Lisa Leslie
basketball player
Personal Information
Born Lisa Deshaun Leslie, July 7, 1972, in Los Angeles, CA; daughter of Christine Leslie (a truck driver).
Education: Attended University of Southern California, 1990-94.
Career
Professional basketball player. Member of Italian professional league, 1994-95; qualified for U.S. National Team, 1995; member of gold medal-winning U.S. Olympic basketball team, 1996. Los Angeles Sparks (women's pro team), founding member, 1996--.
Life's Work
Lisa Leslie would seem to have it all: beauty and poise, athletic talent that earned her an Olympic gold medal, a high-profile contract to play professional basketball with the fledgling Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA), and a modeling career that has landed her in the pages of Vogue magazine. The six-foot-five- inch Leslie has been one of the biggest names in women's basketball since joining the United States national team prior to the 1996 Olympics. With her success--and her refusal to conform to any stereotype--she has helped popularize basketball as a sport any woman can play without sacrificing femininity or flair.
Leslie joined the WNBA as one of its founding players in December of 1996 and played her first pro season in America during the summer of 1997. At the same time, the 1996 Olympic basketball gold medalist signed a contract with the prestigious Wilhelmina modeling agency in order to do both runway and print modeling. Leslie told Women's Sports and Fitness that she loves the way her dual careers--basketball and modeling--have come together in the 1990s. "I'm passionate about both, and when I'm doing both, I'm giving you me," she explained. "I'm being aggressive, doing what I love and what I've practiced with attitude and style. The big difference is, I'm showered and clean when I'm modeling. The point is, I am a woman, always."
Lisa Leslie was born in the Compton section of Los Angeles, California in 1972. Her father, who had played semi-pro basketball, deserted the family while she was very young. Her mother, Christine, had three daughters to raise and needed a livelihood that would bring in a dependable income. "We had no money and we could've gone on welfare, but my mom wanted to do something she was proud of," Leslie recalled in the book Venus to the Hoop. "She sat us down and said, 'This is what I've got to do. I'm going to buy a truck and learn how to drive it. It's going to take time for me to pay it off and get a local route. I need you kids to give me five years.'"
Leslie's mother went to work as a long-haul trucker, criss-crossing the country in her rig while her daughters grew up in Los Angeles. Christine Leslie was often away for weeks at a time and then home for only a few days, but she still managed to keep her daughters close and self-sufficient. Young Lisa had yet another cross to bear: she was the tallest child ever to pass through her elementary school. By second grade she stood five-foot-two and was taller than her teacher. Not surprisingly, she was teased about her height. "They called me Olive Oyl, they called me all sorts of things," she remembered in Venus to the Hoop. "The grown-ups mostly thought my height was beautiful, but the kids gave me a hard time." Leslie's mother, who was herself six-foot-three, encouraged her daughter to keep her chin up and be proud of her height. It was valuable advice for someone who would one day turn her height into a valuable asset.
One question that Leslie heard constantly was: "Do you play basketball?" As a young teenager, she just couldn't understand why people expected her to play hoops just because she was tall. She might never have tried the game if the other girls in her middle school hadn't begged her to come and join the school team. Even after making the team she was less than enthusiastic about the game for awhile. "I was so tall, they'd just throw the ball at me and I'd make the basket," she said. "All I did was do what I was told." Her middle school team was undefeated that year.
Leslie became more serious about basketball during her freshman year of high school. That year she moved in with an aunt and began playing ball with an older male cousin who served as a mentor and private coach. "My cousin made me do push-ups and sit-ups and then we'd work on my shots," she recalled. "I think it was at that point I learned how hard you had to work to get from one level to the next." Honing her skills on teams that were otherwise all male, she became a very skilled player.
Leslie's mother finally got the local trucking route that she had coveted, and the family moved to Inglewood, California--home of the Los Angeles Lakers. Leslie attended Morningside High School in Inglewood, where she quickly established herself as a commanding force on the basketball team.
It was a Morningside High tradition that, in the last regular season game of the year, all the basketball players would feed the ball to a chosen senior just to see how many points that senior could score. In 1990 that senior was Lisa Leslie, and the game in question was not the final contest of the season, but the next-to- last, against a hopelessly overmatched team from South Torrance. In one 16-minute flurry, Leslie scored 101 points--just four points short of the national scoring record for an entire game. Her performance so humiliated the opposing team that their coach forfeited the game at halftime, denying Leslie the opportunity to break the record.
Leslie's feat against South Torrance was covered by local and national television news crews and Sports Illustrated. This one performance served to overshadow what was otherwise a notable high school career: Leslie had averaged 27.3 points and 15 rebounds per game as a senior, had been a member of the U.S. junior Olympic team, and had received the Dial Award as outstanding female scholar-athlete of 1989. Sports Illustrated called her "the best high school player in the nation."
Many colleges tended to agree. Leslie received so many recruiting letters she had to put them in boxes under her bed. She finally chose to attend the University of Southern California, beginning her college career in the autumn of 1990. Even as a college freshman she was hailed as "not just a star but the kind of superstar who can elevate the women's game to the next level in national popularity," according to Sports Illustrated. Leslie, who was voted Pacific-10 Freshman of the Year, realized that she was serving as a role model and an inspiration to other athletes. "I think we do need that one star that even people who aren't familiar with the game can recognize," she admitted in Sports Illustrated. "It not only gets the attention of the public, it gets the attention of the kids who will grow up to be the next superstars."
Leslie left USC in 1994 with a wealth of basketball experience. She was a three-time All-America and had been named National College Player of the Year in 1994. She wanted more than anything to play for the U.S. Olympic team, but she realized that she would need some professional experience first. Since America had no pro basketball leagues for women, Leslie had to take her talents abroad to Italy. She signed a contract with an Italian league and began playing there. It wasn't easy. "It's hell being overseas," she declared in Venus to the Hoop. "... It's lonely.... You're by yourself. You think, okay, I could handle this for maybe one day, one week, but when you go six months, eight months, it's like, whoa."
For Leslie the experience of playing in a foreign league was blessedly short. She played one season in Italy before trying out for--and winning a place on--the U.S. national team. At six-foot- five she was the tallest player on the American squad. She was also a rarity among female basketball players because she could dunk.
The U.S. women's Olympic basketball team had fared rather poorly at the 1994 Summer Games. Staffed by talented professionals, the team had finished with a bronze medal after being defeated by the Unified Team in a playoff round. It was thought that the American women might have performed better if they had spent more time practicing together. However, the U.S. offered few incentives to entice the women away from their well-paying jobs in Italy, Japan, Spain, and Brazil.
By 1995, attitudes concerning women's basketball had changed in America. In preparation for the 1996 Olympics, the women's national basketball team began training in 1995 and embarked on an ambitious world tour in which they competed against the best international teams as well as top U.S. college teams. Led by coach Tara VanDerveer--and featuring the statuesque Lisa Leslie at center--the U.S. women's team went undefeated throughout their entire international tour.
Leslie worked hard to prepare herself for the Olympics, lifting weights to improve her stamina and strength. Her slender 170-pound frame made her vulnerable to opposing defenses, as she explained in the New York Times: "Their strategy is to beat me up, get me out of the game." During the team's pre-Olympic tours she averaged 17.3 points and seven rebounds per game. An aggressive style of play became Leslie's trademark. As she told People, "When it's time to play, something clicks in my mind, and I become--it's almost like a monster. My favorite phrase is, 'Let's go for the jugular.'"
Off the court Leslie exhibited a different persona. She made no effort to hide her ambitions for a modeling career, making sure she was impeccably groomed and beautifully dressed whenever she represented the U.S. team. "Whether I'm on the court or on the runway, I'm out there entertaining," she told Women's Sports and Fitness. "They're the same for me."
The performance of the U.S. women's basketball team was one of the highlights of the 1996 Summer Olympic Games. Most observers agreed that the women's games were far more interesting and inspiring than the one-sided routs delivered by the U.S. men's team, staffed as it was by the biggest names in the NBA. The women's victories were real victories, eked out against well-matched opponents. Furthermore, the Olympic women's team was not made up of multimillionaires but a group of players who earned relatively modest salaries. The U.S. woman's team defeated Brazil in the gold medal game and--while the world watched--celebrated the triumphant end to a long year of hard work and high expectation.
For Lisa Leslie, as for the other Olympic gold medalists in women's basketball, the victory in Atlanta provided many exciting opportunities. Leslie originally thought she would go straight from the Olympics into a new women's professional league, the American Basketball League (ABL). However, she decided that she needed a break from basketball. She signed a contract with Wilhelmina Models, one of the nation's top modeling agencies, and continued her association with Nike shoes. In December of 1996 she was one of the first players chosen to play in the fledgling WNBA, a women's league financed and promoted by the NBA.
The WNBA proved to be a good fit for Leslie. She was signed to a team in Los Angeles, her hometown. As a founding member of the Los Angeles Sparks, Leslie made her American pro debut in June of 1997--after having spent the off-season modeling sportswear in the pages of Vogue, TV Guide, and Shape.
With the financial backing of the NBA, the WNBA will be given several seasons to establish itself. As a result, Leslie will be able to play basketball and develop her modeling career at the same time. She has voiced a desire to move into acting and broadcasting when her basketball career ends. She would also like to become a new type of role model for women: an athlete who is proud to be feminine. If she has any message for youngsters, she concluded in Women's Sports and Fitness, it's this: "You can be whatever you want to be. Women don't have to fulfill the stereotype of looking like men with their clothes hanging off them just because they play basketball."
Awards
Named All-America three times while attending USC.
Further Reading
Books
- Corbett, Sara, Venus to the Hoop, Doubleday, 1997.
- Essence, January 1997, p. 80.
- People, June 30, 1997, p. 109.
- New York Times, July 17, 1996, p. B11; January 23, 1997, p. B14.
- Sports Illustrated, February 19, 1990, p. 30; November 25, 1991, p. 78; May 26, 1997, p. 36.
- Sports Illustrated for Kids, March 1997, p. 62; June 1997, p. 28.
- Women's Sports and Fitness, November 21, 1996, pp. 12, 50.
— Anne Janette Johnson
