Lisa Leslie has scored 101 points in a single half while in high school. She’s won four Olympic Gold medals. Three WNBA MVPs. Two WNBA championships.
But how she managed not to dig into Boston Market’s appetizing spread of rotisserie chicken, roasted potatoes, macaroni and cheese and steamed vegetables during our interview deserves an award in itself.
The Hall of Famer spoke to SLAM about the responsibility she and other inaugural members of the WNBA felt toward growing and preserving the league, explained her #LogOutLookUp campaign and more.
Check out some of the highlights of the interview below:
On family meal planning: “Life is not always this structured thing where you can provide a meal early enough or you have time to cook. Some days you don’t. That’s why for me, Boston Market comes in really handy.”
On scoring 101 points in a 16-minute half in high school: “Yeah, that was a rough day for the other team. It probably didn’t feel good to be on the other end of that. It’s kind of cool now because it’s its own record. I don’t know if that will ever be broken.”
On goal-setting: “To me, what’s the point of being out there if I don’t want to win and be the best that I can be? Being a champion was probably a goal I set every year. Individual goals of wanting to be the Most Valuable Player or to lead my team in scoring, rebounding and blocked shots has always been a goal. I’ve achieved that on so many levels. And the times when I didn’t, I would always go back and try to figure out what I could do to get better and to improve.”
On growing the WNBA: “Coming from the inaugural season, I understood the importance of our fans and the support that we need—whether it was national sponsors or just the fans in general getting butts in seats. That’s something that hopefully the players now continue to do because you have to embrace the fans, and we need them for that success. That was something that was engrained in us from the ’96 Olympic team in just finding ways to win over the support of the American crowd and it carried over to the WNBA.”
