Dawn Staley: ‘I’m Tough. And I Don’t Cry a Lot. That’s a Philly Thing’
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ou likely know Dawn Staley as head coach of the three-time NCAA champion University of South Carolina women’s basketball team. If you’re a big basketball fan, and maybe a little bit older, you also know her as a six-time WNBA All-Star, a three-time Olympic gold-medal winner with Team USA, and a two-time Naismith award winner and two-time ACC Player of the Year at the University of Virginia. What you may not know is how the hell she’s managed to do all of that coming from extremely humble roots in Philadelphia. How she muscled her way onto the courts of the Raymond Rosen housing projects growing up, the only girl playing with all the neighborhood boys. How she nearly lost her scholarship and got booted from UVA for bad grades and a bad attitude. How she failed to make the 1992 Olympic team. How she fell into a depression after winning gold in Atlanta in 1996. How she put her career on the line fighting for pay equity — and after months of controversy, won, becoming the highest-paid NCAA women’s basketball coach in history.
You’ll learn all this and more in Staley’s approachable and fast-moving new memoir, Uncommon Favor. Organized in 13 chapters titled for important life lessons (“The Disciplined Person Can Do Anything”), the book traces Staley’s origins, her fantastic achievements, and her stumbles in equal measures. She comes off as she does in interviews — direct, insightful, humble but never self-deprecating, slyly funny. Rolling Stone spoke with Staley about some takeaways from the book as well as life since her USC Gamecocks fell to UConn in this year’s NCAA title game.
What’s the key to getting a group of disparate people to all buy into the same vision?
The most important thing is clear communication. A life motto of mine is “Look, sound, feel” — if something looks or sounds or feels off, then you have to address it. That is the moral compass I use to keep everybody on the same page. It also allows people to have perspective and use their voices. And when you use your voice, it just clears up everything, and you’re not having to deal with things two or three or four months down the line.
If you’re in a meeting and someone says something that you didn’t like or you disagreed with, the best of us can’t stay stone-faced, right? You’ll raise an eyebrow or maybe you’ll smirk, change your expression. Really, you’ve addressed it. But now it’s about putting words to that expression. If you disagree and then say why, your message isn’t lost in the delivery.
You write about being extremely shy as a girl, reluctant to speak for any reason. Yet you ended up in a job where you’re giving direction, talking to players, animated on the sideline, talking to the media day in and day out. What changed for you?
I write in the book about when I was almost kicked out of [the University of Virginia] because I didn’t perform well in the classroom. I sat in front of that dean, shy, no eye contact. I hadn’t developed emotionally because I was a shy kid. And the way I operated in that space was to look down. I know now that’s disrespectful, that it comes off as I wasn’t interested, but it was the furthest from the truth. I hadn’t been taught how to operate in those situations.
I know now to give people eye contact, to actually use my words. But if I didn’t go through that, I wouldn’t know. And if my coach, Debbie Ryan, didn’t speak up for me, I would’ve been kicked out of Virginia, all because that was a new experience for me. I not only messed up in the classroom, but I messed up with the very person that was the decision maker whether I stayed or had to go. Luckily, I have people in my life that allowed me to learn those life lessons without it costing me some devastating loss.
Being a coach is a little bit like being a therapist. What’s your approach to treating players as individuals?
Well, when you grow up the youngest of five, you really don’t have a voice. You’re a listener, an observer. My position in my family really helped me observe and navigate from that. And as a point guard when I was playing, I got to know my teammates, figure out what moves them, what doesn’t move them, how you can and can’t communicate with them. You have to observe to understand that some players like for you to really get on them and talk to them as their parents would talk to them. Some of them like one-on-ones, like, “Come talk to me on the side, or in a more intimate setting.” Once you figure out how everybody receives information, your life smooths. They’re no longer in a position of thinking about how you deliver something. They’re more, “She understands me, she takes her time with me.” And you have to be able to pivot at any given moment with who you’re dealing with. You could have 15 different personalities to give what they want at any given time.
You write that young people today “only want to see the good they’ve done; they don’t want to register anything that needs improvement.” Yet you tell every one of your players, “I love you enough to allow you to hurt.” What do you mean by that?
We have to condition players to understand this, because for most of their life, their parents didn’t want them to experience any pain. What parent does? But when they do, you meet them where they are. For me, I don’t mind if a young person has a bad game. I don’t mind if a young person has a bad week. And sometimes I’ll allow them to sit in it, because growth is taking place.
You have to actually explain to them that support comes in different ways. Support isn’t always an active thing. Support is allowing you to figure it out. And then once you are ready to start activating what you figured out, here comes Coach to hear your opinion, to get your perspective, and give you mechanisms so when you are in other tough situations, you know what you did. I don’t let them stay down for long; just enough to feel it, so they don’t want to feel that feeling anymore and they’ll do something about it.
You have a 24-hour rule for your team: After a loss, everyone gets 24 hours to wallow. After a win, 24 hours to gloat. Then it’s time to move on. Did you follow that rule after South Carolina’s loss to Connecticut in the national championship in March?
I mean, I say that to other people. Some losses stay a little bit longer. For me, I’m a processor. If it stays with me for more than 24 hours, then something has to activate in preventing that from happening again. We lost to UConn two, three weeks ago. How do I prevent that from happening again? I’ve been working, I’ve been trying to get better players. I’ve been recruiting. But that 24-hour rule has extended. Sometimes staying in the pain of a loss is the very thing that you need to drive you.
You’ve suffered three major personal losses in your life with the deaths of your father Clarence, your brother Anthony, and your mother Estelle. What has grief taught you?
Grief has taught me to love harder and stronger. And to honor my loved ones’ legacy. My mother was probably the most devastating loss, because she was my rock — my biggest critic and my biggest supporter. And she’s been the most authentic of anybody in my life. She was just unapologetically her, full of faith, full of love. So I honor her by being who I am. I am my mother’s child, because I say things and react to things — and I am not trying hard to do it. Part of it is, I’m over 50 now. I know what I like, I know what I don’t like, and I don’t mind communicating that. But my mother was that way for as long as I knew her. So I speak up for the voiceless. When I see an injustice, when I see inequalities, inequities, I say something. It just rolls off my tongue. And I think that’s my mother in me.
Growing up in Philadelphia shaped you in fundamental ways. What’s the most Philly thing about you?
I’m tough. I’m physically tough. And I don’t cry a whole lot. I don’t. I think partly it’s because I sometimes view crying as a form of weakness, and I don’t really see myself in that vein. And that’s a Philly thing. There isn’t anything we feel like we can’t accomplish. Even in defeat, we feel like we won, because we gave it our all.
Did you feel that way this past March?
I did. I did. There’s a certain level of respect that I have for winners, and winners who do it in a dominating fashion, because it’s familiar. Like, we dominated before, so I understand what goes into domination and have a great level of respect for it. Because if you dominate us, we gave our all, you would be the better team that day. But at the same time, you make us go back in the lab and get it right.
You and UConn coach Geno Auriemma have a friendly relationship. Did he say anything to you after that game that was a comfort or a motivation?
Well, no. I’ve listened to some of the stuff that he said, and I took offense to one thing — probably a couple things, but this one is louder than others. And that was, “When you win one national championship, in some places they make a statue.” Now, I don’t know if he was talking about [WNBA star and USC alum] A’ja Wilson or not, but she definitely has a statue and she only has one national championship. But I say to that, if he knew how many females have statues around this country — he’s got enough young people that probably deserve statues for the contributions they’ve given to his program that made him the coach that he is. And A’ja Wilson’s statue is not for a national championship. It’s for the good works that she’s done for her community, her state, for women’s basketball. So when you utilize your platform, when you help other people, when you touch other people that aren’t necessarily in our game, and they give you your flowers in the form of a statue, that is doing something.
This is a Black young woman. Not very many Black people are bestowed such an honor. So, if he was talking about A’ja Wilson, then I’m going to give him a little bit more information as to why that statue exists and why that statue means so much to not just South Carolinians, but her lineage of her grandmother who couldn’t walk across this campus as a Black woman. Now her granddaughter has a statue that when you come to South Carolina, it’s a landmark that a lot of people go and take pictures. That’s doing something with your success that’s much more impactful than one national championship.
What do you do to relax?
My fun is simple. I like to organize my garage. Seriously, I do. I got the shelving unit. Just the other day, we dropped a recruit off for a 10:30 a.m. flight, and then we were picking another recruit up at 10 o’clock that night. So I had about five hours in my garage. I was listening to music. I turned the fan on my boy Champ [Staley’s seven-year-old Havanese dog]. He stayed in the garage, and I was able to busy myself and organize, and that was really a simple, happy moment for me. That’s the most peaceful thing.
I’ve seen the pictures on Instagram. What are you organizing in there?
Well, I mean… stuff. I think I’m a hoarder. I really think I got little hoarder tendencies in me.
You’ve had eight knee surgeries and suffered a minor heart issue a few years back. What’s your fitness regimen these days?
I walk about six miles a day. It clears my head. I walk from my house, all through campus, and back. It’s a scenic route. You get a chance to see the students. And you wouldn’t imagine how many selfies I take. Now I know I’m getting old, because students are coming up to me and saying their parents love me. It is super cool. Some of them come up and say, “I chose South Carolina because I grew up watching the women’s basketball program.” How incredibly grateful [I am] that they share these stories with me.
I don’t walk that way to garnish those kinds of compliments. I walk it because I think it is a cool route and I like to see where I work from a different vantage point. And I like to be out with the people. I really appreciate the people here in South Carolina, because I wasn’t really like them when I came here. I’m from a big city. I’m ready to move and shake. My butt has slowed down and I’m a Southerner now. I talk to people for longer periods of time. I am a little bit more outgoing. And I’m more inquisitive to meet people out there, because I am appreciative for them creating this experience for me and my family — because most of my family has moved down here — and to create an atmosphere for our team. I don’t think we’re as successful without having this city and this state go crazy for our team.
So you’re not jumping into some five-on-five with your players anymore at this stage.
No. On the road we play cards a lot. I can’t move like I used to on the court, so I put all that pent-up aggression into cards. I can still take them down that way.