Sky’s Delle Donne comes out, vows not to ‘hide anything’

Sky star Elena Delle Donne, the WNBA’s reigning MVP, has publicly announced she is gay and got engaged to her longtime partner, Amanda Clifton, on June 2.

The news was revealed in an upcoming Vogue magazine story and Delle Donne discussed the article Wednesday with reporters covering the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

“I decided I’m not at all going to hide anything,” Delle Donne told reporters in Rio, where she is playing for Team USA. “It was just one of those articles where they came into my home, spent a couple days with me, and Amanda is a huge part of my life. So to leave her out wouldn’t have made any sense.

“As the future keeps moving on, I don’t plan on having our relationship out in the public and all this media on it, but obviously there’s excitement right now because people see it for the first time.”

Delle Donne said the Vogue article was mostly about her life off the court. Clifton, a former women’s basketball player at Illinois State, is a big part of that life — something Delle Donne stresses is well known among her Sky teammates.

“It’s not a coming-out article or anything,” Delle Donne said. “I’ve been with her for a very long time now and people who are close to me know that.”