When Chamique Holdsclaw recently received the news that she would be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, she “cried like a baby.”
But it wasn’t just that moment that made the three-time NCAA national champion, No. 1-overall WNBA pick and six-time WNBA All-Star emotional. As she told the crowd at the “The Unquiet Journey of Chamique Holdsclaw: A Message of Hope and Healing” lecture at the Arts United Center on Wednesday night, she’s been overcome multiple times in the last week as she’s jetted around the country, visiting multiple schools and both the men’s and women’s Final Fours.
“I’m sitting with a lot of feelings – every plane I got on, I’m sitting there with tears rolling down. I was flying here and I started crying,” said Holdsclaw, whose packed schedule includes a knee replacement scheduled for next week. “I’m thinking about all those battles I had to get on the court, and the times when basketball wasn’t feeding my soul. It’s been a beautiful journey.”
During her talk, which is a part of the Jonathan Hancock Lecture Series and followed a day spent with Canterbury School students, Holdsclaw discussed her upbringing in Queens, New York, where an outdoor basketball court within view of her grandmother’s apartment window was one of the few places she was allowed to play. Although she quickly became one of the top girls basketball prospects in the country while at Christ the King Regional High School and was getting good grades in class, she said there were warning signs that all was not well. She desperately wanted to not be like her parents, who were sometimes absent from her childhood as they struggled with their own substance abuse and mental health issues, and once refused to return to a game until her mother was escorted out of the gym.
“No one ever asked me after that, how do you feel? How are you doing?” Holdsclaw recounted. Years later, when she asked her coach why they didn’t discuss her anger directed at her parents, he simply replied, “You always seemed to have it together.”
As a rising star at Tennessee, where Holdsclaw and the other Lady Vols were showered with attention (and pressure), Holdsclaw began to feel more symptoms of depression and paranoia. Although she (briefly) attended therapy, she told herself that as long as she had 20 points and 10 rebounds a night, no one would ask inconvenient questions, an assumption that proved largely correct.
Although her profile only grew after being drafted by the Washington Mystics in 1999, her mental health continued to wax and wane during her professional career, and at times derailed it entirely. During one crisis, she failed to appear for a game, and was later traded to the L.A. Sparks. Later, while she was living in Los Angeles, she attempted suicide, but was taken to the hospital and survived. The prompted a quasi-intervention by her legendary college coach Pat Summit, who told her “The only way you’re going to get your life back is you’ve got to do the work. You have to do your therapy and hang around people that know you and know your character. Get rid of all the noise.”
From there, Holdsclaw, who has since gotten married and become a mother to a son and daughter, said she made the affirmative decision that “I deserve to have a good life.” She told the crowd, which included a number of high-school aged students, that “you should pick your therapist like you pick a boyfriend or girlfriend.”
“Don’t just get with somebody for the first time and try to make it work. Date around and figure it out,” she advised, noting that the therapist who “helped me get the color back” was her opposite in many ways.
Finally, she reminded listeners, especially, teens, that they’re not alone if they feel like they’re struggling, and they can ask for help when you need it.
“You might be in a tough quarter of your life,” Holdsclaw said. “But you can make it through.”