Catch a Star

by Tamika Catchings

  Often, I know, he is pushing me to step up as a premier player. He wants me to take the lead. He argues that I need to take the shot.

  I know Dad wants me to be the best I can be.

  We lost game three, at home, against Atlanta. Katie Douglas shot well, but it wasn’t a good game for me. We wouldn’t advance to the finals.

  Immediately after the game, I wondered what Dad was thinking. I was sure he’d have comments. It was all very confusing. At the end of the 2011 regular season the WNBA had voted me Most Valuable Player. And yet that somehow wasn’t enough.

  Part 5

  Harmony

  Balls bouncing . . .

  Kids playing . . .

  Nets swishing . . .

  Crowds cheering . . .

  This is my harmony . . .

  I hear it.

  I see it.

  I live it.

  I feel it.

  I AM IT!

  15

  Winning

  “We have to match Catchings’s intensity. She’s playing so much harder than anybody on the floor.”

  Cheryl Reeve, head coach, Minnesota Lynx, at halftime of WNBA Finals, Game Three

  I understand the need for teams to shuffle the pieces, look for the players who will provide the edge for the next season, and try to tinker with the chemistry—especially when the mix of talent didn’t get you to the championship the year before. But I also think teams sometimes don’t have the patience for the chemistry to come together, and by bringing too many new players into the mix, they wind up starting the chemistry clock all over again.

  But for the Fever in 2012, the changes were minimal, and the opportunity was there for us to put it all together. We had a good feeling about this.

  Of course, every year in the beginning you have a good feeling about your chances.

  I can’t say that I hadn’t started thinking about my career as a whole and my future. I didn’t dwell on it, but some thoughts had started to cross my mind. This marked my eleventh year in the WNBA. I was at the top of my game, feeling good, anticipating more years of playing time. But eleven years in the WNBA is a long time. And I knew it couldn’t last forever.

  The average length of a WNBA career is fairly short. Some have done the math and figured the average is between three and four years. Actually, that sounds long to me. I’ve seen so many come out of college and last only a year or two.

  Some of that has to do with injuries, and some of that has to do with life choices and the generally low pay scale in women’s professional basketball. But another factor is the competitive nature of the league itself. In 2012, the WNBA had twelve teams with eleven players per team—only 132 roster spots. That means in the college draft each year, it’s usually the first-round picks that stick and make a difference.

  And for a veteran—for a second-, third-, or fourth-year player—you’re not only competing for a roster spot against the players drafted in your draft year, but all the first-round players drafted in years since. Because of the smaller size of the WNBA and the roster size of basketball teams, the flood of college talent each year squeezes through a very narrow funnel for starting spots in the WNBA.

  And veteran players have to be at the top of their game to survive. One case in point, although Katie Douglas and I were Fever players on the All-Star team in 2011, other teams had three or more All-Stars representing them. In fact, the Minnesota Lynx had four of their five starters on the All-Star team in 2011.

  It is a league of elite players, and the competition is relentless.

  It was way too early for me to retire, but after ten years in the league, I began to realize that my future chances at a championship might be pretty limited.

  I knew in 2012 we could be close to being competitive at the highest level. More than ever, I wanted us to win it all.

  Before the 2012 season started, Coach Lin Dunn called me to lunch to discuss a “change” she wanted to make for the season. We met up and Lin said, “Tamika, I want to move you from playing the 3 to the 4.”

  All the positions on the court have numbers. A small forward or in some cases the third guard is a 3. A power forward is a 4. I’d been used to playing the small forward position, which is the most versatile role on the court, allowing me to move freely, sometimes bring the ball up, often slide around the perimeter, and sometimes sneak inside for a layup.

  But Coach had an idea that I could be more effective in the 4 position, as a power forward. She said she needed me more in the middle of the floor. She felt that in the small forward position I was sometimes stuck in the corners and not involved in enough plays. As a power forward, she felt, I had the strength to muscle in close, but also the quickness to take advantage of bigger, slower bodies inside. And what’s more, she reasoned, I would be in a better position to grab rebounds.

  I wasn’t so sure. To change my position at this stage was a big shift, for me and others. It sounded to me like it was restricting me from the freedom of the small forward position.

  Then Coach Dunn said something else. “I want you to be a point forward,” she said. “I think you can bring the ball up the court, start the play, then slide down to the post as power forward. Their power forward won’t move high and play you when you bring the ball up, and you’re stronger than their guards. It’ll give us a big advantage.”

  Now that sounded good.

  We started the 2012 season solidly, winning our first four games. Katie came out in the first game and was high scorer with twenty-one points. I would pour in twenty-two and twenty-five points in the next two games respectively. We won by good margins. It felt good, promising.

  But then we went on a losing streak, falling short in the next three contests. Our first game against the Connecticut Sun in June was for me one of the more frustrating games that season—I scored thirty-one points, and we still lost. Less than a week later, we played them again—and lost again, although in overtime.

  The Sun would prove to be the elite team in our conference that year. If we wanted to get through the playoffs, chances were we would need to go through them.

  The WNBA year starts sometime in late April or early May and ends in October. There’s a break in the middle—in July/August—which most years is when the All-Star game is scheduled. And every other year, the league breaks for a month to provide time for players to compete at the World Championships or the Olympics.

  My third Olympics, in London, gave me a chance for reflection. I am so blessed by God to be able to represent my country and play at such a high level. Being in London for another run at the Olympic gold was not the same-old, same-old by any means. No Olympics is ever that. But it was an experience I’d been through before, twice, and I knew the ropes.

  There’s never enough time at the Olympics to do much, but this time through, I had a different perspective. Maybe it was my work with young people in Indianapolis through my Catch the Stars Foundation, or just my view now that I was a little older. But I tried to live in the moment and enjoy the time together with my teammates and such a great group of people.

  The Olympics, despite all the competition, brings people together. We aren’t dozens of different nations, really. We’re just people, young people, who have the same kinds of feelings, thoughts, worries, and joys. We’re all driven to be the best and we’ve been trained to be able to deliver . . . when it counts.

  While the United States was the usual favorite in women’s basketball, having dominated the sport for so many years, there was no such thing as a guaranteed gold. For us, this would be an Olympic year without Lisa Leslie and with a number of new players. And, as always, we were the team with the bull’s-eye on our back—the team every other team was playing over their heads to beat.

  We nonetheless beat our opponents all the way through the quarters and semis. We would face the surprising France in the gold medal game. They had pulled an upset over Russia in the quarters. And France featured an outstanding guard—Céline Dumerc—who could be a threat.r />
  I was told later that NBA commissioner David Stern was in the crowd. As was Kobe Bryant.

  France played us even in the first few minutes. We were missing easy shots, forcing the game. Sure, Bird said later that we weren’t nervous but simply trying to win too quickly. I think that was right. That might sound arrogant—I don’t mean it that way—but we were too aggressive and too urgent to play well.

  But then we settled in, relaxed, and our shots started to fall in. After that, they couldn’t match us. We led by nearly thirty points at the half, and eventually cruised to an easy win.

  So it was another gold medal—although no gold medal is just another gold medal. And maybe it was an even more touching awards ceremony this time, with the Chariots of Fire theme song playing in the background as medals were handed out. Then, standing tall, hand over heart, for the national anthem. It’s really something to stand there at the Olympics while “The Star Spangled Banner” is playing. You can’t help but have tears in your eyes. You can’t help but be grateful and thankful for all the opportunities that have allowed you to get here.

  The WNBA second half started the third week in August.

  Back home, we knew we had to do better. Our first half record of 10–7 wasn’t nearly the pace we needed to set. We’d been losing to teams we knew would be our toughest competition in the playoffs.

  If we got to the playoffs.

  Returning to the States, we would play seven games in the last two weeks of August. We won six out of the seven. And it was the way we started winning that was the key. Each night a different high scorer would step up. Sometimes it was Katie, sometimes me, but also sometimes Briann January.

  The phrase “letting the game come to you” is a cliché in all of sports, but there’s a lot of truth in it. You need time to figure out the other team’s strategy, to see what they are throwing at you and what they will do in certain situations you throw at them. Eventually you can see how the other team is trying to shut you down, and by doing that, who they are leaving open. That’s when the game “comes to you” as a team—you “solve” the defense and then go to the shooter the other team is leaving open.

  Sometimes people ask, “Why do you often start a game so slowly?” Yes, we often play another team pretty even for the first few minutes, or even fall behind at the beginning of the game. Well, that’s why—we’re figuring out what the other team is doing. We’re waiting for the game to come to us. We’re exploring alternative options and going to other shooters—and sometimes it takes a while to find out what works.

  I think this is true in life also. We sometimes go through periods when we feel like we’re just slogging through life, taking a step forward, and then a step back. We’re living life “even,” not getting anywhere. But I think those are also times when we learn a lot—about ourselves, about being tested, about overcoming opposition. And then God brings the game of life to us. He says, “Now’s your chance.” And in those moments, you become God’s go-to shooter. And you need to be ready to follow his lead.

  For the Fever that fall, we were learning that the game didn’t rest just on me to play D and make shots, or on Katie to get open and score. Others could step up as well, be the go-to shooter, ready when the game came to them.

  By the end of August we’d turned our record around—to 16–8. It became clear that, unless we totally collapsed in September, we’d be in the playoffs. But we needed to do better against three teams that had had our number—Atlanta, Connecticut, and Minnesota.

  We played ten games in September. We won six and lost four. But one loss was against Atlanta, another against Connecticut. And we lost two to Minnesota.

  So the good news was that we made the playoffs.

  The bad news was that, as it turned out, in the playoffs we would need to beat Atlanta, Connecticut, and Minnesota—in that order.

  But the good thing about the playoffs is that all teams start from scratch. It’s a new beginning, a chance for the best teams to play each other, and for, perhaps, a new team to emerge triumphant.

  But we’d have to solve teams who had been our toughest competition all year. And it didn’t start well.

  The Atlanta Dream jumped out in the first game of the conference semis and took it to us.

  They came out fast, scoring the first eleven points. We were beaten on the inside, a rarity for our team, and our three-point shooting, usually our strength, was flat. Meanwhile the Dream’s Angel McCoughtry, the leading scorer in the league that season, shot lights out.

  We’d need to win game two to stay alive and game three to move on. As they say, “Win or go home!”

  I knew I had to do better. The team needed both Katie and me to perform, whether or not the Dream was trapping the two of us. We just had to determine in the flow of the game which of us they couldn’t double-team.

  In game two, I became that one. Katie drew the defense to her, giving me, as well as Briann January, room to work.

  We played tight the first quarter, and although we had a one-point lead with just three seconds left, the Dream’s Ketia Swanier launched a last-minute Hail-Mary three-pointer from half-court that went in. Likewise, in the second quarter, we played close, trading leads. There were fourteen lead changes in the first half alone. We played hard, but just couldn’t break it open. We went into halftime down by two and our season hanging in the balance.

  We took charge in the third quarter. Briann scored from inside and outside, winding up with twenty-four points. I scored twenty-five and had thirteen rebounds. We ran away with it and won by fifteen points. We earned a chance to stay alive in the playoffs by getting to a third game.

  I remember that game very well because of one person seated in the first row. One very special person. Coach Pat Summitt.

  The previous year, in May, Pat Summitt visited the Mayo Clinic to look into a series of memory lapses. The diagnosis was early onset dementia, Alzheimer’s. While the disease was just in its beginning stages, it had started to affect Pat’s performance as a coach. Later in 2012 she would announce her retirement.

  When my mom drove me to Knoxville in August 1997, she did so knowing that Pat Summitt would take care of me. And she did. Pat was not only a legendary, tough-as-nails coach to me; she was like my second mom. And most every young lady entering the basketball program at Tennessee would say the same thing.

  And now Pat Summitt was sitting at courtside watching me play. Those laser eyes had dimmed a little, and she looked a little more frail. But her presence and smile meant everything to me.

  That win in Atlanta bought us another chance, game three, back in Indianapolis. And we were resolved not to let this one slip away.

  It was a total team effort. The Dream focused on defending me a bit more, but then Katie really took off, scoring a game-high twenty-five points. Briann, again, played tough, and Erlana Larkins was strong in the middle. We were ahead most of the game, sometimes by just a few points, and the Dream tied us for a moment in the third quarter.

  But we pulled away in the final quarter and won by eleven. We beat Atlanta, one of our toughest opponents all year, and we advanced to the conference finals against number one seeded Connecticut Sun.

  The series started with another loss against the Sun, but game two was a classic.

  I bounced back from being shut down in the first game and had something like seventeen points in the first quarter. But the Sun, featuring MVP Tina Charles and Olympic star Asjha Jones, played us tough. With twenty seconds left in the game, the teams were tied. The Sun’s Allison Hightower was at the line to shoot a free throw.

  Once again, we were playing for our survival. If we lost, we would go home, our efforts to reach and win a championship thwarted yet again.

  Hightower missed her free throw, and I grabbed the rebound, quickly firing an outlet pass up to Briann. Briann raced toward the basket with just a few seconds left and slid in for a layup. But she missed it.

  Erlana was able to tip the rebound back to Briann, who de
sperately shoveled it out to Shavonte Zellous. Shavonte, with just one second left on the clock, jumped and released the ball.

  And it went in. We won by two points. Once again we scrambled and clawed our way into the third and final game of a series.

  In game three we would face our greatest test.

  Just ten minutes into the first quarter, Katie, going up for a jump shot, came down hard on her left foot, and it buckled at the ankle. She had to be carted off the court.

  The rest of us were stunned, but we knew we had to step up. I knew I had to pick up my game, and I did. And so did the rest of the Fever. We went ahead by nine in the second quarter, and never let go, winning finally by sixteen points.

  Some people wonder how it is that when a star player goes down, the team sometimes performs better. There are all kinds of theories about that, and frankly, I don’t know. We won that game, I think, because suddenly everyone knew we had to make up for the considerable loss of Katie’s scoring.

  When bad things happen, sometimes that’s an opportunity for something better. It wasn’t what we’d planned, maybe, but it sets up a new situation that we might be able to thrive in. I think it’s when we have a particular need, and we face our sudden weakness honestly and directly, that God can do more with us.

  It’s because, in our need, we rely on him more.