Players like Kobe and I know that sometimes when you’re performing your best, people criticize you the most. They may even insult you, but demanding excellence means you have to put on a brave face and not react. No drama, no lashing out on social media, and no big meltdowns. If you’re being bullied or talked about behind your back or online, be brave, hold your head high, and talk to someone—like a teacher, a counselor, your parents—about it. When and if you respond, be balanced. Remaining cool will help you and the situation.
After the end of our game against the Dream—the highest scoring game of my professional career—I learned all of this firsthand.
In the postgame interview, I was asked to read various tweets that tagged the @SportsCenter or @WNBA handles. I’m sure there were hundreds, or maybe thousands, of people who’d tweeted congratulations on my milestone or the Sky’s last-second, hard-won victory, but the PR team for the Sky had deliberately pulled together the cruelest, most sexist, and downright stupidest tweets they could find just to show how terrible the Internet can be. They wanted to illustrate how much people want to tear others down when they’re doing their best.
Even when I saw the worst tweets, I brushed them off and laughed.
Women aren’t capable of playing sports, one tweet said.
Then another: Yeah against what competition. I could score 45 points on them.
The WNBA is a total joke and totally unwatchable.
I think this one was my personal favorite, though: That doesn’t look like a kitchen to me.
Even if you’re feeling better than you’ve ever felt, or you’re coming off a huge victory, these haters can get you down. There was a small part of me that was sad when I read those tweets. But I don’t take them to heart, and you shouldn’t either. It’s like Katy Perry says: You’re a firework, so show ’em what you’re worth.
Demanding excellence isn’t just about playing well; it also involves holding your head high before, during, and after your accomplishment, and knowing deep in your heart that—despite what anyone else says—you did your best. Find validation within yourself or through those who support you. Believe me, you deserve the excellence that you demand.
Chapter Thirty-Four
MVP Award
Part of demanding excellence from yourself involves recognizing when you need to improve. After a back-and-forth 5–5 record in June, getting better is exactly what the Sky did. We went 6–3 in July and 7–4 in August—and dropped only two games at home. I wasn’t on the scoring tear I’d been on at the start of the season, but I was still incredibly consistent, averaging in the low twenties in almost every game. I hit a few double-doubles both months too, my rebounding continuing to be strong.
By the end of the summer, it was looking likely that the Sky would be going to the WNBA play-offs again. But one thing was looming larger in my mind: the WNBA MVP award, which would be voted on and announced just before the play-offs began. Fans, the media, coaches, and players had been calling 2015 my breakout season, and they’d all put my name at the top of the list for MVP.
The MVP award is the highest honor any professional basketball player can receive during a season. It’s voted on by broadcasters and sportswriters who’ve been watching and studying each player all season. Basketball awards and honors are often a numbers game, so while I haven’t asked anyone outright, I’m sure these professionals look to the statistics to narrow down the pool of players. Some things really can’t escape their notice, like records being broken, and I’d done that this year. By the end of the regular season in mid-September, I’d missed only eleven foul shots and had a 95 percent success record for free throws, which was the best single-season percentage in WNBA history. In fact, it elevated my career record above Steve Nash’s NBA free throw record of 90.43 percent! I really hate bragging, but breaking men’s records in a game that people just assume men dominate makes me smile.
Winning the MVP award requires more than just facts and figures, though. The voters want a player with leadership and heart, and they look at all-around ability, the team’s overall performance, and how that player contributes to the team. If you’re a top-notch rebounder but that’s really all you can do, you probably won’t be MVP. Or if you miss a stretch of games—like I had in 2014—you most likely won’t be considered. But players like Sheryl Swoopes, Diana Taurasi, Candace Parker, and Lauren Jackson had all been honored in the past, and they’d distinguished themselves by being dominant and successful everywhere on the court—then leading their team to greatness.
Numbers-wise 2015 had been the best all-around year of my career. Thankfully, it had been my healthiest, too. Lyme disease hadn’t sidelined me, and except for some bumps and bruises, I’d been injury-free. Because of this, I’d started in every game, which hadn’t happened in the previous two years that I’d been in the WNBA. The Sky hadn’t performed as well in 2015 as they had in years past, but they’d improved over the course of the season, and that counted for so much. All told, every statistic, media analysis, and chatter among commentators pointed to the possibility that I’d be honored as the league’s MVP.
There’s no way, I said to myself when I stopped and really thought about it. There has to be someone else who deserves this more. No matter how much my friends, family, and coaches tried to get me to accept that I’d probably win, I just couldn’t believe it.
Then, just two days before the play-offs were set to begin, where we’d be facing the Indiana Fever, I got a call.
“Elena,” a woman’s voice on the other end of the line said, “this is Laurel Richie.”
Laurel Richie was the president of the WNBA, a position she’d held for five years. I’d met her many times, but getting a personal call? That was new.
“It’s nice to hear from you,” I said cautiously. I was pretty certain why she’d rung me up, but I didn’t want to assume anything.
“I’d like to congratulate you on being named the 2015 WNBA Most Valuable Player. You deserve it so much, and we’re thrilled. I hope you can take the time to celebrate this victory before the play-offs begin.”
“Thank you,” I answered honestly, even though I was so shocked that my hands were shaking. “This means so much to me. Really, I’m honored, and I can’t believe it.”
Almost the second after I hung up, ESPN SportsCenter tweeted the news, and my phone went crazy. I began to get texts, calls, Facebook notifications, and tweets, and I started trending all over the Internet. When I finally had a chance to stop and read some of my messages, I broke out into a huge smile and called Amanda over.
“Hey, Amanda,” I said, “look at this. J. J. Watt just congratulated me. Isn’t that cool? It’s amazing to hear from such an elite athlete from another sport.”
I was so happy. Like, happier than I’d ever been in my life. I logged on to Twitter immediately and thanked my teammates, naming each of them individually. Then, when the news really sunk in, I looked inward and realized what I wanted to express.
I’m humbled. Winning this makes me understand how insignificant I am compared to the contributions my team made to help me get here. Now I need to return the favor.
For many people a huge prize might make them feel like the king or queen of the world, and they may be content to just sit there, basking in that glow. Sure, I knew my award elevated me to an elite level of athletes, but it also came with responsibility. It was a teaching moment. My team was young, and I had a duty to them. Suddenly I’d been called on to be more of a leader than ever before.
It was a sobering, humbling feeling, especially because we had a huge goal: winning the WNBA Championship.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Radiate Magic
If Chicago’s performance in the 2015 play-offs taught me anything, it was that I still had a long way to go before I’d become the kind of leader I wanted to be. I’m not saying I did anything horribly wrong—in fact, I played some great basketball, including scoring a whopping forty points in game three of our three-game series aga
inst Indiana. They just displayed a magic we didn’t have.
I think much of that talent had to do with their star veteran, Tamika Catchings.
Tamika was a basketball legend, and in 2015, her second-to-last season, she was thirty-six years old. She’d played with Indiana her entire career, including in 2011, when she’d been named the league MVP. Even though she was the oldest person on the court by a long shot, she never slowed down. She was a powerhouse, and members of her team described her work ethic as a warrior mentality.
Maybe there’s a certain wisdom that comes with more than a decade of playing professionally, but I don’t believe Tamika’s influence is only because of her age. I believe Tamika inspired her team with a razor-edge vision and domination, and her toughness pushed her team to play like they were at war.
And it was a battle they won.
We briefly thought we might have a chance after game one, which we just barely won by five points. But we were tired and beaten down; Tamika had scored twenty-one points, and the Fever’s defense had pushed us at every stretch. In game two they beat us by seven, partly because Tamika made twenty-two points and partly because their defense kept me from getting anywhere close to my average shooting record. In game three they bested us, 100–89, and we were officially out of the play-offs. Even though I’d dominated the field with forty points, Tamika and her team’s forcefulness had just been too much on the court.
“Catch obviously makes them believe things they never thought they could do, and that’s what makes her so special aside from her talent,” I told ESPN after the game.
It was true. Her willfulness, her determination, and whatever magic she radiated to her team changed the tide of every game. And after losing in the play-offs long before we’d ever expected, I vowed to try to be more like her the next season.
I want to inspire my team like Tamika does, I thought. I want to help them—and others—to beat the odds, and to do things they don’t think they’re capable of. If I’ve overcome so much in my life, how can I convince a team that they can do the same?
For the answer to that I had to step off the basketball court.
• • •
When I was a kid, my hero was Sheryl Swoopes. Sure, she was an amazing basketball player, but I loved her for the funniest reason, a reason that had nothing to do with how well she played. I worshipped her because she had her own signature sneaker.
“But, Elena,” my mom would say, “I thought you liked Sheryl Swoopes because of her scoring records.”
“Well, I do,” I’d answer, “but I really just want a pair of her Nikes. Air Swoopes are the coolest shoes in the world.”
I’m not diminishing Sheryl Swoopes’s million accomplishments, or how she changed the game of basketball for girls around the world just like me. But the fact that she’d branded herself and made people notice her—and the new women’s league called the WNBA—was so impressive to me.
People don’t assume that only men play basketball anymore, I thought every time I laced up my pair of Air Swoopes and headed out the door to practice. They know now how good female players can be, and that’s because of Sheryl.
Could I capture a little bit of her magic and influence by raising my profile, just like she had?
The timing was definitely right for it. Tamika Catchings was about to wrap up her WNBA career, and Diana Taurasi had taken a year off to play overseas. Viewership of the 2014 WNBA finals had been up 91 percent from three years before, and while it was still more than three hundred thousand viewers short of how many people watched the NBA finals, female basketball was on some fans’ radars more than ever.
I’d just been named MVP, and I was already doing a lot. I had endorsement deals, speaking engagements, a basketball academy devoted to training young women, and my work with the Special Olympics and Lyme disease. Every single bit of that helped raise the WNBA’s profile, but should I have been doing more?
Absolutely. I knew that the more I started to do off the court, the more it would make people pay attention to what happened on the court. That would make me a highly influential player—just like Tamika—if I played my cards right.
During the off-season I kicked my public profile up a notch.
I interviewed with Time magazine, a more serious, higher-profile magazine than I’d met with before. I participated in the Nike Innovation summit, which is an important annual conference that showcases new, groundbreaking advances in athletic gear and technology. I played in the NBA All-Star Celebrity Game with celebrities including Kevin Hart and the Property Brothers from HGTV. Sure, all of this was fun and interesting, but I’d realized that with a larger public profile comes responsibility, and part of that involves helping to drive new fans to the WNBA. Plus, I knew that acting like a star player would inspire everyone, from my young teammates to the little girls who asked me for autographs after games.
The six months before the 2016 season were so different from the year before, when I’d holed myself up in Delaware to get my body strong for the next season. Tamika Catchings’s magic had worn off on me, and I realized I was ready for a new role. I wanted to be a truly influential leader—and then I wanted to take home a WNBA Championship trophy.
But first I had to go to the biggest, most magical, most prominent event in the world: the Summer Olympics.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Be Yourself
I was six years old when the 1996 Olympics came to Atlanta, and that summer I spent two full weeks glued to the TV in my family’s living room. Sure, Sheryl Swoopes, Lisa Leslie, and Rebecca Lobo—who were on the US women’s basketball team—were my idols, and I was thrilled when they beat Brazil in the gold medal game. But it wasn’t basketball that stole my heart. Instead I was totally, completely infatuated with the Magnificent Seven—the US women’s gymnastics team.
The US gymnastics team had never won an all-around gold medal, and when Shannon Miller, Kerri Strug, Dominique Dawes, and the rest of their teammates headed into the all-around competition, I was breathless. As they entered the final rotation—the vault—I thought I was going to have a heart attack when Kerri Strug injured her ankle on her first attempt. When she stuck the landing on her second flawless try, then collapsed to the ground in pain, I broke out in tears.
“Mom,” I cried, “that was the greatest moment of my life. Kerri Strug just won the gold medal for the US. She’s my hero! I want to be a gymnast too.”
I was probably too emotional, staring at the TV while Bela Karolyi carried Kerri Strug in his arms to the medal podium, to notice my mom’s reaction. I’m sure she started laughing, and I know she told that story to all of her friends and family for the next year. I mean, Kerri Strug was 4'8". At age six I think I was already taller than her! But she inspired me, and the idea of going to the Olympics became a two-decade dream of mine.
On April 27 I’d find out whether or not it would become true.
The US women’s basketball team had won forty-one consecutive Olympic games and racked up a total of five gold medals, so there was no question that they were the perpetual team to beat. In the 2016 Olympics, which would be held in Rio de Janeiro, the team would be coached by Geno Auriemma, my college coach of all of twenty-four hours. I was one of twenty-five finalists for the twelve-woman squad, and the media kept questioning whether or not it would be awkward if I was on a team with Geno.
“We’ve always had a great relationship. He’s always been respectful of my decision,” I said honestly when interviewed by Julie Foudy, a former Olympic soccer star, at an ESPN event. I knew people just wanted a good, juicy story, but they weren’t going to get that. Geno had looked past everything that had happened. He knew I’d just been a confused, burned-out kid back then.
Still, Foudy questioned whether that was really true.
“Maybe our first hug was a butt-out hug,” I joked in response. “But I figured it out from there.”
Like I said before, if the world demands drama, just be a firework and rise above it.<
br />
What I couldn’t shake off was that being on a new team involved a learning curve, and that was a little intimidating. It always was, though; I’d felt a tinge of nervousness every time before the WNBA All-Star Game. I didn’t know who I was supposed to be, and I never felt like I was familiar enough with my teammates. I like being aware of everyone’s tendencies and knowing where each player needs to be in order to be successful. It was also tough to determine how vocal I needed to be, while still respecting everyone’s boundaries and personal preferences.
In the training camp just before the final team cut was announced, those growing pains were more apparent than ever.
“Stop passing the ball so much,” Tamika Catchings said to me at one practice. “We want you to do what you do best.”
She was right. I knew I had to stomach the fact that I was still figuring out how I fit in on this team and how to be myself on the court. I shrugged off my modesty and played like no one was watching, and sure enough, on April 27, I was named to the US women’s national team, along with Tamika, Diana Taurasi, Sylvia Fowles, Brittney Griner, and seven other women.
My dream has come true, I thought. Then I laughed to myself. Too bad it’s not for gymnastics!
The Olympics were going to be held right smack in the middle of the WNBA season, but the league had made accommodations for that. There would be a five-week break so that the national team could practice, play a few exhibition games (including one at UD!), travel to Brazil, and compete in the Olympics. I knew I’d be busy, but I was thrilled. I wasn’t doing any of it out of a sense of duty. I wanted this, so it would be a joy.
Unfortunately, that entire summer the Sky didn’t perform well, and a little voice inside me began to worry that I was at fault. We were 2–5 at the end of May and 11–13 at the end of July. We hadn’t had a losing record the entire time I’d been with the team, yet here we were, struggling in more than half of our games. I started to wonder, was my excitement about the Olympics distracting me, hurting my play, or taking me away from Chicago emotionally?
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