And we would make, as part of the clinic activities, an exercise of bringing those cans to a local food bank. These kids were so often themselves in need and looking for a handout. Now just to see the look on those kids’ faces as they put those cans on the scale at the food bank was priceless.
To see them experience the joy of giving back made me start to feel that this is what we were really made to do. Purpose.
That winter was cold and blustery, as Indiana winters always are, and it blew in the winds of change for the Fever in 2003.
Nell Fortner resigned as coach. Kelly Krauskopf, who had been director of business operations for the Fever from the beginning, hired Brian Winters as our new head coach. Brian had played with my dad when he was with the Milwaukee Bucks. He was a quiet, self-contained type of coach, given to the x’s and o’s of the game. He was so calm and even-keeled that when he did get upset, you knew it.
The team added new players as well, including Natalie Williams and Kelly Miller. Natalie was a forward who’d made her mark as a franchise player with the Utah Starzz and was a former Olympian too. Kelly was a super quick guard who was originally drafted the same year I was, right ahead of me at number two to the Charlotte Sting.
With changes in the front office, the head coach, and on the court, there was a lot of excitement about the new Fever. And we started to draw some new fans. Our opening day game on May 29 that year was a sellout—the first in franchise history. Unfortunately we lost that game against the Charlotte Sting.
Our second game that year was broadcast on national television, against the Washington Mystics, and we won by eleven points.
I think we were better that year, better in terms of the level of our play, but our record didn’t show it. We finished 16–18 and missed the playoffs.
While it was disappointing, over the years I’ve learned that through ball and life, sometimes we are better than before, but maybe the results don’t show it. It’s like when you work on some part of your game—say, defense. When I went to Tennessee and had that run-in with Pat about my technique, she was teaching me a new way to play defense. As I tried to play her way, it felt awkward at first, unnatural. I think it was better technique, but it didn’t feel that way, and it took a while before it had its effect on the court. Fortunately I stuck with it—Pat made sure of that—and the results eventually came around.
In life we might strive to get better at something—at work, or in competition, or in marriage—and we make changes in ourselves. But we often don’t see the results of those changes immediately. It requires us to be patient. To follow through. To be consistent.
The Bible says “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Gal. 5:22–23 NIV).
With the Indiana Fever in 2003, I needed to realize that though we were better, the fruit of our efforts would take some more time to develop. I needed to be patient.
There was only one problem.
I don’t do “patience” very well.
The year 2004 was another mixed-results season for the Fever, and one that would again test my patience. It would also be my first time at the Olympics, an amazing experience. In August, the WNBA took a hiatus and players representing their respective countries flew to Athens, Greece, for the Olympic Games. I was so excited to be joining my fellow USA teammates.
Athens, as the birthplace of the Olympics, was an especially meaningful location, and it was simply an overwhelming kaleidoscope of color and pageantry. The opening ceremony, held in the Olympic Stadium, was incredible. The massive structure, a lacework of metal cables and steel at the sides and overhang, featured a huge white oval in the center. As the countries’ teams marched in, we paraded around the track and spiraled into the center oval. The flags and costumes of each country’s athletes were colorful and fascinating, and the sound and music simply created a feeling of awe.
Dawn Staley, from the women’s basketball team, was selected to lead all the U.S. athletes into the stadium. It was an incredible experience that impressed on me the variety of people, “all God’s children,” in the world. And I was so proud and honored to be there representing the USA.
Tauja and my mom were there with me as well, which made the experience all the richer. The U.S. men’s and women’s basketball teams had chosen not to stay in the Olympic Village housing, as that was deemed to be a distraction and not conducive to prep for our competitions. Instead we stayed on a chartered ship, the Queen Mary II, docked in the harbor of the Aegean Sea, off the coast of Athens.
As we prepared to keep the gold medal streak alive (the team had won gold in 1996 and 2000), we knew the international competition had upped its game. We might be challenged, but we would be prepared. While I would remember this Olympics as my first, I would also remember it for my first true individual challenge as a player and a huge lesson in leadership.
The Olympic team was composed of a wealth of talent. Players like Dawn Staley, Lisa Leslie, Sheryl Swoopes, Sue Bird, Diana Taurasi, me, and so many others—we all had to put aside our egos to play together and focus on the ultimate goal: the gold.
I never considered myself a born leader but more of a “quiet leader by example.” What I’ve seen is that sometimes your talent and your success push you into a more visible and more aggressive leadership role. I’d been feeling that the Fever needed that kind of leadership from me. I just didn’t know how to give it. I was content to lead behind the scenes, a leader who shows you rather than tells you. But sometimes we’re called to be more outspoken and to lead more directly. And that’s not always comfortable.
I see that when it comes to our faith too. We hope to live a life that’s a good example, one that reflects Jesus to others. There is certainly a place for the kind of faith that doesn’t hit people over the head with your beliefs. Yet sometimes we’re called to be more outspoken and to “lead others” with a more open statement of what Jesus means to us. All this is fine and good, but sometimes we’re just not comfortable with it, and often we don’t quite know how to go about doing it. Sometimes we need to see it demonstrated to see how it works.
At the Olympic Games I watched Dawn Staley in action. And learned what it takes to be a true leader.
She had the confidence to take the lead with a group of basketball stars who were themselves leaders on their individual WNBA teams. That year at the Olympics, I watched and listened as she pulled together all these different personalities. She’d tell each of us how we needed to play a role on this team—perhaps a role that we weren’t used to back home. Dawn would talk personally to each one of us and say, “Here’s what I need you to do.”
I remember Dawn pulling me to the side and telling me, “Catch, you just have to play your game. I know it’s easier said than done, but we need you. If you do your part, then we’re gonna win.” I believed in Dawn, my teammates, and the opportunity ahead of us. I would not let them down.
A head coach can do only so much. He or she can train you, motivate you, challenge you. But every coach needs a leader on the court. Dawn was that leader for our 2004 Olympics team.
Our toughest game was against Russia in the semifinals, but we won by four points. And we beat Australia in the gold medal round by eleven.
I would have a gold medal around my neck, but as amazing as that was, I’d come back with something far more valuable. I would not be the leading scorer or the leading rebounder or the leader in steals at the Olympics that year.
But I’d be returning home a leader in a whole different way than I had been before.
The biggest thing for me in 2004 wasn’t on the court.
The community initiatives Tauja and I had started were evolving into something bigger. We now had basketball camps, fitness clinics, and mentoring programs, and we continued to add more programs. In fall 2004, we received 501(c)(3) status for our nonprofit, the Catch the Stars Foundation. From the beginning, Tauja and I were the dynamic duo, but she was the drivi
ng force, helping to do nearly everything needed to keep this dream alive.
When I was a kid, I had to overcome a lot of obstacles like low self-esteem and bullying and struggled to find my place, but I was able to use all those obstacles to fuel my success later on in life. While most kids didn’t have to deal with a hearing loss, many needed to overcome other barriers, most of all, a lack of opportunity. My goal was to inspire and uplift youth. My goal was to help Indy’s youth define purpose and achieve their potential by providing goal-setting programs that promote literacy, fitness, and mentoring; to help them to set goals and “catch their dreams one star at a time.”
14
Relationships
The face of the Fever is Tamika Catchings! She is my kind of player, relentless in her pursuit of excellence. Determined and dedicated, she defends and rebounds with a passion unequaled. And, off the court, she gives back to her fans and her community more than any athlete I have ever coached.
Lin Dunn, Indiana Fever head coach, 2008–2014
The five players on the court have to have the same dream. Not just that we all want to win (of course!), but a collective dream about how we are to play together to win. That requires the players to play their roles, to find their spots, to move not individually but in relationship to each other.
If football is rock music, and baseball is classical music, then basketball is jazz. Jazz is an ensemble of people improvising all at the same time, each doing her own thing, but together. That’s what makes it hard. On the court, you need to do what you do best, but do it in rhythm with everyone else.
In 2005, the Fever played some pretty good jazz. We wound up with a 21–13 record and made the playoffs for the second time. In the postseason, we swept the New York Liberty, which was our first playoff series win. But in the next series against the Connecticut Sun, we lost the first game in the final seconds as the Sun’s star Katie Douglas sank a winning three.
A step forward, but frustrating.
Do you want to date me because I’m “Tamika” or “Tamika Catchings”?
Flying solo wasn’t the same now as it might have been in high school or college. I was a celebrity and becoming a well-known star in the Indianapolis area. Guys would approach me and ask me out. I had to figure out why and what they were interested in. Whatever they actually called me, I could tell if they might be interested in the real “Tamika” or in the celebrity “Tamika Catchings.”
Not that I ever made it easy to get to know me.
I know sports have always been my buffer against life, a bubble I lived inside where I could not be touched. From my early years in school, the court was where I could level my opposition, where my basketball achievements earned me respect. My bubble world of basketball was the safe house of my life.
I always had that bubble wall around me. I know I tend not to let that wall down. It’s scary out there, and you don’t want to get hurt, so you crawl into your bubble world and protect yourself. I know that’s an issue for me. But it is what it is.
So it’s been a long time since I’ve allowed someone I’ve dated to be a part of, like, my life. Not my public life—everyone has a piece of that. My private me. Tamika. My life.
What some guys don’t understand is that if I let them in, their lives change too. Here’s the thing about the bubble—it’s transparent and everyone can see what you do. So if you want to enter my life, my real life, you need to know everyone’s watching. Everyone becomes a judge. Everyone has an opinion about me. You. You and me. And then I get protective and ready for battle.
Relationships take a lot of work.
In the off-season, the Fever made a number of changes. They acquired free agent Tamika Whitmore of the LA Sparks. Suddenly I wasn’t the only Tamika on the team. Whitmore had been a star forward for the New York Liberty and the LA Sparks, a strong shooter, and promised to be a strong addition to the Fever.
Year after year, we were striving to reach the pinnacle of winning a championship. For the front office, the coaching staff, and me, there was this sense of building something, climbing a ladder to the top.
In 2006, we would duplicate our previous season record: 21–13. A good record overall, but not better, not a step up. With all the changes, it was tough not to improve at least a little. Frustrating.
And, to make matters worse, we crashed and burned in the playoffs. Facing our archrival Detroit (we’d placed second and third in the standings), we lost the first game of the best of three. In the second game Tamika Whitmore would set a WNBA scoring record—forty-one points—and yet we’d lose by a big margin.
That season would be the second year in a row that I’d be awarded the WNBA’s “Defensive Player of the Year” award—an honor that had me recalling my first and only run-in with Pat Summitt some nine years earlier, as she tried to teach this defiant teenage girl how to play proper defense.
But the highlight of my 2006 had to be the All-Star game. While I’ve been fortunate to be selected for many All-Star teams during my career, this was special because it was held in New York’s Madison Square Garden. Great sports figures had played there—Muhammed Ali, Joe Frazier, Patrick Ewing—not to mention a number of NHL and NBA All-Star teams. Now we were on that same court, playing professional basketball in front of thousands.
Katie Douglas was named MVP of the game. I was selected to the WNBA “All-Decade Team.” It was a great honor to receive this recognition at halftime alongside Dawn Staley, Sheryl Swoopes, Lisa Leslie, and many other notable stars.
It felt good to be chosen.
In a way, your family doesn’t choose you. You are born into them, and they have to deal with you. If you’re lucky, like me, your mom and dad love you just because you’re theirs, and maybe they’re proud of you no matter what. But your brothers and sisters can invite you into their lives, or not. They can live in ways that make you important to them, or not. They can choose you, or not.
In all my basketball career—my high school and then college successes, and now in my pro ball career—there’s been one “fan” who’s often been in the background, sometimes sitting at courtside with his kids, sometimes unable to be there physically but still there emotionally and spiritually, in his own special way.
My brother, Kenyon. He chose me then, and he has continued to choose me throughout my life. His support means the world to me.
I have always had the sense that for both Kenyon and Tauja, I got the basketball fame they might have had. Tauja was such a good basketball player, but she chose not to pursue it. She didn’t have the passion for the game like Kenyon and I did. Plus, she excels in so many other things. She amazes me. Kenyon, though, would have been in the NBA if not for his Crohn’s disease. It derailed his basketball career and changed his life.
Between junior and senior year in high school Kenyon was in and out of the hospital, looking for answers. Crohn’s, a nasty inflammatory intestinal disease that cannot be cured but only controlled, changed his options. Yes, he got better, but his dreams of playing ball were shattered. Despite his struggle with Crohn’s, he had always planned for his next phase in life. He knew basketball wasn’t his only option. He studied hard, excelled academically, and won a scholarship to Northern Illinois University. He started his dream life with Motorola and since then has developed a distinguished career in the pharmaceutical industry, settling in St. Louis and growing a family.
Kenyon—quiet, gentle, yet so strong—lets me know frequently that he chooses me, by his phone calls every day, our conversations, and coming to Indianapolis just to hang out.
I don’t assume that basketball is the only important thing in the world. I know better than that. I don’t assume that basketball is the highest goal or dream for Tauja or for Kenyon that they weren’t able or did not want to realize. But I do have a sense that in a family whose destiny for so long revolved around an orange ball, I was the one who wound up with the basketball opportunity and the life in the sport. I was the youngest child in a basketball family, the
little girl with big box hearing aids who would someday land among the stars.
Ultimately, the only thing that matters is to excel in the thing God wants you to do and made you to do. All three of us have and continue to do that in our own unique ways.
And so Kenyon is there for me, courtside with his boys, cheering me on, or back home, cheering me on. In his heart and soul, cheering me on. And more and more I’m aware he has the life of children and family that I can only hope to have myself someday.
Kenyon, I choose you too.
In 2007 the Fever, right out of the gate, had the strongest run of basketball in its young history. We won sixteen out of our first twenty games—the best start in the eastern conference.
One of our new players was Tammy Sutton-Brown. She had played for the Charlotte Sting, a franchise that just didn’t thrive and folded after the 2006 season. When Tammy became available, the Fever picked her up.
Not only did Tammy become a standout center for the Fever, she also became one of my best friends. From the beginning, something with us just clicked. She shared my passion for hard work and my deep dislike of anything that smacked of mediocrity. She also had a heart for kids, eventually establishing her own basketball camp program and writing children’s books. We seemed to look at life and basketball through the same set of glasses.
On July 20 that year, I injured my foot. It was a partial tear of my plantar fascia, which is the flat connective tissue on the bottom of the foot. In short, it was an injury to the arch of my foot, very painful, needing weeks to heal.
The Fever would go 5–9 the remainder of the regular season. Still, we got into the playoffs, encountering the Connecticut Sun in the first round, for a remarkable series of games. And I was able to recover well enough to play.
Catch a Star Page 15