My Shot Page 12

  Just before our September 20 opening game against the Indiana Fever, Laurel J. Richie, the president of the WNBA, stood at a podium in front of my family, coaches, and a room full of media, and announced that all thirty-nine people who’d cast ballots for the Rookie of the Year Award had voted for me. As she pulled me into a big hug, I wasn’t as shy or unhappy as I had thought I would be. I was thrilled, in fact, and most of all, honored.

  But I needed to thank the people who’d made it happen, and they included Sylvia Fowles, who’d been named the Defensive Player of the Year, and Swin Cash, who’d tied for the Kim Perrot Sportsmanship Award.

  “Truthfully,” I said when I leaned down into the mike, “I talk about them because the individual accolades and the individual success doesn’t come without them. They’ve helped me rise to the occasion game after game, practice after practice. So I’ll continue to talk about them, because I owe them a ton.”

  Those words would ring in my ears throughout the play-offs. I’d need to remember how important my teammates were to me, because I was about to face one of the toughest challenges of my basketball career, against the Fever.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  WNBA Play-offs

  The first round of the WNBA play-offs consisted of only three games. That meant that every second counted, because if we went down one game, everything would ride on a second. There was no room for big mistakes to be made, and before we went into the play-offs against the Fever, we vowed that we’d try as hard as possible to avoid errors. Unfortunately, all the good intentions in the world don’t guarantee that you won’t slip sometimes. That’s exactly what happened in our two games against Indiana.

  Indiana was the defending WNBA champs, so seven of their veterans went into each game understanding the kind of pressure that goes into being in the play-offs. It was all new to the Sky, though. In eight years of franchise history, we’d never been to the play-offs.

  Swin Cash later insisted that lack of experience had nothing to do with how we played, though. “The play-offs are about toughness, mental toughness, not about age,” she said to the press.

  If that was the case, then we just weren’t tough enough. In fact, we struggled mentally, physically, and emotionally from moment one.

  Over the course of both games, the Fever out-rebounded us 70–51, even though we’d been the number two rebounding team in the nation all season. They nearly killed us on offense, too. During the first game, I made only ten points, which was less than I’d scored in all but one game during the regular season. My season average had been almost double that!

  We lost the first game 57–79.

  If every victory is a team effort, then every loss is as well, and my teammates had struggled as much as I had.

  Sylvia Fowles got in fewer than 50 percent of her shots close to the net. Our point guard, Courtney Vandersloot, hardly completed any assists. We were four for seventeen on three-pointers, too. All around, we were outhustled, and we struggled over and over with our shooting and defense.

  When the buzzer rang after the last game, which we lost 72–85, Courtney Vandersloot sat on the sidelines with her head underneath a towel and didn’t move for several minutes.

  I know how she feels, I thought. I just want to hide too.

  But if you’re ever going to come back from a devastating loss, you can’t just disappear. Maybe you can squirrel yourself away for a few minutes, but soon you have to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and learn something from it.

  After the devastating 2013 play-offs, that’s exactly what I planned to do.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Building Strength

  I mentioned before that one of the things I always tell participants in the Elena De11e Donne Academy is that everyone is going to make mistakes, but that doesn’t mean you’re a failure. Quite the opposite, in fact; errors are a sign that you’re only human, and if you don’t make them, you won’t learn anything.

  When you’re burning from a crushing loss, it’s easy to lose sight of that. Failing hurts. You feel shame, anger, sadness, and even hopelessness, knowing that whatever you do next is going to be an uphill battle. But you have to keep trying—even if you can’t figure out what you need to do. After all, haven’t you always tried your best?

  Before the play-offs, I definitely felt that way. I trained as hard as anyone I knew. I worked out four and a half hours a day with weights, on the court, and by running to build up my speed and stamina. It paid off too. All throughout high school and college, I was always at the top of my game from beginning to end. I didn’t falter in the beginning of a game, then gain speed, and I certainly never sputtered out toward the end. The sum total of a game might have been a challenge, but I always thrived—and then some.

  At some point during my rookie season with the Sky, though, that changed. I started to notice that I wasn’t feeling as good in the second half of a game as I was in the first. I began to run more slowly, breathe more heavily, miss more shots, and go after the ball with less gusto than I had before. I wasn’t sick or injured either. I just lacked the endurance I needed to take me through the end of a game as well as I’d started in the beginning.

  Never had I been more aware of that than after our final loss to the Fever.

  I could have felt better after halftime, I said to myself. I was rested up, yet I was so slow.

  What could that be from? If I was already doing everything possible, what else could be causing it? It wasn’t Lyme disease, so was I just getting old?

  As the team was walking toward our press conference, where we’d have to recount not just how Indiana had swept us but also account for what we could have done better, I suddenly figured it out. I turned and grabbed Pokey by the arm.

  “I don’t think I’m strong enough, Pokey,” I said to her as we rounded the corner toward the press room. “I think that’s why I struggled so much in the second half of both games. I need to hire a strength coach in the off-season.”

  Pokey had been a coach for years, so she’d heard players say all kinds of things after big losses. Since she was someone whose job it was to help her team perform better and win games, I guess I thought she’d agree with me. What I didn’t expect was that she’d tell me I was being too hard on myself.

  “Elena,” she said, almost like she was scolding me, “you are the Rookie of the Year. You had one of the best years I’ve ever seen from a new player. Can’t you just stop and be thankful for that for a minute or two? Then we can figure out why we lost these games.”

  “Okay,” I answered, half in shock and totally confused. Isn’t she happy that I want to improve? I wondered.

  “Look, I’m not disagreeing with you,” she continued, probably noticing the weird look on my face. “But just think about this moment for right now. You just finished your season. Focus on that and speaking to the press. When we leave this room, we can think about next year.”

  And with that, we opened the doors, saw flashing bulbs, and began talking about the best season—and the worst end to it—that the Sky had ever had.

  • • •

  WNBA players aren’t paid much compared to other professional athletes. On average we earn about $75,000 a year, and the best, most experienced player isn’t allowed to make more than $109,000, a cap based on an agreement between the players and the league. NBA players have it a lot better. LeBron James is paid more than $30 million a year by the Cleveland Cavaliers. Think about that. He earns in one day what most female players do in a year.

  The lower pay is why most WNBA players go overseas in the off-season to play for Russia, China, Turkey, Korea, Italy, or a handful of other countries. Players can make more than a million dollars on those teams! It’s usually a fraction of what they’d make if they were men, but it’s still great money. Unfortunately, traveling to another country means you’re away from your family for months—unless they come with you. Maybe that might have been an option for my parents, Gene, or Amanda, but Lizzie couldn’t do that
. She could hardly leave the state of Delaware.

  I’d thought a lot about what I wanted to do in the off-season, and I’d considered playing on a foreign team. Life in Chicago was expensive. I had endorsement deals, but making more money is always nice. Plus, the top players were almost expected to play overseas. It helped you keep your game up, raised your exposure internationally—which ultimately benefitted the WNBA—and taught you skills that only international players could offer. The basic rules of basketball may be the same from country to country, but the style of play may not be, and I knew that I might come back from overseas with some really great tricks up my sleeve.

  But I wouldn’t see Lizzie for months, and the thought of that broke my heart.

  I decided to turn down all the overseas offers and stay in Chicago over the winter. I could continue to take Wrigley on long walks, I could see Amanda as much as possible, and I could go home every weekend to see Lizzie. I’d also have time to do what I hadn’t during the season: volunteer with special-needs kids and raise money for Lyme disease. I’d recently started working with the Lyme Research Alliance and the Special Olympics, and the thought of devoting my energy to them was thrilling. In fact, I’d been named a global ambassador for the Special Olympics the year before, and it had been one of the prouder moments of my life.

  The winter wouldn’t be all fun and relaxation, though, because I planned to hire two people to help me build strength, and I wanted them to push me to the limit. Luckily, I found the perfect partners right in front of me. The first was one of Chicago’s assistant coaches, Christie Sides, who would practice on the court with me and be my lifting buddy in the gym. The second was the Sky’s strength coach, Ann Crosby, who would formally train me in all my lifting and conditioning.

  For six months, till the Sky began practicing for the 2014 season, I’d meet Christie and Ann bright and early every morning for training. For the next four and a half hours, we’d stretch and lift weights, and then hit the court for drills. I’d worked out plenty in my life, but this was at a whole new level. I’d never pushed myself as hard or sweated as much as I did with them.

  “I hate this,” I told Christie every single morning in the beginning. “I feel terrible, and I’m not performing well because of it.”

  She was so reassuring. “Your muscles aren’t used to it. Just keep at it, and soon they will be.”

  Within a few weeks I could tell a difference. I’d started putting on weight, and it was all muscle.

  One of my favorite shots on the court is called a fadeaway, which involves me jumping or leaning back just a bit to get away from a defender. I’m so tall that when I go for a fadeaway, then shoot, the ball is almost impossible to block. Defenders just can’t get into the air fast enough, nor are they close enough.

  “Forget fadeaways,” Christie said one morning. “You’ve got to know how to make a shot when there’s contact.”

  She was right. All during the previous season when a defender hit or touched me, I’d stumble out of position, and half the time miss the shot. Other times I’d just fall onto the court.

  It’s true, I thought. I hate contact. I got a concussion from contact!

  Christie started intentionally fouling me—hard—and slowly I got comfortable with being bumped up against. As I put on muscle, the hits hurt less, and I didn’t mind driving harder, risking knocking up against her. My body was responding in ways I’d never expected it to, and it was exciting.

  This is so funny, I realized one day. For years people have been worrying about my mental game. Like whether I’d burn out or run away because I wasn’t happy. All that time I was ignoring the fact that my body needed to grow as much as my mind.

  I wasn’t just building muscle and endurance during those months off. I was also working hard to keep Lyme disease from attacking, and I saw Rita Rhoads every other month for infusions of vitamin C. During one visit she noticed a difference in me right away.

  “You seem healthy, Elena,” she said. “That’s great. I think you’re going to have a fantastic season.”

  By the time the season was set to begin in May, I’d packed on twelve pounds of muscle, and I felt like a new woman. I could even do a pull-up—something I’d never before done because my wingspan is so huge.

  I thought I was practically unbeatable, and I knew that no defensive player could knock me off my feet. Neither could Lyme disease, if I was lucky.

  Unfortunately, I was only half right.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Lead with Confidence

  The word that sums up the beginning of the 2014 WNBA season for me is “confidence.” The veterans, like me, had learned so much from the play-off sweep the year before, and we’d grown because of our mistakes and shortcomings. I’d grown too—literally! I was noticeably bigger and stronger, and just looking more athletic made me feel like I could do anything. Our rookies were also eager and had been terrific in practice, and they felt even more confident because they were working with players—like me and Sylvia—who’d been recognized and honored by the league. We were ready to tackle anything and anyone because we knew we were the team to beat.

  Then Sylvia Fowles aggravated an old tissue injury in her hip and had to have surgery, and we were suddenly without our best defensive player. Christie had encouraged me to read books about leadership during the off-season, and thinking about them, I remembered a lesson I’d learned in college.

  You’ve been a vocal leader before, and you can do it again. You’re in a position to inspire this team, so do it.

  During one practice just before the season began, I called the team together in a huddle.

  “Listen,” I said confidently, “we don’t have Sylvia, and that’s a big loss. But we have each other, and we’re not the kind of team that depends on one player to do everything. We might play differently without her, but that doesn’t mean we’ll play worse. I’m confident we can be just as good as ever—even better. Are you?”

  “Absolutely!” one person said.

  Then another chimed in, “We can do this!”

  Sure enough, we did. We had the best opening in franchise history, winning our first four games decisively. I captured the Eastern Conference Player of the Month for May, and Courtney Vandersloot had a career milestone when she became the Sky’s all-time leader in assists.

  Even without one of our best players, we’re amazing, I thought. Being confident has helped us so much.

  Unfortunately, confidence doesn’t prevent bad things from happening. Just because you’re feeling great doesn’t mean that great things will happen, so I always think it’s best to expect anything—good or bad—but always hope for the best. Lead with confidence, but know that reality can sometimes be ugly.

  That’s what happened during our eighth matchup, an away game against the Atlanta Dream.

  I started to feel sluggish before I even got to the Atlanta stadium. We’d had a home game the day before, and the flight down had left me spent. I couldn’t believe how tired I was even though I napped almost the whole trip, and when we landed, I felt like I walked off the plane in slow motion.

  Now, I’d been fighting Lyme disease for five years, so you’d think I’d know right away when symptoms hit me. But since no flare-up is the same as the one before, this time I was pretty sure it was something else.

  “I think I’m just overtired,” I told Pokey. “I’m sure that getting on the court is going to energize me. I just know it.”

  It did exactly the opposite. During a time-out my hands were shaking so badly I could hardly hold my cup of water and drink it. I managed to play for only twenty-five minutes, and by the time I sat down on the bench, completely exhausted, I’d scored only seven points. We lost the game 59–97, our biggest defeat in terms of points all year.

  I missed the next game, and the next four after that. When I finally got a proper diagnosis, I realized Lyme disease had been my problem all along. It had just been blossoming during the Atlanta game, preparing for a full
-scale attack.

  The previous two times Lyme disease had sidelined me, my symptoms had been like a bad case of the flu. My muscles and joints ached, and all I wanted to do was lie in bed. I also had brain fog, but it didn’t stop me from being aware of my surroundings and making good decisions. This time was different. The fuzziness in my head got so bad that sometimes I didn’t know where I was, and I couldn’t figure out the simplest things, like what to eat for breakfast. I started having tremors, especially in my hands, and they got worse when I tried to practice. Can you imagine attempting a basket when you’re not even sure you can hold on to the ball?

  For a brief few days I started to feel better, so I played in one away game in Connecticut, but then I felt terrible. Playing is just not worth the effort, I realized, so I went home to Delaware and decided to see Rita daily for IV injections of antibiotics and vitamin C. I drove to her every morning, then spent all day in her office with needles and tubes in my arms.

  Sounds like a really glamorous life for a basketball star, right? It was awful. Luckily, Amanda drove all the way from Chicago to Delaware with Wrigley in her car, then stayed with me in Delaware to take care of me and lift my spirits.

  I tried as hard as I could to be optimistic, but the truth was, I was totally down in the dumps. I couldn’t stop worrying that all the hard work I’d put in during the off-season had been for nothing. My muscles were withering away, I knew I’d have to spend at least six months getting my endurance back, and pull-ups? Forget it. The thought of doing one wore me out.

  Worse, the Sky had gone 5–12 since I’d been home. It wasn’t entirely because of me—Sylvia was still recovering from surgery, and Courtney Vandersloot had just been sidelined because of a knee injury—but I still felt awful. I hated seeing my team lose.

  We’re better than this, I thought. And we were so confident!