PHILADELPHIA — The whistles blew, and Connecticut Sun guard Marina Mabrey walked away smirking. After colliding with Washington Mystics center Shakira Austin during a game for the WNBA offseason league Unrivaled, Mabrey put her right index finger up to her head to motion that she was living rent-free in Austin’s head.
The moment came after Austin checked Mabrey’s shoulder as she tried to create space, triggering the whistle and a brief stoppage of play.
Unrivaled play-by-play broadcaster Brendan Glasheen commented, “Someone get the jar,” a reference to Mabrey’s newly created “crash out jar,” a self-imposed accountability tool she introduced in January for moments when emotion overtakes control and frustration spills over.
For those unfamiliar, a “crash out” is a modern colloquialism for moments when emotion overwhelms regulation and impulses run wild.
So what is this “crash out jar” and how did Mabrey come to the conclusion that she needed to begin this practice? And could the concept of the jar be something that takes her career to new heights after years of playing slightly below an All-Star level?
Mabrey’s a combo guard who can score at all three levels, shoot a high volume of threes and can play the point guard through the small forward positions due to her size and strength. For her career, she’s averaged 12.5 points while averaging 5.5 attempts from three-point range.
Mabrey is known for her relentless competitiveness, which has often come to her detriment. According to WNBA data site Across the Timeline, Mabrey has averaged a bit under three technicals a season.
Mabrey, 29, was drafted by the Los Angeles Sparks in 2019 and has been traded from the Sparks to the Dallas Wings, from the Wings to the Chicago Sky and then from the Chicago Sky to the Connecticut Sun. Frustrated by the prospect of a rebuild, Mabrey requested to be traded from Connecticut prior to the 2025 WNBA regular season after the roster turnover that ended the Sun’s run as a perennial playoff contender.
Amid the multiple trades and the trade request, Mabrey’s competitive nature is something that her peers around the WNBA respect. Unrivaled’s founder and New York Liberty forward Breanna Stewart was asked on her new podcast Game Recognize Game with Stewie & Myles who the best trash talker is in the WNBA. While Stewart had to shout out now-retired legend Diana Taurasi, she sees Mabrey as the league’s current best trash talker.
“She’s just like a firecracker,” Stewart said. “She’s from [New] Jersey and she’s competitive and she just says whatever comes to her mind whenever she wants. I love her competitive nature. She’s here at Unrivaled and I walk by her and I’m like, ‘No crashouts today, please. Don’t crash out here.’”
The lore behind Mabrey’s “crash out jar” began when she hopped on her YouTube channel to make an announcement during a video that was posted on January 23. She began talking to the camera while wearing a business casual tan suit jacket. She was holding a notebook and a pen. She meant business.
Mabrey spoke about how she wanted to do a reflection series that explained her behavior following games. “It will be fun,” she said. “Hear my side.”
A few days prior Mabrey had just gotten into a public scuffle with Courtney Williams, someone Mabrey had played with previously on the Sky. During a January 19 Unrivaled game, Mabrey attempted to drive on the baseline, but Williams played well-positioned defense to prevent her from getting to the rim.
The two made contact and then the whistle blew as Mabrey went to grab Williams. The players began talking at each other while their teams clustered together to try to separate the two players. Mabrey shouted multiple expletives at Williams. Double technicals were administered. Yet another Mabrey crash out.
Mabrey explained what happened here and why she was going to introduce the “crash out jar.” She noted that she often gets upset when defenders try to stop her.
“Honestly that’s part of my growth,” she said. “I need to calm down. And I was supposed to practice saying ‘good D’ after someone plays good [defense] and stops me. But that has been so hard to say. So instead I just hugged [Williams]. I gave her a hug instead. Congratulations, you did great. But for real, I have seriously been trying to stop. I’m doing breathing before the game, I’m praying into my water [bottle].”
Mabrey also resorted to self-talk to regulate her emotions. None of those methods had led her down any considerable improvement. Enter: the jar.
She whipped out a plastic jar with a bright blue top that was labeled in her handwriting “crash out jar.” Each outburst would cost her money. Curse words were a dollar each, a scuffle could be as much as $40 and something like an insult to someone else would cost her $5.
When Mabrey went over her crash outs from that January 19 game, she’d often say: “that was insane Marina.” This is how she reflects.
But the push to introduce the jar didn’t come from Mabrey alone. She said the idea was suggested by Brittainy Rivers, the sister-in-law of Sun teammate Saniya Rivers, who pulled her aside after a game and encouraged her to reflect on how she expresses her emotions.
Brittainy, the COO of “Own Your Energy,” a personal development company created by Saniya’s sister Nanna Rivers, reminded Mabrey that it’s a better use of her time to reflect after her crashouts rather than to self-sabotage. And that if Mabrey is honest about her struggles, the story shifts. Mabrey’s self-awareness becomes the story rather than the crash outs themselves.
“I was kind of just reminded, like, people go to their everyday job and go absolutely nuts,” Mabrey said prior to her game in Philadelphia on January 30. “Go home and act like nothing happened. The only thing is that there’s not a camera on them when they are working. So she just reminded me that, like everyone does, and just to remind people that I am authentic and that I do reflect. I don’t want to do some of the things I do. I am normal. I’m a human.”
At the start of her new practice, Mabrey didn’t know who or what would be the recipient of her outbursts. She pondered that maybe she could donate the money to a charity, use it for her own therapy sessions, give the money to a fan or even her younger sister Dara who plays professionally in Greece.
While the “crash out jar” made sense on paper, Mabrey found that adjusting to her new practice of holding herself accountable was quite difficult. Instead, it led to overthinking and the lessening of her notorious competitive edge, an intangible.
There was less money in the jar, but she wasn’t having her best statistical games on the court. On January 26, she shot 8-for-20 from the field and scored 21 points. On each miss of a three or even blowing a bunny at the rim, she dropped an F-bomb. On that day, each one cost her $5.
According to her latest YouTube reflection video that was released on January 29, she learned that maybe it wasn’t about preventing crash outs entirely but rather having a more measured way of reacting. Her reactions fuel her game. She couldn’t just turn a light switch off and be crash out free. It doesn’t work that way.
Her mindset is now different. Instead of using up so much energy to prevent her natural emotions from taking their course, she worked on reining herself in. Feel the emotions but don’t ruminate in them, and don’t engage in them for longer than she has to.
Going into Unrivaled’s highly-anticipated debut in Philadelphia, Mabrey knew she had to step up. She wasn’t in the right headspace. She kept going onto the social media app Threads to look at what random people were saying about her. It got into her head.
“I don’t know why I was even reading it at first,” she said postgame. “Some athletes always say, ‘I don’t really care. Oh, whatever.’ Sometimes that shit gets me, so I’m not gonna sit here and act like it doesn’t. Like any other human, I don’t want people talking bad about me. So when they do, sometimes I like, get upset and get in my head.”
With the help of some self-talk and reflection, Mabrey did get over it for that moment and ended up having the greatest scoring game of her professional career. She put up 47 points on 18-of-28 shooting. She made over 64 percent of her shots and hit ten threes, breaking multiple Unrivaled records.
Amid her shooting prowess, three-level scoring, and emotional outbursts, Mabrey is just another person who has multiple layers to her personality. She’s hyper-competitive and as a result loses her self-control. But that’s not only who she is. She’s much more amicable off the court and cares about her teammates.
Following her 47-point explosion that made the 21,490 crowd at Xfinity Mobile Arena erupt, Mabrey gave credit where credit was due to her opponent in Austin who in addition to shoving Mabrey in the third quarter, scored a quiet 31 points that evening.
Mabrey made it a point during her postgame press conference and even on the broadcast to explain how it was her teammates who allowed her to break out. Temi Fágbénlé set excellent screens, Skylar Diggins directed traffic, Rachel Banham hit timely threes and Rebecca Allen ran the floor and defended larger than her size. Mabrey wanted to win for her Connecticut teammate Aaliyah Edwards who couldn’t play in Philadelphia due to a right arm injury.
While the “crash out jar” highlights a side of Mabrey that isn’t universally beloved across the WNBA, its value lies in her openness about growth.
The “crash out jar” has become a motif, something that Mabrey’s fans and the general women’s basketball community can associate her with. It’s become a part of her brand. It has since become a running joke on social media and on television.
During her postgame television interview, Mabrey finally decided where the money from the crash out jar will go. She explained that she’d follow in the footsteps of Paige Bueckers, donating all the proceeds of the jar to a cause that directly helps communities that are dealing with ICE on the ground in Minnesota.
Could this willingness to not take herself so seriously while stressing accountability be a part of how Mabrey writes the next chapter of her pro career? It could be. Her almost 50-point romp in Philadelphia was a preview of what she could become.
“This is kind of the first step for me, just being able to see a 47-point game in my career,” she said. “I’ve never done that, so just letting that fuel me and not limiting the light that I can shine.”
Through reflection and self-awareness, Mabrey has stopped trying to contain what makes her great. The only lid she needs is for her jar.
