Basketball On The Internet.

SHE won two WNBA championships, led Adelaide Lightning to the WNBL crown in 2008, was an Opals Olympian AND a FIBA world champion all before she became the face of AFLW at Adelaide Crows and Port Adelaide. Tomorrow night, Erin Phillips plays her final match of competitive sport in the NBL1 Central women's grand final.

After she leads Woodville Warriors - chasing their historic first SA championship - tomorrow against Sturt at Adelaide Entertainment Centre, the final siren will close the competitive chapter on an extraordinary and unique sporting career.

Phillips has compiled the most amazing individual record in team sports, as a super successful basketball player, rivalling other local SA legends such as Lorraine Eiler and Jenny Cheesman, who also enjoyed the status of superstars in multiple sports.

Of course football was Erin's first love and the fact she made it this year into the AFL Hall of Fame - alongside her father Greg as the historic first father-daughter combination in the Hall - speaks to how well she played footy.

In the AFLW's first few years as Erin Phillips was winning MVP awards and premierships, it was clear she was a football player while every other young woman in the competition was trying to play football.

The fact that at 40, she could return to basketball to complete a career closure and help steer Woodville into only its second-ever championship decider - it was beaten in 1997 by a Norwood team coached by Vicki Daldy, ironically now the Warriors' coach in their pursuit of a maiden title - is testament to her talent and competitive instincts.

Having had the pleasure of chronicling her career from start (and now to its competitive finish), it took me a while to comprehend why I was quite as emotional as I became while watching her AFL Hall of Fame induction speech.

It was because of her relationship with Greg, the ominous man-mountain who terrorised the SANFL at centre-halfback for Port Adelaide premiership team after premiership team, before also showing the VFL how good he was at Collingwood.

Yes, many of us loved Russell Ebert and John Cahill and Geof Motley, but was there ever a more quintessential Magpie than Greg?

Watching his emotional reaction when Erin switched from the Crows to Port and became its inaugural AFLW captain was one thing, but when she spoke of him teaching her to play football when he knew that at that time there would be no avenue for her to show her mastery of the sport, showed us all exactly what true love looks like.

You don't get many opportunities to see love in its raw, moving, infinite depth too often so we were truly blessed.

Basketball SA will also truly be blessed tomorrow night when Erin looks to end her on-field/on-court sporting life with a fairytale finish.

It would be a remarkable conclusion too, Woodville finishing dead last in 2024. Last-to-first hasn't been done too often. Well, not since last year at least.

That was when Central District, dead last in 2023, won its historic first-ever women's championship ... and there is a common denominator.

New Lightning WNBL signing Jasmin Feo was a star with those Lions last year, and this year at Woodville cleaned up every major worthwhile award shy of the Lorraine Eiler Medal.

Sympathies lie with Woodville's grand final opponent Sturt, losing grand finallist in 2022 and 2023 before last year finishing top but going out of contention in straight sets.

But only the Sabres' faithful want to see this one end in anything other than a Warriors' success and a super send-off for one of Australia's genuine all-time sporting greats.

Few expected Central District, masterminded by multiple NBL champion Rupert Sapwell, to shock the stacked Forestville Eagles in the men's playoff race. West KOing the Eagles last week with Keanu Rasmussen - Woollacott and Frank Angove Medallist, league MVP - blocking the ill-advised jack-up three attempt by Dejan Vasiljevic to clinch the two-point win, was less so.

Central is pursuing only its second championship and first since 1984 - Sapwell potentially joining the legendary Arden Herr as the club's only other championship winner.

It should be a gem and an outstanding close to the 2025 NBL1 Central season. We can applaud Erin's farewell and keep fingers crossed one day she may make a reappearance in a novelty or charity game somewhere.