Wednesday, September 20, 2017

J-Speaks: Lobo Enshrined Close to Home


While the University of Connecticut Lady Huskies today are known as a collegiate basketball powerhouse that has produced some of the best women to ever play on the hardwood, there was a time that this now great program under head coach Geno Auriemma was just another team dreaming of being in the same sentence as that of the University of Tennessee, led by the late Hall of Famer Pat Summit. That rise to greatness began with the recruitment of a Southwick, MS native who set the standard that all other Lady Huskies would follow. Her basketball career gave her the chance to achieve her dreams, but gave other little girls and young women after her the courage to dream of playing professional basketball in the United States. Two Fridays ago, this proud legend of the hardwood, who now works for ESPN received the highest honor one could ever receive for a second time. 
On Friday, Sept. 8 in Springfield, MS not too far from where she grew up, Rebecca Lobo was enshrined into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame as part of the 2017 class. The same place where she got married to Sports Illustrated writer Steve Rushin.
Lobo, who is now a women’s college basketball and WNBA studio and color analyst for ESPN, was inducted in the 11-member class that consisted of the all-time winningest boys’ high school coach Robert Hughes; two-time NBA scoring champion, and an ESPN basketball analyst Tracy McGrady; Notre Dame women’s head coach Muffet McGraw; University of Kansas men’s head coach Bill Self; Nick Galis; George McGinnis; Mannie Jackson; Tom Jernstedt, and the late great Jerry Krause. 
“I grew up 15 miles from here,” Lobo said to NBATV’s Rick Kamla on the Red Carpet that evening. 
“I came to the old Hall of Fame building. I’ve been to the new one so many times. Understanding the magnitude of what it meant for all those players to be in, I couldn’t be more excited.”
For Lobo, who is also a member of the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame as part of their 2010 class, adds another honor to a that took her from her home in Massachusetts; to Storrs, Mansfield, CT; to New York City, where she played for the Women’s Basketball Association’s New York Liberty from 1997-01; to the then Houston Comets in summer of 2002 and ending her playing career with the Connecticut Sun in 2003. 
This journey of Lobo playing basketball came from her wanting to be like her older siblings that she adored very much. Her brother Jason, who played collegiately at Dartmouth College, and is now a judge in Connecticut, and her older sister Rachel, who she played with for two years at Southwick-Tolland Regional High School, played collegiately at Salem State College. 
Lobo in her high school career playing for Jim Vincent scored at the time a Massachusetts record 2,740 points. 
Lobo said in her acceptance speech that she learned from Vincent and her middle school head coach taught her how to play, and that the people in her town helped raised her to be the person that she is today, and she hoped that they take a great deal of pride in this proud moment. 
She also gave thanks to the people that did help raise her and drove her to basketball practice and sacrificed for her to achieve her dream were in her father Joseph, who is of Cuban descent and her late mother RuthAnn, who is of German and Irish heritage. 
When it came time to choose where to go to college, Lobo chose to attend the University of Connecticut, because it was close to home and that the institution matched her belief in academic excellence. 
She also went because she wanted to play for Auriemma, and Associate Head Coach Chris Dailey. 
Lobo called it the best decision of her life, and that when she is in an arena calling games now or doing studio work, she gets text messages from Dailey, with half of them that said, “I just pressed mute.” 
Her reply on stage that evening to that was, “So C.D., whose here tonight, you can’t press mute tonight. Thank you so much for the role you had in getting me here and the role you’ve had in my life.” 
After three solid seasons of individual success where she accumulated averages of 14.3, 16.7 and 19.2 points and 7.9, 11.2 and 11.2 rebounds, she and UConn broke through in the 1994-95 with a perfect 35-0 season, which was capped off with a 70-64 win in the National Championship. 
Lobo was named the Most Outstanding Player of the Final Four that season, and it was one of many honors she received that season. She became the first basketball player ever to win the ESPY for Outstanding Female Athlete; was named the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year; the NCAA’s Women’s Basketball Player of the Year; won the Women’s Sports Foundation’s Sportswoman of the Year; won the Wade Trophy, and received the Honda Sports Award for basketball. 
While Lobo was the headliner of that title team a little over two decades ago, she gave a lot of credit to the rest of her teammates in Jamelle Elliott, Jennifer Rizzotti, Pam Webber, Kara Wolters, and Carla Berube. 
 “Thanks for making that such a fun ride,” Lobo said about her teammates. 
She also gave a special shout out to Rizzotti, who attended the festivities, and Lobo said that she is one of her best friends and teammates she ever had and thanked her for being by her side for a great deal of her basketball career. 
“She was the first nationally known player that we were fortunate enough to get,” Auriemma said. “Next thing you know, everybody in America is talking about University of Connecticut Women and Rebecca Lobo.” 
That UConn team also became just the fifth Division I women’s basketball program to go undefeated on their way to a title; just the second team to do it in the NCAA era, dating back to 1982, and the first NCAA team, men or women of all divisions to go unbeaten and win 35 games in the process.  
Prior to that season, the UConn Women’s team had made just one Final Four appearance and never won a National Championship. Since that first title, the Lady Huskies have added 10 more championships to that one. 
While Lobo made a solid name for herself in the WNBA, she will always be remembered for what she did at UConn taking a team that had just one Final Four appearance prior to her arrival to a team that under Auriemma has won 11 National titles and a produced some of the greatest players, not just women to ever play on the collegiate, professional, and international hardwood. That is all because of him and Lobo, who said that and then some of her former college coach at the end of her induction speech.  
“When you recruited me, you knew I belonged at UConn. You knew I was meant to play for you, and fortunately I knew that too, and I followed my heart. You have completely changed my life, and for that I thank you. You have changed my life, and I’m here tonight completely because of you. Thank you.”
After an outstanding career at UConn, Lobo was part of the 1996 Olympic team, that captured Gold in Atlanta, GA. Lobo teamed with basketball legends like Teresa Edwards, new Women’s National team head coach Dawn Staley, Sheryl Swoopes, Lisa Leslie, Jennifer Azzi, Ruthie Bolton, Katrina McClain, Carla McGhee, and Katy Steading.
“Rebecca was the youngest one on the team, and I remember a young kid that was willing to do whatever it took,” Edwards, a member of the 2011 Hall of Fame class said
One year later, the WNBA was formed and began its inaugural season, and Lobo was assigned to the New York Liberty during the league’s first player allocations on Jan. 22, 1997. 
Former WNBA President Val Ackerman, from 1996-05 said that the signing of Lobo to the WNBA gave this new women’s league was legitimate and one that was going to be special and long lasting. 
“She was a phenomenon in many ways, and she played a key role in the surge that brought women’s basketball into primetime,” Ackerman said.
One of the lasting images from that inaugural campaign, that has become iconic was a promo that featured Lobo, and fellow Hall of Famers Leslie, and Swoopes walking down a tunnel with WNBA bags with the slogan at the end saying, “We Got Next.” 
Another lasting promo from that time was one of Lobo working out on the floor of Madison Square Garden in New York, NY. During that promo, Lobo can be heard saying that when she in sixth grade, she wrote a letter to the late great Hall of Fame multi-winning championship head coach, and executive of the Boston Celtics Arnold “Red” Auerbach that she would be the first girl to play for the C’s. The promo ended with her with her hands on her knees looking up into the sky with sweat coming down her face and she said, “Sorry Red. I’m booked.” 
While that dream did not become a reality right away, thanks to former NBA Commissioner David Stern, current Commissioner Adam Silver, who was the Deputy Commissioner then, Ackerman, Lobo was able to realize her dream of playing professional basketball in the WNBA.
While the numbers she did not have the kind of impact she had at UConn, Lobo was a big part along with her then teammates like Teresa Weatherspoon, Sue Wicks, Kym Hampton, Sophia Witherspoon, and Coquese Washington in helping the Liberty to get to the WNBA Finals in 1997, 1999, and 2000. Their championships were dashed at the hands of the then Houston Comets and Swoopes, Hall of Famer Cynthia Cooper-Dyke and Tina Thompson. 
“In the infancy of the WNBA, we needed to make our fans feel like they were family and Rebecca was the perfect person for that,” Cooper-Dyke, member of the 2010 class said. 
While those Liberty teams never won a title, they brought to fruition a dream for all young girls that there was a professional basketball league for them to watch on television, and to be drafted in one day if they were good enough in college. 
One person that Lobo and Weatherspoon left that aspirational impression on Lauren Thomas, the daughter of Hall of Fame guard Isiah Thomas, who is now the President of the Liberty. 
“Rebecca Lobo and Teresa Weatherspoon. They gave my daughter a dream,” the two-time NBA champion with the Pistons said to Kamla during the Hall of Fame Red Carpet Show on NBATV that night. 
“Because my daughter couldn’t dream of playing professional basketball in the WNBA, until they came along. They gave a whole generation of women the dream to be professional basketball players, and they did it with such class. They did it with such grace.” 
That dream became realized by fellow UConn legends, champions, Gold medalists and future Hall of Famers in All-Stars Diana Taurasi of the Phoenix Mercury, who played at UConn from 2000-04, and Sue Bird of the Seattle Storm. 
“She started that waive of passion, and of winning,” Taurasi, the WNBA all-time leading scorer said of Lobo. 
Bird, the WNBA all-time leader in assists said that Lobo and the 1996 Gold Medal winning Women’s team that, “inspired this whole generation of women’s basketball players.” 
Lobo also said in her acceptance speech that she can watch her oldest daughter light up when she talks about some of the young rising stars in the WNBA like All-Star Breanna Stewart of the Storm, a former UConn star and champion, or her 11-year-old daughter beam when she sports her jersey of Liberty All-Star center and former Lady Husky Tina Charles, who also played at UConn. 
“I have three daughters, who play basketball. So, the WNBA means even more to me now, then it did when I was playing in it,” Lobo said of her children Siobhan, Maeve, Thomas and Rose.
Over the next two seasons, Lobo would play for the Comets, and Connecticut Sun, where she would retire in 2003. 
After retiring from playing basketball, Lobo began the next chapter of her life as her kids put it, “talk ballgames,” as a broadcaster, working as a reporter and color analyst for ESPN, where her focus on Women’s College Basketball and the WNBA. 
“I’m thankful to Pat Lowry and Tina Thornton for giving me the opportunity to do this job that I love,” Lobo said. 
That journey began as a sideline reporter working UConn Women’s games. One time she saw her old head coach and Auriemma said to her that when she interviews him could she wear high heels. She gladly obliged that request every time that she has interviewed him. 
When Lobo asked Auriemma over the summer if he would be her presenter for her induction into the Hall of Fame, she promised to take off her heels. Auriemma said that he would present her if he let him wear her heels. 
She went on to also say that no one tells you how to become a broadcaster, except for everyone with a twitter account. 
For Lobo, she had the advantage of having who she calls two great mentors in her corner, who she also calls her friends in Holly Rowe and Doris Burke.  
“You are great friends, who’ve been with me along this ride, and I thank you for being her tonight,” she said about two of the best side line reporters in the game today. 
One of the great things about becoming a Hall of Famer is that is gives you a chance to put your critics in their place. For Lobo, one of those critics early in her career was her now husband Steve Rushin of Sports Illustrated. 
The two first met at dive Irish bar in New York, NY in 2001. Lobo said that she reade all of her now husband’s columns, but about two weeks before they met, he wrote this article in SI, which featured what she called a throwaway line that said, “Much like Wilt Chamberlin, I too slept with 8,000 women last night. I was at a New York Liberty game.”
That night when Lobo met Rushin she said, “I know who you are. Are you the guy that wrote that joke about the New York Liberty?” 
He blushed and said that he was. Lobo asked him how many games have you been too? Rushin said none. 
Lobo said in response about the attendants at MSG games for Liberty games, “Well obviously, or else you would have been sleeping with 12,000 women, cause that’s how many fans we average.” 
Lobo then invited him to one of her Liberty games and they have been together ever, when they got married 23 months after that. Rushin, Lobo said has been to hundreds of WNBA and women’s college games, and most exciting for their family 10-year-old girls AAU basketball games.   
Lobo however would not have reached this pinnacle of her basketball journey had it not been for her late mother advocating for her to play on the boy’s team back when she was in third grade when only two girls signed. 
Her mom said no, and that means she would have to let her play on the boy’s team. Lobo’s mother brought her down, but the other girl dropped out making Lobo the only girl on the squad. Mrs. Lobo said to the coach that he wanted her daughter treated the same as all the other boys. 
That meant if she had to run sprints, she had to run sprints. If they were getting yelled at, she needed to be yelled at. 
The one exception was that if the team was divided into shirts and skins, Lobo always had to be on the shirts team. 
“No one would have appreciated this hall of fame honor more than my mother,” Lobo said of her late mom. 
Nearly three decades ago, a young lady by the name of Rebecca Lobo went from being a high school star in Southwick, MS to Storrs, CT and became a star, champion, and trail blazer. She then became an Olympic Gold medalist, a WNBA All-Star and legend, and today is an in-studio and color basketball analyst for “The Worldwide Leader in Sports,” at ESPN. You can also call her as her tv partner for WNBA games the past few years in Ryan Ruocco at the start of each broadcast, “The Hall of Famer Rebecca Lobo.” 
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