Don't Let The Lipstick Fool You:. Lisa Leslie
he put it to me was, “Lisa, with your long legs, you will be able to just glide over those hurdles. You will never hit one.”
Of course, the first time I practiced running hurdles, I crashed right into one and went down face-first. The hurdles were made of metal and wood, and they hurt. There I was, sprawled on a track all over again. I told anyone who would listen, “I will never come back out here if you make me run hurdles.”
I guess the coach felt really bad, because he agreed that I would have to compete only in the 400 meters, plus three jumping events, and that was fine with me. In the long jump and the triple jump, I would be landing in the sand. That seemed safe enough, but the high jump was a different story. I used the Fosbury Flop method for high jumping, which meant that I would run up, lift off, and go over the bar with my chest facing the sky and my back closest to the bar. Then I would kick and arch my way over. Essentially, I was going over the bar upside down, and I was getting pretty good at it until one painful attempt. I went up just fine and I cleared the bar, but on the way down, I just barely skimmed the edge of the mat on my landing, and I flopped to the ground with a thud. Fortunately, I was not injured badly, and I was able to continue jumping, but after that crash landing, I was never really the same mentally when it came to high jumping. On a good day, I could get up and over a bar set at five foot eight. That was pretty high for me. I knew it was definitely a long way to fall, and everybody who knew me knew that I hated to fall down.
But I did not give up on high jumping, and I am glad that I stuck with it, because I got good enough to compete in the state championships. I cleared the bar at five feet six inches and managed to improve my personal best in the triple jump to thirty-eight feet nine inches. I was so proud to qualify for state, especially since track was just something that I did to help me improve in basketball. I have always wondered just how good I might have been if I had practiced the sport all year long.
I really did feel faster and stronger after track season, and I knew that was going to help me on the basketball court. Any doubts I might have had in that regard were eliminated on a rainy afternoon at Morningside when track practice had to be moved inside, to the gym. I was focusing on my high jump technique, which involved footwork, pushing off, body control, and lift, but we were really limited indoors as to how much practicing we could actually do. My coach said, “Lisa, why don’t you work on your approach to that basketball rim over there? It will give you a chance to use a lot of the same skills as the high jump.”
I followed his instructions and measured my approach from about sixty feet out. I got my running start, took off, and touched my fingers on the rim. I had never done that before. I was excited, and so were my teammates. Somebody found a tennis ball. I ran in, took my steps, went up, and dunked it. Now everybody in the gym was into it. They found a volleyball, and I dunked it, too. I tried to dunk a basketball that day, but my hands were too small to palm the ball, and I could not get good control. Oh well. But I knew that my time would come. That might have been my most enjoyable track practice ever.
Running track paid dividends for me, but I gave it up after my freshman year because my heart just was not in it. I realized that I spent way too much of my time trying to find excuses not to go to practice. I told the coach, “I dread coming out here because of all the running. It makes me so nervous. When I get to fifth period and I know that track is coming up next, I get sick to my stomach.”
It takes a lot to run track. It really does. I think track athletes have more heart than athletes in any other sport. Jackie Joyner-Kersee, a track-and-field legend, is one of my “sheroes” and has all my respect in the world. It takes a lot of heart and a lot of discipline to get on the track every day and to be successful at it. I knew I did not have that kind of heart or desire for track, especially for the running. I told Coach Tatum, “I know what it takes to play basketball. It is hard work, but I never dread going to basketball practice. But this is literally making me sick.” That was the end of my track career.
That summer of 1987, I played AAU basketball, and I also played with Morningside’s off-season team. When I went back to high school in the fall, I was no longer the “new kid.” In fact, my good grades, sense of humor, and success on the basketball court had earned me a lot of respect and had made me pretty popular. I was thrilled when I was elected sophomore class president.
That season our basketball team lost only two of thirty-five games, and despite being one of the smaller schools, we won the CIF Division 5AA title, captured the Division I Regional, and advanced to the California state championship game. Our Morningside squad had a date with Oakland’s Fremont High School for the big showdown at the Oakland Coliseum.
That game was hard fought. We should have put Fremont away, but Morningside could not manage to score a single point in the final seven minutes of the contest. Still, we found ourselves trailing just 53–52 with seconds left to play. Coach Scott called a time-out. He huddled us together and said, “This is the play we are going to run.” It was an inbounds play from the baseline that we had run ever since I got to Morningside. Our guard, JoJo Witherspoon, would handle the ball and lob it to me at the front of the block. I’d catch it and hit a bank shot. It was nothing complicated and nothing new to us. I make the shot, we win the game, and Morningside wins state. It was as simple as that.
Coach Scott made sure that everybody knew their responsibilities and had the play fresh in their minds. “I want you here,” he told each of us as he pointed to the play board and calmly looked around our huddle. “I want you over here. You are going to break this way. Just lob it up there to Lisa, and that will be the game.” He never said anything to me. I am sure he figured that I knew exactly what I needed to do on the play and was well aware of the importance of the final shot.
We broke our huddle and stepped onto the court. The play was designed perfectly. JoJo lobbed the ball in. I jumped up to grab it, came down, turned, and put up my shot as time was running out. But it was short. The ball barely hit the rim. What happened? I choked. That was my shot. I made it all the time, but as I turned to make the shot, I could not decide whether to bank it off the glass or try to swish the ball straight in, and I wound up shooting the ball too softly to accomplish either one. My shot was not high enough to kiss the rim, bounce around, and have a chance to drop, and it was too weak to reach the backboard and carom in. If I had just used the glass, I probably would have scored. At least the ball would have had a chance to go in, but the wimpy way I shot it, NO CHANCE. I had choked. I had a triple-double in the game, thirteen points, twelve rebounds, and ten blocked shots, but we lost by one point, and Morningside’s season ended on a terribly sour note.
Fremont’s players were cheering and jumping for joy in the middle of the court. Their fans were jubilant. Our fans were shocked. Our team was stunned and silent. I know some fans were probably thinking that our senior, Shaunda Green, should have taken the last shot instead of me. Hey. Our play worked. I just could not put the ball in the hole.
That was a major turning point in my life. When I missed that shot, we lost out on a state championship. My miss kept us from getting the title for Shaunda in her last season at Morningside. That was a lot of weight on my shoulders.
Looking back now, I think I needed Coach Scott to say something to me in that final huddle. I needed reassurance that I could do it. Maybe if he had said, “Just shoot it like you normally shoot it, Lisa.” Or, “You have made this shot a hundred times. Just use the glass.” But I know I should have made the shot.
The whole team cried after the game, and I apologized a lot for letting them down. I cried through the entire flight back to Los Angeles, and I could not stop crying after we got home. I was sick to my stomach and felt terrible, but before I went to bed, I wrote down my goal for next season. I wanted to win the state championship in 1989.
I could not get that loss or that missed shot out of my mind. Maybe that was good in a way, because it motivated me to work even harder on my game. During the off-season, I sprouted to my full height of six foot five, and I was really driven to succeed. In my junior year, I averaged twenty-five points, fourteen rebounds, and six blocked shots per game. Both USA Today and Parade magazine named me to their first-team high school All-America squad. That was all great, but most importantly, I helped lead the Morningside Lady Monarchs to a 33–1 record and a trip back to the California state championship