity to watch her play at a WNBA stadium not distant from their home on July 30 when the Mercury play the Indiana Fever in Indianapolis. On August 3, the team will return to the Chicago Sky.
Held, who graduated from Cooper High School in 2018, finished her senior year with the second-highest scoring average in the state at 28.3 points per game. During her varsity career, she scored over 2,430 points.