In My Skin

by Brittney Griner

  The hours whittled down to minutes, and eventually it was time to leave the tent and walk to the studio where the draft would take place. As everyone expected, the Phoenix Mercury took me with the No. 1 pick. But much to my surprise, I was overwhelmed by the moment—I was so happy, I was speechless—and I stumbled through an on-camera interview. When that was done, an ESPN publicity staffer escorted me from the studio to the media press conference, which was on a different floor.

  And that’s when I happened to cross paths with Kim. We were walking along a hallway, and she seemed hurried. She quickly explained she was leaving, that she had a plane to catch. (I found out later from various people that she had entered the hospitality tent right before the draft started, then did an on-camera interview after Phoenix selected me.) She said congratulations and wished me good luck, and we posed for a few awkward photos. The whole interaction didn’t last more than a minute or two. And it was only after she walked away that I thought to myself, Wait, didn’t she take a charter plane here? (We always flew charters at Baylor.) I put the pieces of the puzzle together, and I came to the conclusion that she was leaving because she didn’t want to stay, for whatever reason. It felt like she had shown up for the cameras, not for me. I remember walking away confused, as one of the Mercury staffers patted me on the back.

  There is no right side or wrong side when it comes to Kim and me, just a lot of complicated feelings. I still love her. And I think she still loves me. But that interaction we had at the WNBA Draft, which happened simply by chance, would end up being the only time we spoke all spring, all summer, and into the fall, until just before I left to play overseas. I still text regularly with many people at Baylor, including some of the players, a couple of the assistant coaches, and most of the support staff. They would check in to wish me luck before Mercury games or congratulate me after big wins. My connection to the program still feels strong, even if Kim isn’t at the center of it for me anymore. Whatever differences we have, whatever the distance between us, I’ll always be grateful for what she taught me, and proud of what we achieved at Baylor.

  We accomplished so much together.

  WELCOME TO THE PROS

  My Mercury teammates are great. I lived in the same apartment complex as Lynetta Kizer, Alexis Hornbuckle, and Charde Houston, and we all clicked right from the beginning of training camp. We just make each other laugh. They love to give me a hard time about my eating habits. Whenever I tell them I’m going to McDonald’s, they say, “No! You need to get real food!” And I say, “That is real food in my book.” At Jack-in-the-Box, I order the extreme sausage sandwich, with meat and cheese, no egg. I get it every time I go, no matter what time of day it is. I normally get two, but if I’m stopping there on my way to a game, I just order one sandwich, with an orange juice. I like things I can grab on the go—fast food, candy (love Skittles!), things that aren’t exactly healthy. I’ve always been a picky eater. I found a few things I liked as a kid, and I’ve just stuck with them. My mom cooks the best ham ever. I also love steak. There’s a place in Phoenix called Hillstone, and they have this amazing Hawaiian rib eye. It’s got a little pineapple taste to it. Mmm . . . so good. But I know my teammates (and my agent) are right: I need to think more about the kinds of food I’m putting into my body. I’m trying to give vegetables a chance, so I’ll order rice with peas and carrots in it. Baby steps.

  I love the freedom of being a pro. I’m in charge of me now. Yes, more freedom also means more responsibility, but I’m learning how to handle it, even if the lessons are more expensive. During the first two months of my rookie season in Phoenix, the only reason I had been fined was for getting a couple of technical fouls. I could live with that, because I’ve come to realize it’s better for me to show more emotion on the court, not less. Also, our best player, Diana Taurasi, had to pay some fines for jawing with the referees, so I felt like I was in good company. (She was actually suspended for two games by the league after getting her ninth technical of the season, which tells you what she thinks about the officiating.)

  But on August 8, 2013, a little more than midway through our season, I got a serious introduction to life as a professional basketball player. The day before, I had bought a new iPad, and I spent the evening like most people would: playing with my new toy. Before I went to sleep, I set the alarm on my iPad and left it on my bedside table. I had to be at the arena at 8:30 in the morning for treatment with our trainer. I’d been battling knee and ankle injuries all season, missing games here and there, playing limited minutes, and I spent hours in the training room, trying to get the swelling under control. My alarm was supposed to go off at 7:45, which would give me a few minutes to snooze before getting up, throwing on a pair of shorts and a tank top, and making the quick drive to the arena, with wiggle room to spare. I hadn’t been late for anything all season.

  At some point that morning, Cherelle rolled over and said, all groggy and half awake, “Hey, what time is it? I think you need to get up.” I heard her and mumbled an answer, saying I had set the alarm, and then we both drifted back to sleep. But she woke up again a little bit later. “This doesn’t seem right,” she said. “There’s too much light outside.” I sat up and looked at my iPad: It was 9:04 A.M.

  “Oh my God!” I jumped up and scurried around the bedroom, collecting my things and tossing them into a bag. I was going so fast, I forgot my ankle was sore. Before I bolted out the door, I checked my iPad, and that’s when I realized I had set the alarm for the wrong day. Such a rookie mistake. I flew to the arena, walking in the door an hour late, around 9:30. Our trainer looked at me, shook her head, and said, “I have to fine you. I’m sorry. I hate to do it, but those are the rules.”

  I wasn’t worried about the money (it was a few hundred bucks), but I was disappointed in myself for making her wait. “Nah, I understand,” I told her. “I’m the one who messed up.”

  Meanwhile, I had no idea that this was only the first twist in what would end up being a very long day.

  A FEW MINUTES AFTER I got settled in to start treatment, our team president, Amber Cox, walked into the room. It wasn’t unusual for her to be around, but what struck me was the look on her face, because she seemed upset. A second later, she said, “Everybody, go to the weight room right now.” I walked into the weight room with a few of my teammates, and we waited for the others. Some of them were in the locker room, some already on the court shooting. Once we were all together, Amber told us to head to the film room that the guys, the Phoenix Suns, use. I thought that was strange. Why are we switching rooms now? I’m sure some of my older teammates figured out what was going on, but I was totally in the dark. Then the team owner, Robert Sarver (who also owns the Suns), walked into the film room, and that got everyone’s attention. I’m thinking to myself, What is going on here? I looked around and saw the entire team was in the room, except for our head coach, Corey Gaines, and one of our assistants, Earl Cureton, who worked with me and the other post players.

  Right about then, Mr. Sarver addressed us. “We let Corey go,” he said. “We’re getting a new coach, and he’ll be in today.” He went on to remind us that coaches are measured by how their teams produce, and we hadn’t been producing the kind of results that were expected of us entering the season. We were 10-11 at the time, and inconsistent, losing to teams we should beat.

  I had never experienced a coaching change before. At Baylor, Coach Mulkey was like a celebrity, and the program was so strong that I couldn’t even begin to imagine her getting fired. Now I was sitting in that film room, trying to wrap my head around the news about Corey and Earl. My first emotion was disappointment, because I really liked both those guys, especially for who they are as people. Our team had been dealing with injuries, but I just kept thinking we needed to get on a roll and everything would work itself out. Obviously, management decided we needed a change, a different approach, to turn things around, and I could understand why when I really thought about it. My mind flashed back to our most recent game,
a loss to the Seattle Storm, and how Corey had told us in the locker room beforehand, “They really want us to beat Seattle.” He was trying to create a greater sense of urgency. But I don’t think any of us knew just how serious it was—that if we didn’t win, he would lose his job. He was in his sixth season as head coach, and the Mercury had won the WNBA championship with him in 2009. I just didn’t see it coming at all, Corey being fired.

  After the owner gave us the news, he asked, “Who’s the captain?” Nobody said anything, because Corey had never officially named anyone captain. But Diana Taurasi—everybody calls her Dee—was always the one to talk with the referees at half-court before the start of our games, so Mr. Sarver looked to Dee and asked her to speak. She stood up. “We hate to see Corey and Earl go, but we also know you’re right,” she said. “This is a business. And we aren’t winning.”

  We had started the season 0-3, which was a completely new experience for me. During my last two seasons at Baylor, our record was 74-2. So in about one week with the Mercury, I had dealt with more losing than in the previous two years combined. Wow. I didn’t know how to handle it. Losing? What is losing? What am I doing wrong? And then I got hurt—first I sprained my left knee, then I rolled my right ankle—which was also a new experience for me. At Baylor, I didn’t miss a game in four years, except for the two I sat out after punching Jordan Barncastle.

  As we left the arena that day, I think we all knew it was time to look in the mirror. Corey had an up-tempo, run-and-gun style of play that we enjoyed, but we weren’t accountable enough, especially on defense. We needed more discipline. I already felt like my first few months in Phoenix had been a crash course in life as a pro. But that meeting in the film room was when it really hit home for me, when I learned what happens when you don’t produce.

  Someone always pays the price.

  EVEN BEFORE COREY WAS FIRED, I had gotten an interesting look at some of the behind-the-scenes business decisions that are important to the league. The one that really sticks out was a meeting that took place during my trip to Connecticut for the WNBA All-Star Game, at Mohegan Sun. Even though I had missed a bunch of games because of injuries, the fans voted me into the game, as the starting center for the Western Conference. I was really looking forward to playing, but my knee had other ideas, and the Mercury didn’t want to take any chances. The league still wanted me to take part in All-Star weekend, though, because it’s an important time to market our sport, and also a chance to hold meetings with a lot of the key players. So the WNBA flew me to Connecticut. (And by the way, for anyone who thinks life as a pro is glamorous for female ballers, I have some news: we fly coach class, and I was in a middle seat, missing those Baylor charter planes.)

  The day before the game, in one of the conference rooms at the Mohegan Sun hotel, league executives showed us various designs under consideration for the new uniforms they’re hoping to unveil for the 2015 season. But there was one problem: we didn’t like what we saw. Apparently the idea is to come up with something more “appealing” to fans. What that means, of course, is that the designs were an obvious attempt to create something more traditionally feminine, to show our bodies in a way that will attract more men. Everything was tighter, more streamlined, and the shorts were even shorter than the ones we wear now. (I wore longer shorts in college.) There was actually an option to wear leopard-print tights beneath our shorts. I can probably think of a few women in the league who might like that look, but the bottom line is that the uniforms we saw won’t flatter a lot of our players. We have some big girls in the WNBA, lots of different body types. A razorback jersey, essentially a track outfit, doesn’t really work for a woman who is six foot four and 210 pounds. Not everybody in this league is stick-thin; most of us aren’t. We care more about comfort on the court than sex appeal.

  The league is trying to be edgier, but it feels like the marketing folks are still chasing a certain kind of fan—young men—who have never really watched the WNBA. (The fact that our league is supported by the NBA probably has something to do with that.) If we want to be edgier, we should focus more on finding clever ways to embrace the people who are more likely to attend our games, like the LGBT community, which has always been an important part of our audience. Heck, if you go to one of our Mercury games, you see all kinds of people in the stands: older folks, kids, gay men, straight men, lesbians, straight women, African Americans, Asians. What you don’t see is the typical white-dude mainstream sports fan who shows up at football games wearing his favorite player’s jersey. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) Those guys don’t care about women’s basketball. So why do we keep trying to make them care? Not everyone has the same definition of sexy. And there’s nothing sexy at all about having to wear something you don’t want to wear.

  Anyway, we were asked for our opinions in this meeting, and I didn’t hold back. I said I thought the uniforms didn’t work—not just the way they looked, but the way they felt, too. The top half of the jersey, up by the collarbone, was made from a different material than the bottom half, like an old-fashioned mesh, and while that might sound cool, it just doesn’t absorb sweat. Also, it was see-through and thin. One hard foul down in the post would rip the material in half. (I suppose that would get more people watching us.) Other players voiced similar opinions. We were given a chance to try on the sample uniforms—I did it to be funny—but Diana Taurasi just shook her head and said, “I’m going to spend my summers on the beach in Hawaii while you’re all wearing those things. Have fun.”

  On the morning of the All-Star Game, the players had breakfast with WNBA president Laurel Richie. She wasn’t in the meeting the day before, when we saw the designs, so at one point she came up to me at breakfast and asked me what I thought about the uniforms. I told her, “I don’t like them. They don’t look like basketball uniforms anymore.”

  She got it. I think Laurel knew we weren’t going to like those designs. They’re still a work in progress, and hopefully our feedback will lead to something most of us can be happy with. We understand the need for a fresh look, but that doesn’t mean we need to reinvent the wheel here. We’ve grown up playing in classic-style uniforms, so we’re just looking for a functional, flexible design that allows each player to embrace and reflect her certain style—like you see in baseball, with some guys wearing their uniform pants long and baggy, and other guys going with the old-school, high-sock look. I like long, baggy shorts, and so do a lot of other players; some women like shorter shorts. The point is for us to be comfortable. Because you know what looks good on a basketball court? Players who are going all out, battling hard, doing everything they can to win.

  A DOG NAMED DYLAN

  I spent most of my first WNBA summer sharing my apartment with Cherelle before she returned to school at Baylor. We even adopted a dog together—at least temporarily. But I’m not sure Relle would use the word we because she thought I bought the dog for myself. As I’ve mentioned, I grew up with big dogs, and I thought about getting a pit bull when I left Baylor. But Relle wasn’t much of a dog person before we met and didn’t think she could handle such an intense breed right away, so we decided to compromise and start with a small dog. She looked around online and found one she thought she might like. Naturally, it was the tiny kind that you can fit into a teacup. I said I would buy it for her birthday, but once we officially decided to go ahead with it, that dog wasn’t available anymore. In the meantime, I had been looking online too, and I found another dog, a miniature schnauzer with a chocolate coat. Diana’s dog, Messi, is a mini schnauzer, and I thought it was kind of a cool breed. (He is named after soccer star Lionel Messi, because Dee is a huge soccer fan and her dad is from Argentina, like Messi.) When I asked Dee about her experience raising Messi the dog, she raved about how awesome he was.

  So that’s how it all began: the saga of Dylan, “cousin” of Messi. A couple of days before Cherelle’s birthday, I bought Dylan from a breeder. He came with that name, and I thought it was cool, so I kept
it. He was only about twelve weeks old, just old enough to go home with his new owner. I arranged to pick him up in Mesa, Arizona. Relle and I got into my truck and drove to the meeting spot. Everything seemed fine. I thought we were both happy to be adopting this puppy. After we collected Dylan, I climbed back into the driver’s seat and put him on my lap. He was no more than five pounds. As we were pulling away, though, Relle suddenly burst into tears. I had no idea what was happening. That’s when she told me she had been really excited about adopting a dog of her own, and she felt like I had gone back on my word. She said, “You bought yourself my birthday gift!” And she was leaning as far away from me as possible, almost like she wanted to climb out the window.

  At this point, I just wanted to get the three of us home as quickly as possible. I was trying to make things right, but I kept saying all the wrong things, like asking Relle if we should stop at PetSmart, so we could get some stuff for Dylan. I thought maybe she would find it fun to buy him a bed and food, as a way for the two of them to start bonding. She couldn’t believe I thought a visit to PetSmart would solve the problem. It sounds silly now, like most arguments do in hindsight, but she was really upset at the time, and I just wanted to make it better.

  I was in the HOV lane, cruising along, not paying attention to my speed. All I wanted was to get home. But about halfway there, I saw flashing lights in my rearview mirror—and I panicked. Instead of pulling out of the HOV lane, across the other lanes, and idling on the right-hand shoulder, which is what I obviously should have done, I just pulled over onto the left side and turned off the engine. My truck was pinned up against the wall, with all the oncoming traffic zooming past us on the other side. The police officer was not happy with me for that. It was already bad enough that he clocked me going so fast. (Let’s just say it was fast enough that I got summoned to show up in court.) I squeezed out of the front seat and met him behind the car, because the space was so tight I didn’t think he could make it to my window.