Coaches are always looking for different ways to motivate players. When a team is struggling, you have to push one set of buttons, to help the players get some confidence back. When a team is steamrolling everybody, you have to push a different set of buttons, to keep the players from being overconfident. There’s no question Kim pushed a lot of the right buttons with our team that season. But she didn’t always push the right buttons with me. Or maybe the way she went about it reminded me too much of my father. I just know that the push-pull with me and Kim started to get under my skin more during my junior year. And when I think about our run through the NCAA tournament, the game that stands out the most is the one against Tennessee in the Elite Eight, because Kim and I had one of those button-pushing moments.
Most people remember that matchup as Pat Summitt’s last game. She had announced going into the season that she’d been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, so everyone was wondering if the NCAA tourney was her last run as Tennessee’s coach. At the time, of course, we weren’t thinking about that as players; all that mattered was that Tennessee stood between us and a trip to the Final Four. And from what I know about Coach Summitt, she wouldn’t have wanted us looking at it any other way, because her teams always competed hard. They were known for their defensive intensity, and that’s how we’d been winning all season—-just shutting people down.
Women’s basketball fans probably remember something else about that game: I got tossed out. It happened toward the end, when the outcome had already been decided. (We won 77-58.) I was on the bench with Jordan Madden and Terran Condrey, one of our seniors, and there was a little altercation out on the court. Odyssey got tangled up with one of Tennessee’s players, and she landed on the floor in a vulnerable spot. The two of them started jawing at each other, so we walked onto the court—-Jordan and Terran and me—to keep O from getting into any trouble. It’s not like we ran out there looking to fight. When you watch the replay, you can see us hesitate a little; we were just trying to make sure everybody kept their cool. But the NCAA has a rule against leaving the bench, so the three of us got ejected. And Kim was so livid. Right before we got tossed, the refs were looking at the replay, to make sure they got everything right, and Kim went off on us. She was throwing her hands in the air, yelling at us: “That’s the stupidest thing y’all did! You’re probably done now! They’re not gonna let you play the next game!”
That pissed me off. I know she was worried we might get suspended for the next game, at the Final Four, but it was clear we were trying to keep the peace, and the refs could see that on the monitor. They did everything by the book. (Well, except they somehow missed that two Tennessee players had also left the bench.) We didn’t get suspended because none of us went out there fighting. But the refs had to eject us for leaving the bench, which meant we had to walk to the locker room and wait for the game to end before we could come back out on the floor to cut down the nets and celebrate advancing to the Final Four. As you might imagine, that put a damper on things for me. It’s not like I could just run back out on the court and be all happy. And Kim knew it. I was standing there at one point, several feet away from her, while everyone else was whooping it up, and she looked at me and pointed to her cheeks, signaling for me to smile. I just turned my head away from her.
When we all got back to the locker room, she came up to me and said, “You know I had to do that.” She told me she had to yell at us on the court to prove a point. She was always doing that, getting on me in front of everybody and saying, “This team is bigger than Brittney Griner.” But then in private, she would tell me, “I’m not really mad at you, Big Girl. You know how much we need you.” Um, okay. Then what is the point of that exactly? It was all for show? Sometimes I would get in trouble for passing the ball too much. Kim made such a big deal about running the offense through me—and sure, I know my height caused a lot of problems for teams. But I didn’t want anybody thinking I had to have the ball all the time for us to win. And I certainly didn’t need to be reminded that the team was bigger than me. We were all pieces that fit together. So why call me out in front of my teammates if you’re just going to take me aside afterward and downplay the whole thing? Kim has a lot of qualities that I respect, but I can’t stand all that business about putting on a public front. I would understand if she got mad at me for something and stayed mad. That happened, no doubt. It was the mixed messages that made it hard for me to know where she was coming from sometimes.
Maybe that had something to do with everything that was happening off the court. Maybe she worried more about my mind-set than I thought she did. I really don’t know. During a big media session at the Final Four in Denver, the day before we played Notre Dame for the national championship, a reporter asked Kim about all the awful things people said about me on social media and the taunts I heard when we played on the road. It was an interesting moment, for a few different reasons. Up until that point, there hadn’t been much public acknowledgment of all the trolling, all the ugly comments. People are always attacking women’s sports, especially women’s basketball, calling us inferior, comparing us to men, trying to knock us down—all the sexist garbage that women face every day in society. I learned in college that you can’t dwell on it, because the stronger we get, the more threatening we are to those small-minded people. But sometimes it feels like people within women’s sports don’t want to talk about it in public. They just want to put a happy, smiley face on everything (look how far we’ve come!), as if ignoring the sexism and the racism and the homophobia will somehow make it less of a problem. The more that I was in the spotlight, the harder it became for people involved in women’s hoops—players, coaches, fans, media—to pretend that this dark cloud didn’t exist. And to Kim’s credit, she didn’t sidestep it that day. You could hear the passion in her voice when she answered that question and defended me. She was Kim the protective mom, reminding everyone that I’m a real person with real feelings. She said, “This child is as precious as they come,” and that she loved going to work and seeing my face, because I made her happy.
That last part made me laugh a little, because there were plenty of days I did not make Kim happy, and vice versa. We both have a flair for the dramatic, which is another reason I remember that media session in Denver. Don’t get me wrong: I believe Kim meant what she said on that podium. It wasn’t just for show. But at the same time, it reminded me of all that was left unsaid. We could acknowledge, in a general way, that people were questioning my gender, calling me a freak, a man, a female imposter. And yet I couldn’t talk about being gay. Most of the time, I was on autopilot with the media, because I couldn’t really show who I was off the court, not the whole picture. The way I was often portrayed—just a big, fun-loving, goofy kid—felt like a two-dimensional version of the real me.
When we beat Notre Dame to win the title, I celebrated by making “snow angels” in the confetti on the court. There was so much paper, I couldn’t resist dropping down like a kid in the snow. That was pure joy right there, but also a huge release. For one thing, the previous forty-eight hours had been draining, both mentally and physically. You don’t necessarily feel that way when it’s all happening, but it hits you afterward. I’ll admit, during the first half of our semifinal game against Stanford, I was worried we might lose. We were sluggish and out of sync, and they played great defense the whole game, especially on me and Odyssey. Thank God for Terran Condrey, who gave us a huge spark off the bench. She made some big shots early in the second half, and really showed what kind of depth we had as a team. That game was a grind. And as soon as we won, our attention shifted to Notre Dame. Even though we had faced them early in the season, I acted like I knew nothing about their players and needed to watch as much video of them as I could. I felt like I was cramming for an exam, and that DVD was my textbook. I studied their big girl, Devereaux Peters, so much that I saw her in my sleep. She was a high-energy player, just really active around the basket, so I knew I needed to box her out and
try to get her in foul trouble (which I did). I also studied Skylar Diggins, their point guard. She was maybe the only guard in college who could get a floater off over me. She had figured it out in previous games—releasing the ball very quick—so I had to change my footwork and take an extra step to go up and try to block or alter her shot. At one point, I was sitting in my room watching clips, and I texted Odyssey and said, “Hey, we gotta get this thing done.” She wrote back, “We gonna get it. We gonna get it.”
And we did. We pulled away in the second half and won big over Notre Dame. On a personal level, it was special because that was the first real championship I had ever won—not just a conference title, but the first time I had finished a season with a win. Also, I already had been named national Player of the Year that season, so lifting a championship trophy made all the individual awards so much more special. Most of all, winning the national title meant we had accomplished what we had set out to do as a team, and what my class had talked about doing when we all committed to Baylor. We finished our business. And for all the doubts I had earlier in my college career, all the frustration and emotional struggles, I never stopped wanting to bring a championship to Waco, because the campus and the community always supported our team. We also knew how much it meant to Kim, to get that second ring. A lot of people were surprised when Baylor won the national championship in 2005, but everyone expected us to win this time around. And even though we turned that pressure into fuel, it still took its toll. Kim was diagnosed with Bell’s palsy the week before the Final Four. Her facial nerves were messed up. One side of her face was droopy (she couldn’t smile), her hearing was bothering her, and her eyes were really sensitive. She had to wear sunglasses during some of her interviews, which made her look like a celebrity recluse. She joked about it with the media, but it was a visible reminder for everybody, the stress on her face.
Looking back now, I wish I could have stayed on that court longer, making those confetti angels, wiping away all the hard stuff I had dealt with—just enjoying the moment as long as possible. Because once we got back to Waco, there wasn’t much time for me to exhale before all the pressure and all the expectations started building again. There had been a lot of speculation at the Final Four that I might leave Baylor after my junior year and go pro early. I shot that down in Denver and made it clear I wanted to finish college. You can’t relive those four years of your life, and I was looking forward to my senior year.
Little did I know it would be so challenging.
ADVENTURES IN LONGBOARDING
Life was pretty crazy for a while after we won the NCAA championship. Good but crazy. I couldn’t really go anywhere in Waco because people acted like it was the first time they’d ever seen me in person; everybody wanted to stop and say hi or take a picture. When I was a little kid, I loved people. My parents say I used to hug everyone I met. I still love people, most of the time. But Waco is a small place, and it’s not like I blend in when I’m out in public. Just going to class was a challenge. And if I needed something at the store, I would ask somebody to get it for me. That was kind of a drag. I had never imagined myself as being any kind of celebrity. It’s one thing to deal with the media during March Madness, when the spotlight is on us as players, but the level of attention after we got back on campus was pretty intense.
At the same time, though, I was on such a high. I was finally getting a chance to enjoy the ride. And being Brittney Griner definitely had its advantages in Waco. A few weeks after we won the title, I was out with my boys late one night—Nash, his housemate Albert, our friends A.J. and Mikey—and I had the bright idea of longboarding while holding on to the back of Mikey’s car. “We are real skaters,” I said to them. “Let’s just do this and have some fun.” Those guys didn’t need any convincing. So I grabbed the spoiler on Mikey’s Mitsubishi Lancer, along with Mikey, Nash, and Albert; then A.J. got behind the wheel and started driving. We rode around the whole campus like that, cruising down Main Street, University Drive, probably hitting 30 or 40 miles per hour, which feels pretty damn fast when you’re on a board. It was like that scene in Back to the Future 2, when Michael J. Fox is on his hoverboard, riding behind the car—just an insane rush. I think we were so focused on what we were doing, we didn’t even think about anybody seeing us. When we got to the Ferrell Center, we slowed down and decided to head home. It was around 1 A.M. at that point, and we were only a few seconds away from hopping off our boards.
Of course, that’s when I spotted a campus police car sitting in the Ferrell parking lot. I said, “Y’all, that’s a cop over there. Are we gonna stay and let him pull us over, or are we gonna dip?” We knew the guy had probably seen us; it would have been hard to miss us unless he was snoozing. Sure enough, before we even had time to react, he was already coming toward us. Then he threw on his lights and pulled us over. We all got off our boards and just stood there, waiting like a bunch of little kids who got caught running in the halls at school. I was wearing a pair of ripped jean shorts, my Vans, and a sports bra, no shirt, and I wedged myself in behind the bros, hunching over and lowering my eyes. I had one thought in my head: Fuuuuck! The officer didn’t see me at first. I think he thought I was one of the dudes. He walked up and said, “Whatcha guys doing?” But we didn’t say anything because we could tell he was pissed. He looked at us for a few seconds, then said, “This is the most boneheaded thing I’ve seen in a long time. What the heck are y’all thinking?” He paused and shook his head. “I need to see some identification from everybody.”
I had to lift my head when I gave him my license. He squinted a little to read it, and then his eyes got wide. He looked up at me and said, “And you? Does Coach know you’re out here?”
That is one of the more comical questions I’ve ever heard, now that I think about it. “Well, sir, she knows I like to longboard,” I said, all sheepish-like. “She just doesn’t know how I do it exactly.”
He shook his head again and said, “You just won a national championship, and this is what you’re doing?” He didn’t even check the other IDs after that. All he said was, “Put the boards in the back, get in the car, and go home.” I had been pretty nervous up until that point, because when he told us how boneheaded we were being, that’s when it finally hit me, like, Oh yeah, that was a really stupid thing we did. But as soon as he let us off the hook, I felt this giant wave of relief. “Yes, sir,” I said, trying to look as serious as possible, while in my head I was like, Hell yes! And then he said, “Y’all get the gold star for the night—for the month, actually.” That’s when I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. I mean, what we did was reckless. DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME. But the fact that we were dumb enough to do it, and that we walked away without getting hurt and without getting in trouble? I couldn’t help cracking up about it afterward, at the absurdity of it all. The guys kept saying, “Damn, we’re glad you were with us, B, because we would have been toast otherwise.” It’s like they had forgotten that I was the one who had the crazy idea in the first place.
I WOULD EVENTUALLY pay the price for pushing the limits on my longboard. And everyone would find out about it. We rode a lot that spring, me and the boys, for hours at a time. We liked to hit the parking garages around campus—take the elevator up, then ride down. Nothing too crazy. But one day in early May, a couple of weeks after our late-night stunt with Mikey’s car, the fun came to an end. There is one particular spot, in the bookstore parking garage, that’s more challenging. The ramp to go up is really steep, which means you pick up more speed on the way down. Naturally, we decided to ride it. Mikey went down first and barely made it around the first turn at the top. I thought about it for a few seconds and said, “Okay, I can do it.” But I walked halfway down the ramp first, so I could start from the middle and keep my speed under control. Unfortunately, that didn’t help. Almost as soon as I got going, I could tell I was heading for a nasty spill if I tried to swing that turn. I shouted, “I’m not gonna make it!” And then I jumped off the board. But I was
going so fast, I couldn’t stop running. I must have looked like a cartoon character, just a big blur of arms and legs. I almost went headfirst into the curb, but I somehow managed to stay on my feet and threw my hands up to brace myself as I ran into the wall. My right hand—my shooting hand—absorbed most of the impact, and my wrist bent back at an awkward angle.
I knew right away something was wrong. It hurt like hell. I dropped down to the ground, holding my wrist, yelling and cussing. I said to the guys, “We have to go back to the car.” So we all got on our boards—I wasn’t thinking too clearly, obviously—and when we started to go, I said, “I can’t do it. I just can’t.” I took my shirt off and wrapped it around my wrist to keep it still. The pain was getting worse by the second. Then I told the guys, “Y’all go get the car and pick me up. Grab my phone, call the trainer.”
At first we couldn’t get in touch with anyone because Kim was attending an awards banquet in New York City and most of the staff was gone. But one of our assistant coaches, Rekha Patterson, was around, and she met us at the hospital. Julio and Nash waited with me. The x-rays confirmed what I already knew: my wrist was broken. I also knew I had to call Kim. Rekha had already told her, but I still had to check in. And I was dreading it. I thought Kim was going to rip me. Hell, I probably would have ripped me. I made sure I took my pain medicine before I called her, so at least I would be drowsy in case she started going off on me. But she didn’t do that at all. She just said, “Big Girl, I hear you broke your wrist.” She was sympathetic. Of course, she also said, “You know, if this had happened during the season, you would have hurt your team, too. I’m glad you have plenty of time to heal and rehab it. Do whatever you need to do to get better.”
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