My Shot
Page 1
CONTENTS
Introduction
Part One // Foul Trouble
Chapter One: Home
Chapter Two: Growing Up in Basketball
Chapter Three: High School Star
Chapter Four: Free Throw Champion
Chapter Five: Time Off
Chapter Six: Senior Year
Chapter Seven: Burnout
Part Two // Rebound
Chapter Eight: The Hardest Summer of My Life
Chapter Nine: Lyme Disease
Chapter Ten: Volleyball
Chapter Eleven: Basketball, Take Two
Chapter Twelve: Lyme Disease, Take Two
Chapter Thirteen: Elena International
Chapter Fourteen: China
Chapter Fifteen: Vocal Leadership
Chapter Sixteen: NCAA Tournament Debut
Chapter Seventeen: Seize Every Moment
Chapter Eighteen: Saying Good-bye
Part Three // Forward
Chapter Nineteen: WNBA Draft
Chapter Twenty: Moving to Chicago
Chapter Twenty-One: Toss Out Your Expectations and Make Goals
Chapter Twenty-Two: Living and Playing Differently
Chapter Twenty-Three: Rest, Refocus, and Rediscover Your Passion
Chapter Twenty-Four: Making Sense of Loss
Chapter Twenty-Five: WNBA Play-offs
Chapter Twenty-Six: Building Strength
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Lead with Confidence
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Attitude Is Everything
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Comeback Kid
Chapter Thirty: Make Adjustments
Chapter Thirty-One: WNBA Finals
Part Four // Slam Dunk
Chapter Thirty-Two: Demand Excellence
Chapter Thirty-Three: You’re a Firework
Chapter Thirty-Four: MVP Award
Chapter Thirty-Five: Radiate Magic
Chapter Thirty-Six: Be Yourself
Chapter Thirty-Seven: Engagement
Chapter Thirty-Eight: Rio
Chapter Thirty-Nine: Gold Medal Game
Chapter Forty: In an Instant
Chapter Forty-One: Bad Things Will Happen
Chapter Forty-Two: Shake-Up
Chapter Forty-Three: Take a Risk
Chapter Forty-Four: The Mystics
Afterword
Acknowledgments
About the Author
To my wife, Amanda,
for giving me the courage to unapologetically be me.
The fog on the journey lifted the day our paths met.
—E. D. D.
Introduction
I hate basketball.
Those three words were the last thing anyone ever expected me to say to myself. After all, I’d decided when I was six that I wanted to be the best player in the country, and I’d worked toward that goal each day since. In middle school I’d forced myself out of bed at six a.m. to run—rain or shine, every single day—shot free throws after practice till the sun went down, and then lifted weights at home on weekends. I’d been named the nation’s top female high school recruit during my senior year, and when the media had called me a female LeBron James, I’d been honored. Then the University of Connecticut—considered by many to be the best women’s basketball program in the world—had offered me a full ride, and I’d given them an enthusiastic yes. I knew I was one of the best young basketball players in the country, so why was I ready to walk away from all of it? Especially when I’d barely given college sports a chance?
Because I hate basketball. And I never want to play again.
It was June 2008, and I was just about to start classes at UConn. Because the women’s basketball team trained during the summer, a few days earlier I’d driven with my family from Wilmington, Delaware, to Storrs, Connecticut, moved into a dorm, and enrolled in classes for the summer term. That night I was going to meet my teammates on the UConn women’s basketball team for the first time. This is what I’ve been working for since I could hold a basketball, I told myself. And you can’t get any better than UConn.
From the second I kissed my family good-bye, though, I was more miserable than I’d ever been in my life. And when I pulled on a T-shirt and a pair of baggy shorts, laced up my shoes, and headed toward a pickup game the seniors had pulled together to welcome all of us, I felt even worse.
“Hi, Elena,” said one of the captains when I walked up to her and a group of my teammates. “It’s so good to see you. Welcome. Geno asked me to tell you personally that he hopes you’re ready for a great season.”
I smiled. “I am. Thank you.”
Geno Auriemma was the UConn head coach, and he was a basketball legend. Before he’d gotten to UConn in 1985, the women’s team had had only one winning season. Within two years he’d turned the program around, and by 1995, UConn went undefeated and won the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) women’s title. He’d led the Huskies to five national championship wins since then and had become one of the most famous coaches in Division I NCAA basketball history—for women and men’s teams. Playing under him wasn’t just a privilege; it was an honor. So why did the thought of it make me feel sick?
Because I can’t face up to the fact that I can’t stand basketball anymore.
Still, I promised myself I’d work hard during that first game. My teammates deserved that. They consisted of girls I’d met at tournaments around the country, women I’d played with at invitationals, and names I’d only heard whispered in hushed tones in the locker room. I’m 6'5", and I was taller than almost all of them, but there were plenty of six footers on the Husky squad. Off the basketball court, I knew they’d felt different and out of place all their lives, just like me. I knew they’d been stared at. When I was three, someone stopped my mom in the grocery store and said, “An eight-year-old shouldn’t be using a pacifier!” These girls could relate to situations like that. Probably all of them had turned to basketball because it was a safe haven. The court was a place where tall girls weren’t just normal; we were the stars, and our parents, teachers, and coaches had all lovingly pushed us down a path where we could shine. Basketball was written in our DNA, and we excelled at it. That was why we’d made it our life mission. Sure, it was what we told ourselves we were expected to do, but it didn’t matter, because we did it so well. We were the best. What could possibly be wrong with that?
What’s wrong is that I’m exhausted. Practicing so hard for so long has taken everything out of me.
Plus, I missed my family—terribly. My sister, Lizzie, is six years older than I am. She was born blind and deaf and was diagnosed with cerebral palsy not long after she went home from the hospital. When she was a toddler, doctors discovered she also had autism. Lizzie could understand the outside world only through her senses of touch and smell. A hot, stinky gym and hard bleacher seats make her uncomfortable, so she’d been to only a handful of my basketball games. She hadn’t seen me make my eightieth consecutive successful free throw—a record that still stands today—nor had she heard the screams of the crowd at any of my All-State games. If I did well on the Huskies, she’d never know me as one of the best basketball players in college hoops. But that didn’t matter. She thought of me as part of her team—and that had nothing to do with basketball.
I miss Lizzie, I thought. If I’m here, I can’t hold her hands. She can’t smell the sweat on me after practice. She can’t feel the wind through her hair as we walk around my parents’ yard. When I’m with her, she doesn’t expect me to make a perfect shot or a perfect defensive play. Lizzie just wants to love me and spend time with me, and that can’t happen if I’m at UConn.
I heard a whistle blow, and I grabbed a basketball from the sideline bench and jogged with my brand-new teammates out onto the cour
t. As we circled up, I looked at everyone’s faces. Some girls were smiling, and some were nervously biting their lips. Some had wide-open eyes, and others were shuffling from one foot to the other. But all of us clutched our basketballs tight, waiting for someone to start talking.
One of the team captains finally broke the silence. “There are some new faces and some old familiar ones here today. Some of you have traveled thousands of miles to get here, and others live right down the road. You all come from different places and have different kinds of families, but what ties you together is your passion for basketball. Geno and the entire coaching staff are going to demand that from you all year. More than hard work or natural talent, they want you to have passion.”
I listened to her closely, and when she was finished speaking, I dribbled the ball, made a few baskets, and threw myself into the toughest pickup game of my life. When it was over, my muscles were screaming, and I knew I’d been physically challenged in a way I’d never been in high school. Geno Auriemma and the UConn women’s basketball team were ready to demand the mental, emotional, and physical excellence that had made them the best squad in the country, and I understood that if I wanted to give them that, I had to lead with passion.
Deep in my heart, though, I realized the sad truth. Passion’s not something I can give them, I thought. I’ll fake it today and tomorrow, but I really, truly hate this sport. I’ve burned out.
After I peeled off my sweaty clothes and stepped into a steaming hot shower, I paused for a minute and made my decision. I was going to quit basketball. Not just for the season but forever. Elena Delle Donne might have been the most sought after and celebrated women’s high school basketball recruit in the country, but she was going home.
PART ONE
FOUL TROUBLE
Chapter One
Home
The thing about being different is that you don’t really realize you are until someone points it out to you. My mom is 6'2" and my dad is 6'6", so I can’t remember a time when they weren’t ducking to get through doorways or smiling at silly, obvious comments like, “Boy, you’re so tall!” They always towered above other people, but when I was little, that seemed normal because they were my family. And my family was my whole world.
I was born in late 1989 in the suburbs of Wilmington, Delaware. I was the third of three kids, below my brother, Gene, and my sister, Lizzie. Gene is three years older than me, and he’s always been a goofball. Nothing was ever too serious for him to laugh at. Even when he played high school basketball at Salesianum School, an all-boys Catholic school, and people taunted him at the free throw line by saying, “Your sister’s a better player than you!” Gene would just smile. Nothing rattled him. Sometimes he’d miss the shot (I actually was better than him!), but he didn’t care. His goal in life was to make others around him happy, so he never pitied himself.
I sometimes wonder if he decided at a very young age to be optimistic and never let anything drag him down, because of Lizzie. Gene is three years younger than Lizzie, and he more than anyone else lived through her pain. Early on he didn’t have a sibling to talk to when my dad was struggling to lift Lizzie from her wheelchair and help her walk across the room, or when she was being wheeled into one of the thirty surgeries she’s had because of her conditions. Most of those operations were to cure her blindness—and all of them failed—but one of his first memories related to Lizzie’s long, painful recovery after a spinal surgery she had when she was seven. For three years, till I came along, Gene was all alone with two parents who struggled twenty-four hours a day to give their disabled child love and top-notch medical care. I think he saw all of that and decided to turn outward rather than inward. He wanted to see Mom and Dad laugh rather than cry.
Luckily, that wasn’t always so hard. Dad went to work before the sun came up and didn’t get home till dinner was on the table, but he was always ready to play with us. We had a game we called “knee football,” where he’d crawl around on his knees while Gene and I—both standing—tried to tackle him. He rubbed my back till I fell asleep, and then he’d stay up all night constructing the K’NEX roller coasters I hadn’t been able to finish before bedtime. Mom might have spent her days taking Lizzie to doctor appointments and physical therapy while Dad worked hard helping to build his father’s real estate development company, but she always woke us up with a delicious, homemade breakfast. She was first in line to pick me up at school, and on the rare few times when she was late, I always assumed something terrible had happened. She was on top of every detail in our lives and made sure to spend quality time with each of us, which must have been a real struggle given all that Lizzie was going through.
Cerebral palsy is a chronic, incurable condition. Doctors refer to it as a movement disorder, which means it affects the muscles and prevents a person’s body from working the way it’s supposed to. Doctors and scientists often don’t know exactly what causes it, but they do understand that the problems stem from a baby’s developing brain. Sometime during pregnancy, childbirth, or early childhood, a part of the brain doesn’t come together the way it should, and parents might discover that their baby doesn’t sit up when he or she is supposed to, has trouble making sounds, or shakes for no reason.
Doctors knew something was wrong with Lizzie right away. From the moment she came into the world, it was obvious she couldn’t see, because her eyes wouldn’t focus, and just a few days later, she didn’t pass her hearing test. When she was a few months old, she still couldn’t hold her head up, and doctors worried she never would. When she finally walked, she couldn’t do it on her own, and she still needs one of us to guide her. These days she usually gets around in a wheelchair, which we have to push. She goes to a special-needs facility called the Mary Campbell Center from nine to three during the week, and after Mom picks her up and takes her home, she hangs out on her couch in our living room with her babysitter or one of us.
Cerebral palsy is pretty common—about one out of every five hundred babies is diagnosed with it—and, luckily, the treatments are good, because the medical community spends a tremendous amount of time and money researching them. Lizzie has always had a team of doctors on hand, as well as the same wonderful babysitter for more than twenty years, and our focus has always been on making her happy rather than “fixing” her. What I mean is that we’ve always looked forward rather than backward. Lizzie is never viewed as a problem or a lost cause—we do everything to make her life better. How could I ever see her as something hopeless? I’m her sister, and I love her with every bone in my body.
I often wonder if, like Gene, I became the person I am as a reaction to Lizzie. Because I’ve always spent so much time with her, I know she has shaped my adult decisions, but part of me thinks I was changing and responding to her the moment I came home from the hospital. Caring for her was the focus of our lives at home, so it just makes sense that I’d always be aware of her, constantly making choices based on how it would affect her and my family dynamic.
I remember sitting in a physical therapy appointment with my mom and dad when I was about five, playing with some toys that I’d picked up from the waiting room. I looked up and saw my parents stretching Lizzie’s legs out on the table. Lizzie wore braces, which they’d taken off, and she was grimacing as they moved and massaged her stiff muscles.
“It’s okay,” my mom said as she leaned down to kiss Lizzie’s face. “It’s almost over.”
Lizzie couldn’t hear anything Mom said, of course, but I like to think she could sense the vibration of Mom’s voice. I know she could feel the kiss and Mom’s and Dad’s soft touches, but I wonder if she could feel the air come out of Mom’s lungs. Mom always spoke to her, probably thinking the same thing, but it was more than that. She refused to treat Lizzie differently from me or Gene.
Lizzie’s so brave, I thought. She’s doing everything she can, living her best life, in the body she was born with. So I’m going to do the same thing too.
As a reaction to Lizzie, I gain
ed confidence in my body’s abilities early on. When I was three, I picked up a wrench and took the training wheels off my bike. My mom and dad stood inside, watching me from a window. Later that year I saw Dad, Gene, and a few of his friends playing Wiffle Ball in our backyard, and I ran outside and begged them to let me join in. They said yes, and I grabbed the big, plastic bat. Dad tossed me a slow, underhand pitch, and I knocked it into the neighbors’ yard. By the end of the day, Dad was throwing the same overhand pitches he’d lob to Gene, and I hadn’t missed a single one.
When I was in third grade, our gym teacher decided to teach juggling one day. Each student took turns trying to keep three balls in the air without dropping any, and all of them struggled. Then it was my turn.
“Okay, here we go,” I said as I tossed one up.
For probably two minutes I didn’t drop a single ball. I took to juggling right away.
I don’t mean to sound like I’m bragging. Those of you who look different—like I did, being so tall—know the shame that can come with it when people stare at you or comment on your appearance. Like I said earlier, you don’t realize how different you are until someone points it out to you or it becomes clear in some other obvious way. I remember at eight years old having a classmate trace my body on butcher paper and then hang it on the wall. Most kids’ papers stopped before they reached the floor. Mine hit the ground and then extended a foot out into the classroom. I was humiliated, thinking, I might as well have two heads.
Again, my family hadn’t made me feel like I was different, but when I was faced with “normal” people or when I was talked about, I felt so odd. But, like Lizzie, I somehow knew I had to deal with it, so I subconsciously convinced myself to shrug it off and stand tall—literally. I never slouched or slumped, and I wasn’t clumsy. I held my body strong because I decided my heart should be that way too. Just like Lizzie’s.
I don’t remember exactly why I decided that I wanted to play basketball. Mom and Dad told me that I first picked up a ball when I was four, started to dribble it, and then refused to put it away for the next week. Even though I was clearly athletic, they never pushed me into sports. Dad had played basketball in high school and golf in college, and Mom had been a high school swimmer, but just because they loved sports didn’t mean their kids had to. But when I was five, Mom and Dad enrolled me in a youth basketball league at the local YMCA, and I never looked back. I started playing every chance I got. Dad set the basket outside our house at the five-foot height, moved it up a little bit every few months, and by the time I was eight, it was at the full ten-foot mark. Throughout all those years, when Dad would practice with me, he’d urge me never to change my form just so I could make a basket. He taught me the fundamentals, then made sure I never deviated from them.