When Aliyah Boston was 12 years old, she took a 1,700-mile journey with her sister to their aunt’s home in Massachusetts from the Virgin Islands, hoping to become a good enough basketball player to go to college for free and maybe one day make it to the W.N.B.A.
Boston fulfilled that dream on Monday night at Spring Studios in New York when the Indiana Fever selected her with the first pick in the W.N.B.A. draft. Boston is the University of South Carolina’s second-ever No. 1 pick in the draft; A’ja Wilson was the first, in 2018.