Sabrina Ionescu Parents: Meet Liliana Blaj, Dan Ionescu

Sabrina Elaine Ionescu is an American professional basketball player for the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA)’s New York Liberty. She is the daughter of Liliana Blaj and Dan Ionescu.

Her father Dan Ionescu fled communist Romania around the time of the 1989 revolution in search of political asylum in the United States. Dan ran a limousine service in Northern California at the time, where he had chosen to relocate because he had several extended family members there.

Sabrina initially took up a basketball when she was about three years old. She has a twin brother named Edward (“Eddy”). Eddy played basketball at City College of San Francisco before transferring to Oregon, where he was a lone student during the 2018-19 academic year before joining the Ducks men’s basketball team in 2019-20.

Sabrina Ionescu was a member of the Oregon Ducks during her college career. She is the NCAA’s all-time career triple-double leader, the Pac-12 Conference’s all-time assist leader, and the only NCAA Division I basketball player to record 2,000 points, 1,000 assists, and 1,000 rebounds in a career. The New York Liberty selected Ionescu with the first overall pick in the 2020 WNBA draft on April 17, 2020.