But behind the decision to trade our #1 pick or not, even the fans could see that the players began communicating better on the court and making the extra unselfish passes necessary to build a championship team without losing the individual heart and drive it took to be great. They chalked up their first-ever 23-win season, the first regular-season Western Conference Championship. At the same time, the kids and I flew to Madrid, where Dean Smith, Bill Russell, and I would become the first Americans to be inducted into the FIBA Hall of Fame. It was an enormous honor, but the whole time I hated the thought of missing a play-off game. We flew back to Phoenix in time for game 4 in which a last-minute shot by Cappie Pondexter forced a decisive Game 5. And though on the road, in 2007, at long last, the Mercury clinched their very first WNBA Championship, beating out the favored and more playoff-experienced Detroit Shock. Detroit’s coach, Bill Laimbeer, tipped his hat. We had beat him, and on his home turf. It was another WNBA first.
If I’d been juggling before, now I felt like I was juggling on a unicycle. But at least I was on a peak.
The following June, I found myself in the East Garden of the White House. President George W. Bush had invited the Mercury in celebration of the previous year’s championship. I had met him several times in the 80s when he was part owner of the Texas Rangers. They’d come into Chicago to play the White Sox and he’d met with Don.
I brought D.J. with me. He was attending Arizona State and interning for the Mercury and the Suns. The President had asked him to stand during his presentation—he wanted to see if D. J. resembled Don as much as he’d heard. “He does kinda look like the big right hander,” he said before proceeding with his congratulation speech to the team.
Next, it was my turn. “Mr. President, we know your support for the Phoenix Mercury is genuine because of the influence of the women in your life.”
“Yes,” he said.
“All first ladies—your graceful mother, your classy wife …”
“Thank you…”
“…your very strong-willed daughters.” When I said this, everybody laughed—as I expected they would. The twins had recently been featured in the news as big-time party-girls. They were just displaying typical, (some may have said irresponsible) teenage behavior. It was harmless, unless your dad happened to be the president.
“That’s why my hair is white,” he quipped, and again there was a big laugh. Up until that point, his standard response to the press’ questions about his daughters had been, “That’s why my mother’s hair is white,” but he’d obviously rethought the wisdom of that, deciding to make himself the butt of the joke, instead. After all, he was playing to a primarily female crowd.
Clearly, the leader of the free world enjoyed making people laugh. I’d met his father and mother with Don when Bush, Senior was in the White House. Don had known all of the presidents from the Kennedys on up, and as an Olympian I’d met President Ford. Now, however, I was here with the Mercury, and I couldn’t have been prouder. I continued my speech, and then Diana Taurasi and Cappie Pondexter, our team captains and two fellow Olympians, presented him with a Phoenix Mercury jersey and a replica of our championship banner.
The president finished and came over to say hello. When D.J. went to shake his hand, the President smiled, took D.J.’s palm, closed the fingers, and gave him a little fist bump. He was laid back and friendly, and it might have been my imagination, but it was almost as though he sensed that D.J. had had to act like a grown up for far too long, and he wanted him to relax and enjoy himself, at least for an afternoon. The three of us must have spoken for a good fifteen minutes before his security finally came up and took him away.
Afterward, D.J. and I headed back to our hotel, the Mohegan Sun in Connecticut. The team had a game that night. The hotel’s casino had about a half-dozen shops and boutiques, one of which was filled with celebrity memorabilia. Something of Don’s was there, but that’s not what caught my eye. In the window, there was a framed picture of Mother Teresa with a letter written and signed by her.
“Mom, we have to get that for Papa,” D.J. said the moment he saw it. Mother Teresa had been one of Papa’s greatest inspirations.
Back in the 80s, former LSU basketball coach, Dale Brown, had arranged a meeting between Papa and Mother Teresa when she was in California, but Papa had fallen sick. Dale loved him, as so many of the coaches and players did, and he knew how much the meeting would have meant. Papa had never asked for anything. He didn’t need anything. But I knew how much he regretted not being able to meet her that time. I hoped this would help. I couldn’t wait to get home to give it to him. He had far more yesterdays than tomorrows, yet he lived each day as his masterpiece. It had always been his credo.
I thought about Papa’s philosophy that July, as I left for the Beijing Olympics. This time I brought the kids with me. The flight was long, and when we finally arrived, the room was small. The four of us had to stay in one hotel room. I had no problem sharing a bathroom. I was used to that having grown up in a big family. But for the kids it was something new. Drew and I shared the bed, while the boys slept in a bed and a roll-away. The accommodations couldn’t take the shine off our thrill to be in Beijing. The eyes of the world had turned to China, which was proving to be the new superpower while billing itself as the best of the old and the new. Beijing was every bit as metropolitan and high tech as I’d heard. I’d also heard about the choking smog, and that was no lie either.
We’d only been there a few days when Drew complained about her throat hurting. She had tonsillitis earlier and now I was afraid it might be back. She didn’t want to miss any of the sightseeing, though, especially The Great Wall. She knew this might be her only opportunity to visit China, so she came out with us every day and was a great sport. But the air quality was so noxiously bad in Beijing, especially during the summer, that a year earlier there had been speculation in the U.S. press about whether or not some of the events would need to be postponed. Now factories were closed, construction slowed and it was reported that one million of the city’s 3.3 million cars were banned from the roads by China’s government as a precaution.
They had spent nearly 40 billion dollars to remake the capital in anticipation of being on the world stage. Image was important. The basketball games (which were very popular in China, because of Yao Ming’s participation in the NBA) were indoors, so the players were more or less unaffected. But the highly anticipated track and field events took place in the Bird’s Nest national stadium. You might be able to disguise the pollution for the cameras, but with over 550,000 foreign visitors and about 22,000 accredited members of the media descending upon the city, there were bound to be plenty of people who noticed athletes complaining about the air quality—athletes, and visitors recovering from tonsillitis.
Toward the end of the trip Drew was really sick. When I looked inside her mouth, her tonsils were so swollen that I couldn’t see the back of her throat. We found the nearest clinic in Beijing where a doctor who spoke some English gave her an herbal remedy which, luckily, worked right away.
All in all, it was a great opportunity for the kids. The Opening Ceremonies were some of the most spectacular I’d ever seen. The U.S. Women’s basketball team had an excellent showing by defeating Australia 92-65 to take the Gold, in large part thanks to a team of WNBA players twelve deep, as compared to Australia’s seven WNBA players. Among the U.S. team were two of the Phoenix Mercury, Diana Taurasi and Cappie Pondexter. And three-time Olympian Dawn Staley, a point guard for the Houston Comets, was selected to carry the flag. That another woman, and basketball player no less, was selected to carry our country’s flag made me proud.
Back home, the Suns were continuing to dominate. Two-time MVP, Steve Nash, could knock down shots from any point on the court, and as one of the best passers in the league, he was one of the NBA’s big ticket draws. But it was the WNBA Fever - Mercury Finals that changed the way the country was coming to view the women’s game. The Indiana franchise had been hemorrhaging
cash so badly that there was talk that it might fold. Pacers President, Larry Bird bought $5,000 worth of tickets for the fans in support of the team, and then Steve Kerr, GM of the Suns, bought $5,000 when they were playing in Phoenix. All of the Finals were sold out.
Away games three and four of the finals had produced full houses of over 18,000, giving the Fever a much-needed financial infusion. On the Mercury team—in the bleachers during games, and in management—we all felt it was a historic series. The New York Times agreed. A piece appeared in early October likened the WNBA finals between Mercury and the Fever to the Lakers - Celtics rivalry of the 1980s, with Diana Taurasi in place of Magic Johnson, and Tamika Catchings instead of Larry Bird.
It had been thirty years since I’d felt like a woman without a team, since I’d spent three days playing with some of the NBA’s best only to find myself, ultimately, playing with ladies who could barely pass a ball. Now women’s basketball had finally arrived. I was contacted by a Sports Illustrated reporter asking me for my take on whether a woman might finally play in the NBA.
NBA Commissioner, David Stern, had been quoted saying that he thought it was a good possibility that we would see a woman playing in the NBA within the next ten years. That idea had been heresy in 1979. Suddenly, with the way the finals had played out, the commissioner was suggesting that it was likely. The irony, of course, was that now that women finally had a league of their own, playing on a level to par the men, they didn’t need to go out for the NBA (although there were and are all sorts of issues as to the huge disparity in compensation.)
When the Mercury won the Championship again in 2009 in another exciting five game series, we were invited to the White House a second time. This time, I brought my daughter, Drew, to meet President Obama. He didn’t spend nearly as long with the team as President Bush had, but I suppose the world had changed so much in that short period and he had a busy day ahead. I will say I was disappointed that he didn’t spend more time with us.
After he left the podium, the president took a group shot on stage with the team. As he left the stage, Corey Gaines, now our head coach, jumped off the stage and ran up to the president, rousing security. “My mom would kill me if I didn’t get a picture with you.”
After half-scaring the President to death, Corey got the photo he knew would make his mother proud and explained that his mother was also from Hawaii. Hopefully, it was a bit of levity for a man dealing with a country in turmoil.
The crash in the housing industry and resultant bank failures were being felt far and wide and as near as Vero Beach. The Dodgers spring training camp for sixty-one years was suddenly no more. Florida’s 220 acres of practice fields with their intersection of Vin Scully Way and Don Drysdale Drive became an antique over night. The new owners, the McCourts, thought it would be more cost-efficient to build a new facility in Arizona rather than try to coordinate the team’s long trek cross country from L.A. to Florida.
Vin Scully called Dodgertown his “memory factory,” and I’d been taking the kids back every year as a way of staying in touch with their father’s memory. The final game was set for March 17, the traditional St. Patrick Day game where the players wore green caps and ran around green bases. After that, the camp was moving to Glendale, a suburb outside of Phoenix, where the Dodgers would share a training site with the Chicago White Sox. While it was certainly closer for me and I would be able to reconnect with all the friends Don and I had on the White Sox team, it just wasn’t the same. They didn’t even serve Dodger Dogs! But still, it would be convenient, and that was a good thing.
When I looked at my calendar these days, it was like a completed crossword puzzle—no empty spaces. Of course, I loved being busy and had gone at life that way from the beginning. I didn’t want to play just one sport, I wanted to play them all. While it was a great way to avoid burn out, I think there was also this sense that time was always running out. Do as much as you can Annie, for as long as you can, especially when you’re relatively young. Not working hard while you still had your health seemed to me like an athlete not competing in her prime—it was squandering leverage. After all, life was short. And even when it wasn’t, it was still too short.
On June 4, 2010, John Robert Wooden died. He was ninety-nine years old. We all knew it was coming. He was looking forward to it. He had been waiting a long time to see his Nellie again. The man who started out his career known as Rubberneck for his dives on the hardwood at Purdue had ended it as The Greatest Coach Ever. The man who had instilled the necessary discipline and knowledge to what would become some of the most talented, celebrated athletes in the world, had now left it. He’d been adored by athletes, and yet his heroes were not sport stars, but icons of integrity. His famous Pyramid of Success was based on acting with integrity and kindness. Even though I know he would have never described himself that way, honorable is exactly how I and so many others shall always remember him.
My brother, Dave, along with my freshman coach, Kenny Washington, and too many others to list, attended his funeral. After the services, they spoke for a while and I overheard Kenny tell Dave that Papa used to quietly come into our practices once in a while and sit high up in the rafters where no one could see him so he could watch me. “I never told her.” Kenny said, then added, “Wooden may have gotten Kareem, but I got Annie.”
The truth was, we all got Papa.
The same year that John Wooden passed, I was made President of the Mercury. It was a strange feeling when I got the news. I picked up the phone to call Papa and share it with him, and then I remembered he was gone.
In addition to my promotion, I continued to act as GM and retained my responsibilities as Vice President of the Suns. I also continued to broadcast for Fox and do motivational speaking engagements when my schedule permitted. In 2012, I broadcast the Olympics women’s games for NBC. But, now, as priorities change I’ve decided to relinquish the positions of President and GM to remain V.P. for both the Mercury and the Suns, thereby allowing me more time to focus on other things, including broadcasting.
Sometimes it’s hard to keep all the balls in the air, but in terms of gaining insights for our players—having had the various perspectives of GM, VP, and President, and the ability to go between the NBA and the WNBA—it has been invaluable. In terms of broadcasting, my day-to-day interaction with the players keeps me in the loop with everything from new tricks, to new terms, to new trades. But I’ll still always believe that knowing the fundamentals trumps everything.
Of course, the hardest job is still being mom. The kids are all off to college, doing what they love, and trying to find themselves. I know they’ve enjoyed a certain amount of independence over the years, but I also know they’ve felt abandoned at times, and that is a guilt I will carry with me forever. Still, I try to remind myself that because of baseball and basketball, they’ve had the opportunities to travel, to meet people in sports, entertainment, and politics. They realize, firsthand, the importance of treating others with respect, and of always trying to give back. Most importantly, they’ve learned to be grateful for what the Good Lord has provided for all of us. In 2011, the two boys threw out the first pitch at Dodger Stadium in honor of what would have been their father’s 75th birthday, and the following month Drew sang the national anthem there for her dad. Donnie would have been proud.
All in all, I have been very blessed. I know that God only gives us as much as He thinks we can handle. It’s been a full life, full of blessings and heartache. But if I know one thing for certain, it’s that 90% of life isn’t about what happens to you, it’s about how you respond to those things. Character trumps circumstances every time. One you can control, the other you can’t.
In my bid for the Pacers, when it felt like the eyes of the world were on me and things didn’t go my way, and the press was ridiculing me, I was still grateful for the opportunity. And given the chance, I’d do it the same way, all over again.
So many athletes fear failure. I don’t like it, but it doesn�
��t scare me. I know that failing is not just part of life, it’s fundamental to success. To achieve greatness, you can’t be afraid to fail. When I think back on my life, I wouldn’t change a thing, except to have Don back. Not a day goes by that I don’t miss him. But I also believe that life doesn’t end because Don is gone, or my children are grown, or jobs change. Life does get better. Like Papa used to say, “Live each day as your masterpiece.”
24
Where We Go From Here
“To throw obstacles in the way of a complete education is like putting out the eyes.”
~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
When I was at UCLA with my brother, Dave, we became instant human interest stories, so the media seemed to like me until I went out for the Pacers. But someone has to be the first to open the door for others. A lot of rookies got cut that season and while most of the NBA players, GMs, and coaches believed there was no woman on earth who could have made any of the twenty-two NBA teams that year, or any year, I also know there were some who were rooting for me in spite of their bias.
The Pacer’s assistant coach at the time, Jack McCloskey, who would go onto become the GM of the NBA Champion Detroit Pistons said this about my playing, “Fundamentally, Annie is better than half the guys out there.”
Atlanta Hawks coach, Hubie Brown, said of a woman’s bid to make the NBA, “If there is to be an exception, I wish her a good deal of luck because it couldn’t happen to a nicer person.”
I’m still the only woman to sign a free-agent contract with an NBA team, and I’ll always be proud of the way I played during those three days and grateful that Sam Nassi had the courage to let a woman tryout for the team. It was never about publicity for me, it was about seizing the opportunity. Do I believe that a woman will be signed to an NBA team by 2020 as NBA Commissioner, David Stern, suggested? With the WNBA providing a viable professional outlet, I don’t know that it’s that important anymore. The question shouldn’t be will women play in the NBA, but rather will women be commensurately compensated? And will young women continue to be given the same opportunities in school to pursue their athletic dreams as young men?
You Let Some Girl Beat You? Page 23