Lisa Leslie

Lisa Deshaun Leslie (born July 7, 1972) is an American former professional basketball player.

She is currently the head coach for Triplets in the BIG3 professional basketball league, as well as a studio analyst for Orlando Magic broadcasts on Bally Sports Florida.

Leslie continued her education in 1986 by enrolling at Morningside High School in Inglewood, California.

She made an immediate impact on the basketball program, starting every game for the girl's varsity team.

She also joined the volleyball team and competed in track and field.

She ended up being a state qualifier in the 400-meter run and the high jump.

By the time she was a sophomore in high school, she was able to dunk the ball in the open court, even though she was not able to palm the ball.

She was her team's leading scorer and rebounder and led them to the 1989 California state championship.

Leslie was invited to participate in the USA's Junior World Championship team.

Entering her senior year, she developed into the top player in the country.

She led her team to a state championship averaging 27 points and 15 rebounds per game.

She tied the national record for points scored by a high school basketball player with Cheryl Miller in 1990 with 101 points scored, all in the first half.

She had scored 105 points but four of the points were due to a technical foul charged on the opposing team for a delay of game after halftime, which were later voided as the game was deemed to end after the first half.

Leslie attended women's basketball powerhouse the University of Southern California from 1990 to 1994.

She graduated from USC with a bachelor's degree in communications and later completed her master's degree in business administration from the University of Phoenix.

Leslie played in a total of 120 college games, averaging 20.1 points, hitting 53.4% of her shots, and knocking down 69.8% of her free throws.

She set the Pac-10 Conference records for scoring, rebounding, and blocked shots accumulating 2,414 points, 1,214 rebounds, and 321 blocked shots.

She also holds the USC single season record for blocked shots (95).

All throughout her WNBA career, Leslie also played for USA Basketball in international competition, winning four Olympic gold medals (1996, 2000, 2004, 2008) and two FIBA World Championships (1998, 2002).

Leslie played in the WNBA for the Los Angeles Sparks from 1997 to 2009.

She is a three-time WNBA MVP and a four-time Olympic gold medal winner.

The number-seven pick in the 1997 inaugural WNBA draft, she followed her career at the University of Southern California with eight WNBA All-Star selections and two WNBA championships over the course of 11 seasons with the Los Angeles Sparks, before retiring in 2009.

In 2002, Leslie made history as the first player to dunk during a Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) game.

Leslie was ranked 5th on ESPN.com's 2021 list of the WNBA's greatest players of all time.

In 2011, she was voted in by fans as one of the Top 15 players in WNBA history.

In 2015, Leslie was inducted into both the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame.

Upon becoming coach of the Triplets in 2019, she led the team to the BIG3 Championship that year.

Leslie was born in Compton, California, the daughter of Christine Lauren Leslie, who stood 6 ft, and Walter Leslie, a former professional basketball player.

Christine started her own truck driving business to support her three children.

Walter left the family when her mother was four months pregnant with her.

Leslie has two sisters: Dionne, who is five years older, and Tiffany, who is eight years younger.

She also has a brother, Elgin (named after Elgin Baylor of the LA Lakers).

She played on an all-girls team with the record 33–1.

During the first few weeks of middle school, a classmate asked Leslie to help out the basketball team.

On her first day of basketball tryouts, team members were told to split into two groups for layup drills: lefties and righties.

Leslie was the only lefty in the group, so from then on, she decided to become right-hand dominant so she would not have to stand in a line by herself.

That decision worked to her advantage, as she became ambidextrous.

In eighth grade, she transferred to a junior high school without a girls' basketball team, and joined a boys' basketball team.

Her success there contributed to her confidence in her playing abilities.

At the age of 14, before Leslie had started high school at Morningside, she received more than a hundred college recruiting letters, including some from top Division I programs at the University of Tennessee and Stanford University.