Don't Let the Lipstick Fool You

by Lisa Leslie

  Theresa Grentz of Rutgers was the head coach of the U.S. national team. Lin Dunn and Linda Hargrove were on her staff, and Coach Stanley was one of the court coaches for the trials. Team USA had already qualified for the Olympics back in 1990, when it won the world championships in Malaysia. Now it was just a matter of finding the right combination of players and getting them ready for Barcelona.

  There were only a dozen roster spots available on the U.S. women’s team, so you can imagine just how competitive things were at the trials in Colorado. I held my own against the older players. Most of them were collegians, but many had also played professionally overseas. I hung in there through one cut-down day after another, but on June 12, when the U.S. women’s Olympic basketball team was announced, my name was not on the roster.

  It was heartbreaking. I had worked so hard, and I desperately wanted to be on the U.S. squad in Barcelona, but I noticed that a lot of excellent players had been left off the team, including the legendary Cheryl Miller. The only former Trojan to earn a spot on the team was Cynthia Cooper. Man, I wanted that Olympic experience, but when I looked at the big picture, I realized how much I had learned and accomplished from competing against some of our country’s greatest female athletes. I was only nineteen, and I knew there would be Olympic Games in my future.

  Most of the basketball fuss in the 1992 Olympics surrounded the U.S. men’s Dream Team. That was the first year that the International Olympic Committee allowed NBA players to compete, and Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, and company blitzed through Barcelona to the gold medal.

  Our women’s team was not as fortunate. After winning gold in Los Angeles in 1984 and Seoul in 1988, Team USA could do no better than the bronze medal in Spain. Medina Dixon of ODU was the team’s top scorer, and Katrina McClain was their leading rebounder, but the American women finished behind the Soviet Unified Team and China. That was unheard of and simply not acceptable. USA Basketball officials knew, right then, that our women would have to prepare much differently if Team USA was going to have any chance of striking gold when the Olympics moved to Atlanta in 1996.

  I saw every one of my experiences with USA Basketball as an opportunity for me to grow as a person and as a player. My understanding of the game was constantly evolving, and I was always excited to get back to USC to show my teammates some of the things that I had learned. I wanted to help them so that we could get better as a team. I was winning at the USA Basketball level, but our Trojan team kept getting roadblocked at the Final Eight. It was so disappointing. Every year I would return from USA Basketball and think, This is the year, but it always wound up being, Wait until next year.

  Our USC program was getting better and moving forward. The weak did not survive under Coach Stanley, no matter who they were, and there were times when she would just chew into people—me included—to get them in step with her agenda. I remember she called me into a room once at Washington State, and I walked out crying. Coach Stanley would always find ways to push me to make the most of my abilities. My coach looked me right in the eyes, shook her finger, and said emphatically, “If you want to be the best, Lisa, you gotta act like you wanna be the best.”

  Coach Stanley set the standard for the kind of program that she envisioned us having at USC. It was the standard that a top five college coach would set—not just any old college, but a perennial contender for the national championship. Coach Stanley had no use for slackers. She set the bar very high. Unfortunately, only about half of our team was on the same page with Coach Stanley in terms of what she was trying to achieve. This frustrated me beyond belief.

  I could never understand why players would go to college if they really did not want to be there. Why play a sport if you are not going to give it your all? I understand that everybody has an off day, but not every day. It drove me nuts when certain players on my team would not put in the effort but still expected to win games, capture Pac-10 championships, and compete for the national title.

  Our team would hit the track for conditioning around 5:30 in the morning, and then we had to lift weights. Some of my teammates would stroll into the weight room at 6:30 and be gone by 7:00. They would come late and leave early, and that really upset me. They were cheating on the track and they were cheating on their weights, which meant that they were cheating themselves and cheating our team.

  There were times when USC would lose games because we did not play well together as a team. Maybe we did not pass the ball around or play good defense. That always disturbed me, because those losses related right back to when players cheated themselves in practice, in the line drill, or in the conditioning workouts. When you cheat yourself early, it always catches up with you in the end.

  Things like that really drove me crazy, but I made it a point to cry only one time per season. I know that must sound strange, but I never wanted to be the one crying at the end of a season, so I would find a game earlier in the year in which to let the tears flow. It might be a game that had very little meaning. We might have even won the game, but I would be hurting because we did not play the game well, did not follow the game plan, or maybe we just did not come close to playing the game the way it is supposed to be played. For some people, I know sports is all about winning and losing, but to me, it is also incredibly important how you go about winning and losing.

  As for the wins, USC posted twenty-two victories in my junior year. We went 14–4 in the Pac-10 but still finished second to Stanford. This time our season ended in the NCAA West Regional semifinals. We lost by twenty points to Sheryl Swoopes and Texas Tech. That marked the second straight year that the Trojans had been ousted by the eventual NCAA champ.

  I continued to play well, averaging nineteen points, nine rebounds, and three blocked shots per game that season and shooting at a 56 percent clip. I was named first-team All-Pac-10 for the third straight season, and I was a finalist for the Naismith Award as women’s college basketball player of the year. Sheryl Swoopes beat me in that contest, too. The Associated Press ranked USC number fifteen at season’s end, so we were climbing up the national rankings every year, but the Women of Troy still could not get over the hump that kept us from going to the Final Four.

  That off-season, I played with USA Basketball in the 1993 world championship qualifying tournament in São Paulo, Brazil. There were eight teams in the event. Canada, Chile, and Mexico were in Group A with us, while Brazil, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Argentina were in Group B. The top four finishers in the tournament were guaranteed automatic berths in the 1994 world championships in Melbourne, Australia.

  Tara VanDerveer was our head coach, and Nancy Darsch and Coach Stanley were her assistants. Our U.S. team breezed through the first three games in the championships, and then something happened in our matchup with Cuba that has only happened once in my entire basketball career. Not too many people know this, but I pushed a referee. (Dawn Staley loves to tell this story.)

  I took a jump shot in the game against Cuba, and one of the opposing players shoved me out of bounds. I landed on top of the referee, and the man was nice enough to help me up, but he was not smart enough to call a foul on the play. I was blatantly pushed off the court, but when no foul was called, I kind of shoved the ref. I did not mug or maim him, but I did put my hands on the official. I knew right away that it was wrong, but my teammates thought it was hilarious! They were all laughing while I was trying to sweet-talk the ref to keep him from giving me a technical foul. “I’m sorry, sir! Excuse me! I am so sorry,” I pleaded. “Really, I did not mean it.” I must have said the right words, because the referee did not “T” me up.

  I do not recommend getting physical with officials, far from it. But there were times, especially as a young player, when I would just react badly to situations. I would be playing and everything would be fine, but then a player, or a referee would do something that just set me off. Boom! I would react in an instant without even thinking. I never thought about fighting premeditatedly, but I was not above speaking my mind
. Thankfully, I have learned to control my emotions on the court. I have learned to compartmentalize the Lucille Ball and Wonder Woman personas and make sure that they seldom play on the same playground. My approach is much more pragmatic these days. But for the record, yes, I did push a referee, but just that one time, and it was not very hard.

  Our U.S. team put away Cuba and Canada to set up a showdown in the semifinals with the host team, Brazil. Now remember, we were playing in So Paulo. They had more than ten thousand fans jammed into the Gimnasio de Ibirapuera, and it seemed as if everybody in the arena was wearing Brazil’s green and yellow colors. There were people standing in every open spot in the building. A fire code in Brazil? Not likely. People were cheering and making noise with tambourines. They were stomping their feet, shaking and banging just about anything they could find, and the shouting never stopped. It was like a raucous crowd at an international soccer game, and it gave every indication that Brazil’s matchup with Team USA was much more than a regular basketball game.

  The two teams went into the semis as the only undefeated squads in the tournament. That meant that no matter which team won the semifinal game on July 2, the same two teams would have to meet again to decide the championship on the Fourth of July.

  Janeth Arcain was on Brazil’s team, but she was only their third best player. Hortencia was Brazil’s top athlete and, arguably, the best player in the world. Their point guard, Maria Paula da Silva (aka Magic Paula), was the world’s best at her position. She could come across center court and just fire away. These ladies had international and Olympic experience together, and they could really play.

  Team USA was still a young group. I had not turned twenty-one yet, but I was the leading scorer. Ruthie Bolton, Jennifer Azzi, and Katy Steding averaged double-digit points as well. Carla McGhee topped our squad in rebounding, and Dawn Staley ran the show for us at point guard. Our U.S. squad played even with Brazil in the semifinal game, but they wound up beating us in overtime 99–92.

  That set up the championship duel, fittingly, on America’s Independence Day. I dropped in twenty points in the first half, and Team USA led by fourteen at intermission. Arcain and Magic Paula combined for fifty-eight points for Brazil, but we had five players with double-figure points, and Dawn was incredible. She got me the ball all game long and finished with six assists. We beat Brazil 106–92 on their home court to win the world championship qualifying tournament.

  I remember thinking, Oh man! We beat Brazil, in Brazil. We were screaming and cheering as we ran off the court. The people in the arena were shocked and upset, but we were incredibly happy. Our joy carried over to the locker room. The smiles and the cheering never stopped as we all got cleaned up, dressed, and ready to leave.

  We had to go directly to the airport to catch our flight home, but when we got on the team bus, everybody kept telling us to get down. People were moving up the aisle and closing the curtains over the windows. The Brazilian fans started rocking our bus. We were on the floor, in the dark, and they were trying to kill us! We did not know what they were going to do, or how far things were going to go, but we knew we needed help from the police. How can anyone take sports so seriously? It was just a basketball game. Granted, it was an important basketball game, but not something to get violent about.

  The herds of people kept pushing our bus back and forth. I do not know how it kept from tipping over, because we were doing some major rocking. The local police finally surrounded the bus and moved the angry crowd back enough so that the police cars could pull in and escort us out of the pandemonium. Everyone on our U.S. team was still down on the floor when the bus finally started rolling toward the airport. There was a collective sigh of relief when we got away from the arena and the chaos. It felt great to be safe, but we were all thinking, Brazil is nuts. These people are crazy!

  I was thrilled to be alive and excited to get back to the States, even more so when I found out that I was being honored as USA Basketball’s 1993 Female Athlete of the Year. Everything was going so well for me at the national level, but there was still work to be done at USC. I had one more year to get it right, but as it turned out, Coach Stanley was not going to be around for my senior season. I was shocked to find out that my coach would not be back for my final year.

  How could that be? She had brought the USC program back to life. We had gone to the NCAA tournament three straight years, and we were coming off a season in which we went to the Elite Eight. Coach Stanley was the reigning Pac-10 Conference Coach of the Year, and she had a great recruiting class coming in that included Tina Thompson, the top high school recruit in the nation, and Karleen Thompson (formerly Karleen Shields), the number one junior college player in the country. Karleen scored just under forty-two points per game the previous year at Contra Costa College, and she led the nation in scoring. USC was picked to go to the Final Four in my senior season and could possibly win the national championship, so what had gone wrong? What had happened to my coach?

  News started filtering in that Coach Stanley had asked for a new, multiyear contract equal to the one that USC had given to George Raveling, the Trojans’ men’s basketball coach. Raveling was believed to be earning between $130,000 and $150,000 per year. Coach Stanley wanted equal pay for equal work.

  I remember her telling me that she had met with Athletic Director Mike Garrett to discuss the issue. Coach Stanley said that he had agreed with her position on the equal pay issue, but then the salary he later offered her did not line up with that at all. (Garrett never publicly acknowledged this.) I am sure that Coach Stanley felt that if she stayed, she would be abandoning her principles and doing herself and her gender an injustice. The two sides could not agree, and just like that, Coach Stanley was no longer USC’s women’s basketball coach.

  I was heartbroken.

  I remembered that before all this went down, Mike Garrett would occasionally come to our practices. He and Coach Stanley would go to lunch, and I would ask her, “Coach, do you like him?”

  She would tell me, “Yeah. Why?”

  I was never quite sure how to respond. Because Mike Garrett seldom spoke to me and we had not had a conversation beyond an occasional “Hi, how are you,” I did not know where I stood with him. I respected Garrett because he had been a Heisman Trophy-winning running back at USC, and he had gone on to play in the NFL. But he seemed unapproachable and I did not think women’s sports interested him.

  I think Coach Stanley tried to fight for what she thought was right. There are times when women have to take a stand. If you look at the facts, it was not fair for my coach to be paid less than George Raveling. Just compare our record to the men’s record. In the four-year period (1989–90 through 1992–93) that Coach Stanley was at USC, our women’s team earned a 71–46 record. We went 45–27 in Pac-10 play and finished seventh, third, second, and second again in the conference. In that same time frame, the USC men’s basketball program posted a 73–44 record, went 40–32 in the Pac-10, and finished seventh, third, second, and fifth place in the conference race. Our women’s team went to the NCAA tournament in three of the four years that Coach Stanley was on the job. During that same time span, George Raveling’s teams made two visits to the NCAAs and one trip to the National Invitation Tournament. Coach Stanley was putting up winning numbers if not better numbers, and it seemed reasonable that she should be rewarded for it.

  But there were, of course, other issues involved. At USC I noticed there were differences between the men’s and women’s basketball programs when it came to marketing, support, and respect within the university. I believe Coach Stanley wanted to see improvements in those areas as well. Initially, money was the key issue, but more and more, the stalemate became a matter of principle. She thought that Garrett and the university had discriminated against her because she was a woman. She contended that even though she and Coach Raveling performed the same duties in their respective jobs, she was compensated less and received fewer benefits than he did.

  It was
all too much for me to handle. I did not even want to come out of the house. I did not want to play. Our team was hoping that somehow Coach Stanley’s position would go unfilled. We figured that any coach with a hint of conscience, especially female coaches, would turn down the job out of respect for the principles that Coach Stanley had been fighting for. As a team, we were united in our support, so we held a news conference at a hotel across the street from the USC campus to let everybody know that we were 100 percent behind our embattled coach. We were asked in front of cameras, microphones, and reporters, “How many players are planning to transfer to other colleges if Coach Stanley is not reinstated?” We all raised our hands. It was unanimous. We did not know if our show of solidarity would change anything, but we were holding on to hope that Coach Stanley would somehow get her job back.

  It was not long, however, before we heard that Cheryl Miller would be the new head coach for women’s basketball at USC. This is the same Cheryl Miller who scored 105 points in a California high school game, then went on to a brilliant career at USC, where she rewrote the record books and won two national championships, three Naismith Awards, and, just for good measure, a gold medal in the 1984 Olympics. That Cheryl Miller.

  Once she took the job, our team had to face the harsh reality that Coach Stanley was definitely not coming back. When Cheryl came in, she kept Coach Scott and Fred Williams as her assistants, but I had mixed feelings about her taking the job. I remember the official meeting when Cheryl was introduced as our head coach. Several of us were sad and crying. I was stunned.