The way we were playing, the way we were dominating, I don’t think any of us were going to lose sleep over our phones. But if I had known what was waiting for us in Oklahoma City, I would have given Kim every piece of technology I owned.
THE LOSS TO LOUISVILLE
When I think about my last college game, the frustration and anger rush to the surface all over again, and my heart starts to race. It’s like I’m still on that court in Oklahoma City, kneeling next to Odyssey Sims, wondering what the hell just happened. I went through so much at Baylor—the highs and lows of basketball, the highs and lows of trying to be myself—but I never imagined my career there would end the way it did. I never thought we would lose to Louisville, or anyone else, in the Sweet Sixteen of the NCAA tournament. We had gone 40-0 my junior year, and we were 34-1 heading into the Louisville game. I wasn’t worried when we were down 10 points at half time, because we had been a strong second-half team all season. We always came back. Kim told us in the locker room, “We dug this hole, and now we need to claw our way out.” And we did. We were actually down 19 to Louisville with about eleven minutes left in the game, and then we made a huge run and took the lead by one point—until the refs called a terrible foul on me with two seconds left, and Louisville hit two free throws to go up again. Even then, I was thinking Odyssey would get the ball and make an amazing half-court shot to win the game.
When O’s desperation heave hit off the backboard, I just froze for a moment. Wait, what? This is it? It’s over? This isn’t happening. I was so angry. I was angry at the refs. I was angry at Louisville. I was angry at myself. I just wanted to burst into tears right that second. But I told myself I had to be strong for my team and for O, because she was going through it hard, down on her knees, crumpled up on the court. She carried us that night, and now I needed to pick her up. I reached down for her arm and said, “C’mon, O, get up. We gotta shake their hands. Let’s just do this, get off this court, and get back into the locker room.”
I had so many emotions walking through that handshake line. I just kept telling myself to stay focused for one more minute so I could walk off the court and finish my college career with dignity. It wasn’t easy. I was really heated. And now I had to walk through that line and congratulate Shoni Schimmel, their guard who had gotten in my face earlier. I felt like I could have slapped half the Louisville team, because that’s what they did to me the whole game, and the refs didn’t call it. But I also knew I didn’t have my best game. I didn’t take over like I should have taken over. I didn’t keep my head in the game. The Louisville players were talking shit at me the whole time, and I let it get to me. This one girl in particular was going off, and finally I just let her have it. I said, “I’m going pro. I’m going to be the number one draft pick. What are you doing after college?” I mean, damn, being cocky like that is not even in my character. I was just so mad.
But, hey, credit Louisville. They had a game plan and stuck to it. They had two or three people hanging on me the whole time, following me everywhere I went on the floor, slapping my arms, elbowing me, pushing me. There is a picture from that game and it shows one of their players actually pressing her hand into my face. It was crazy physical. Their coach, Jeff Walz, was arrogant but smart. He knew I was basically playing with one arm tied behind my back. Ever since my freshman season, when I punched Jordan Barncastle, I had been careful about keeping my emotions in check on the court. Too careful at times. I didn’t always play with the kind of fire I’m capable of—didn’t demand the ball or get more physical when opponents pushed me around—because I was worried about crossing the line again. That’s not something male players have to think about the way women do. We’re judged by a different standard, as if there’s something wrong with us if we lose our temper during the heat of competition. Let me tell you, I spent so much energy during that Louisville game battling my own emotions, it was almost like I didn’t have enough strength left to step up and dominate. When Shoni Schimmel made that unbelievable reverse layup on me, then ran up in my face, yelling, there was nothing I could do. (She didn’t say anything specific; she just let out a wild scream.) Some players probably would have pushed her away—and believe me, I was fuming on the inside. But I just had to pretend like she wasn’t even there.
I did the same thing going through that handshake line. I was a zombie. As soon as I congratulated the last person, as soon as we were done with that line, I could feel the anger spilling over. I walked into the locker room and punched the whiteboard, the one that had our game plan written on it. I punched the lockers. I could have broken everything in that room. I had played by the rules, kept my cool, listened to my coaches at half time when they told me not to retaliate no matter what Louisville did. And what did it get me? I just kept walking to the back of the locker room, into the bathroom, then sunk down in the corner and started bawling. I was crying so hard my body was shaking, and the tears were streaming down my cheeks.
I’ll never forget that moment: sitting on the bathroom floor, my back against the wall, feeling like all the air had been sucked out of me. It was horrible. I actually went out that night and partied. Some people might not understand that, but when you lose a big game, on such a big stage, the last thing you want to do is go stew about it in your hotel room. So I just said screw it and went out with some friends. I wanted to forget everything. Of course, when I finally got back to my room late that night, I couldn’t stop thinking about the game. I cried myself to sleep.
The next morning, everyone was texting me, but I didn’t want to talk to anybody. I deleted my ESPN app from my iPhone and avoided TV. I didn’t want to see the news about the game. On our bus ride to the airport, I put on my Beats headphones and drowned out everybody. It doesn’t happen often, but when I’m feeling like that, there is really nothing anybody can say to make it better. I just need to deal with it myself before I can move on.
AS SOON AS WE LANDED in Texas, Kim told us all to meet in our locker room after we left the airport. Everyone was looking around and wondering, Why are we doing this now? In previous years, we didn’t have our final team meeting until a few days after the end of the season, so we all had a chance to process everything before getting together one last time. But after the loss to Louisville, we headed straight from the plane to the gym, and when we got there, the coaches gave us bags so we could clean out our lockers. Then Kim said to us, “I know I probably won’t see a couple of y’all anymore because you won’t be around.” I felt like those words were meant for me, so I said, “Who are you talking about?” And she looked at me and said, “I know you’ll have things to do, the draft and all that, so you probably won’t be around.”
That stung me a little, the way she said it. She was right about my upcoming schedule—it turned out to be even crazier than I imagined—but I also felt like she was cutting ties with me right then and there, like I wasn’t wanted around the program anymore. I was still reeling from the loss to Louisville, so I just put my head down, cleaned out my locker, and took all my stuff from the gym.
I didn’t set foot in there again for weeks.
TWO DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS
It’s true what they say: winning cures all. At least, it was true for me and Kim at Baylor. Whatever frustrations we had with each other—the mistakes I made, the mistakes she made—all was forgiven after we won the national championship. Maybe it was only temporary amnesia, a four-month truce before we started clashing again at the beginning of my senior year. But when people looked at us, they saw something shiny and good, built on a sturdy foundation. And I can’t help wondering what would have happened if we had won the title again in 2013, if that picture everyone had of us would still look the same way, with the two of us standing together, shoulder to shoulder, celebrating what we had accomplished.
But that’s not what happened.
Cracks existed beneath the surface. And the game against Louisville, with the pressure cranked up, blew those cracks wide open. Before then, it was almost
as if we had each made a silent pact to accept the other person’s flaws in exchange for greatness, dominance, championships. I know I was challenging for Kim off the court, but she made it work because I played hard and helped lift her program to new heights. And while I struggled with some of her decisions, especially how she handled my sexuality, I respected her as a coach. When we stepped onto the court together, we made it work.
Except it didn’t work in the Louisville game. Neither of us held up our end of the bargain. I didn’t deliver the way I usually did, and she got outcoached. We both underperformed. We had created something magical for almost four years, and that night we watched, almost helplessly at times, as it melted away. We were left staring at all our warts and flaws, all the things about each other that drove us crazy. And we didn’t have a national championship, the piece of shiny jewelry, to distract us from that reality. Kim and I were going in two different directions, and the game against Louisville was the fork in the road.
A few days after the loss, Kim tried to call me twice, but I didn’t answer. I was still too raw, and I needed my space, some time to process what had happened and to get over the disappointment. But then I started hearing from some of my teammates that Kim was saying certain things about me, that I wasn’t going to graduate, that I wasn’t going to be around anymore. The way I heard it, I felt like Kim was bad-mouthing me, making it seem as if I was turning my back on the program because I had all these new obligations. Obviously, things get lost in translation, and I didn’t know for sure what Kim had said or how she meant it, but at that point in our relationship, pretty much anything she said was going to send me down the rabbit hole. And once again, I allowed my emotions to get the best of me. I sent Kim a few texts telling her—not so nicely—to stop saying crap about me. (And, yes, I realize I might need to impose a twenty-four-hour rule for myself before I send text messages when I’m upset.)
I wasn’t worried when she didn’t write back. I had been taking her calls and her requests for meetings for four years (longer, actually, dating back to high school), so I just wanted a few days to take a deep breath and do my own thing. I figured we would reconnect at the Final Four, in New Orleans, maybe talk through everything that had happened. I had been named to the All-America team again, so I was scheduled to attend a ceremony and press conference there, not that I was looking forward to it. The last place I wanted to be was New Orleans, because the whole weekend was a reminder of our loss to Louisville, our stunning failure. While my Baylor teammates were as far away from basketball as they could get—except for Odyssey, who was also at the All-America awards—I was sitting on a folding table inside the press conference room at New Orleans Arena, my legs kicking off the sides, as I answered questions from the media for more than fifteen minutes. Guess what they kept asking about? Why did you lose to Louisville? How will the program recover? What’s next for Baylor?
Many of the questions were ones that Kim should have been answering. Almost all college coaches attend the Final Four; it’s basically a women’s basketball convention. And Kim was the coach of the defending national champions, with two players being honored as All-Americans. But Kim wasn’t in New Orleans. I don’t know why she wasn’t there. Maybe she was still angry or embarrassed about the Louisville game. She lost her composure down the stretch, ripping off her jacket at one point, and she blasted the refs in her press conference afterward. I didn’t blame her one bit for that, but she was criticized in the media, and the NCAA later gave her a one-game suspension. Look, all of us were upset about the loss to Louisville, but I thought Kim could have swallowed her pride and joined me and Odyssey in New Orleans. Just one year earlier, Baylor had been the main attraction of the Final Four. So many people came to see us play, to see Kim coach, to see if we could finish the season undefeated. Now we couldn’t even finish the season together. I felt abandoned, like I was no longer important because I was out of eligibility. Everyone kept asking me, “Where’s Kim? How come Kim isn’t here?” I just kept shrugging my shoulders. I didn’t have a good answer for them.
EVERYTHING HAD BEGUN moving so quickly in the weeks after the Louisville game. I signed with an agent, Lindsay Kagawa Colas at Wasserman Media, who represents several WNBA stars, including my Mercury teammate Diana Taurasi and Maya Moore of the Minnesota Lynx. Lindsay’s group works with action sports athletes, too, so that was a cool selling point for me, given my love of longboarding. I also knew I wanted to work with a woman, because I believe strongly in empowering women, and Lindsay understood I wanted to live openly and express myself freely. She totally got it. We agreed that if companies didn’t want to endorse me because of my sexuality or my tattoos, then we didn’t want to work with them anyway. We developed a blueprint for my future, which included a short-term plan, because the turnaround time between the end of the college season and the WNBA Draft is so quick, and it’s crucial to capitalize on that window of relevancy. We were committed to being authentic, and we firmly believed that the right partners would want to work with us because of who I am, not in spite of it. The bottom line is that I don’t want to pretend to be someone I’m not just to make some money. (I was happy the folks at Nike got that message too, signing me as their first openly gay athlete.)
I was still torn over leaving Waco, leaving my friends, but I was eager to show the world the real me, and to talk about more than just basketball or whatever topics Baylor deemed appropriate. I think the main reason I got tired of dealing with the media in college was because I got tired of hearing myself answer the same questions in the same way, over and over and over. I didn’t feel like there was a lot of room to be all that interesting. It got to the point that during my senior year, every time I walked to the podium for media availability, I was hoping someone would finally ask me the big question: Brittney, are you gay? I knew it was never going to happen like that, but I would imagine it anyway, and how I would answer it. Yes! I’m so glad someone finally asked! Yes, I’m gay! Then I would have looked at Kim and watched her jaw drop. I resented those trips to the podium because I knew everyone would ask some version of the same three questions they always asked: What’s your mind-set? Is it tough having a bull’s-eye on your backs? How do you keep from overlooking your opponents? Blah, blah, blah.
I had set my sights on the WNBA while I was still in high school, once I started getting all the media attention and people were saying I was “one of a kind.” Playing professionally became my dream, and the closer I got to the end of my college career, the more I thought about how I would feel hearing my name called at the WNBA Draft. And how I would look. After I signed with Lindsay, we talked about what I wanted to wear for the big occasion. She asked me, “Who do you admire? Whose style do you love?” As I was thinking about it, she mentioned Ellen DeGeneres, and my eyes lit up. Lindsay had a connection with Kellen Richards, the woman who styles Ellen, so she reached out to see if Kellen would be interested in designing an outfit for the draft. It wasn’t an insignificant amount of money to spend, but Lindsay and I felt strongly that the draft was a significant moment for me, because I was stepping forward as my true, authentic self. Kellen put together a stylebook for me so I could pick out things I liked. After we talked it over some more, she created a white tuxedo that I wore with white Chuck Taylor sneakers, and I loved the outfit so much that we worked with Kellen again for the 2013 ESPYs and for my cover shoot with ESPN The Magazine. (I also work with Jamie Steinfeld, a stylist based in Portland, Oregon.)
The morning of the draft, my alarm went off early, like 6 A.M., because I had a long day ahead of me. I was anxious, but mostly excited. The draft was being held on the ESPN campus, in Bristol, Connecticut, and I had a full slate of media obligations before the start of the draft broadcast that night: an appearance on SportsCenter, radio hits, a luncheon with other players and ESPN executives. Finally, toward late afternoon, all the draftees changed into our outfits for the evening; we had about an hour to prep before gathering for photo ops, doing meet and greets, and mingli
ng with our families. My schedule had been packed all morning and afternoon, down to the minute, but now we had open hours to fill before the start of the broadcast. ESPN had set up a hospitality tent for friends and families, filling it with food, circular tables, and big-screen TVs. It almost looked like a wedding reception (perfect for my white tux).
My dad was there with a buddy of his, looking so proud and wearing a new suit of his own. I gave him a big hug. (The trip from Texas would have been too hard for my mom, but they both came to Phoenix later that week for my introductory press conference.) My bros Julio and Nash had flown in from Waco, and I was so excited to see them. They were grinning ear to ear, taking pictures with me and other draftees they had seen play over the years. I looked around at each table. I noticed Notre Dame coach Muffet McGraw was sitting with Skylar Diggins. I saw Tina Martin, Delaware’s coach, with Elena Delle Donne and her family. At my table, Lindsay, my agent, was chatting with Lindsay Gottlieb, the head coach at California, who had flown across the country with one of her assistants to support their star player, Layshia Clarendon. My head was on a swivel as I looked from table to table, expecting to see Kim sitting at one of them. I couldn’t find her, but it was still early and I figured I would see her soon, at least get a chance to say hello before go-time. Whenever the door to that tent opened, I glanced over to see if she was walking inside. Meanwhile, I spent a big chunk of time talking to Texas A&M coach Gary Blair, who was there with his star post player, Kelsey Bone. That gave me a chuckle—good old Gary, still chatting me up, like he was trying to recruit me all over again.
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