Delaware native Elena Delle Donne takes viewers 'Beyond the Game' in YouTube series

Elena Delle Donne just wanted some sourdough bread from San Francisco to dip in her chicken noodle soup. Who could blame her? It was December and it was cold.

Problem was, she was sitting in a car in New York after closing out 2020 with a surgery, and it was just the anesthesia talking.

Those are the moments the Delaware native and WNBA star of the Washington Mystics decided to share with fans when she launched "Beyond the Game," a YouTube series  last month.

The docu-series will take viewers inside her personal life during the coronavirus pandemic. 

Delle Donne, a two-time league MVP who last year signed a new four-year contract with the Mystics, opted out of the 2020 WNBA season due to concerns about the virus because of her chronic Lyme disease. 

In a first-person article for The Players' Tribune, Delle Donne opened up about her health and how the WNBA "hurt" her when the league denied her request for a health exemption.

STORY: WNBA MVP Delle Donne says league denied her medical waiver

The docu-series was the idea of Delle Donne's wife, Amanda, she told Just Women's Sports in an April interview. The series begins with the couple driving to New York in preparation for Delle Donne's second back surgery.

Episode three, which was released Monday, features the day of the surgery and is mostly Delle Donne's musings in the car while coming off anesthesia.

Episode 3 is below. The others are available on YouTube.

“This series certainly goes through right after surgery, when I’m a little loopy, through all the different progressions and ways that I’ve tried to get back, like swimming,” Delle Donne told Just Women's Sports.

“There’s just a lot of silliness through it all, but I think people will really enjoy it.”

Delle Donne, a former Ursuline Academy and University of Delaware All-American, is a four-time Delaware Sportswriters & Broadcasters Association Athlete of the Year.

She was named WNBA MVP for the second time in 2019 and sparked Washington to its first league title. She was also league MVP in 2015 with the Chicago Sky, a year before she was on the U.S. Olympic team that won the gold medal.

Chicago drafted her second overall in 2013 after Delle Donne closed her Delaware career by leading the Blue Hens to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament.

Contact reporter Jeff Neiburg at jneiburg@delawareonline.com. Follow him on Twitter @Jeff_Neiburg.