News Stories

It's No Mystery Why the Mystics Finally Arrived
By Sally Jenkins

Monday, August 12, 2002; Page D01

We all have to go to work when we don't want to. Whether with a headache, with a hangover, jet lagged, or sick, everybody has days when we would rather stay home. Mostly, we show up. Athletes get paid more than the rest of us to show up, because pain is their occupation: Their hands hurt, their backs hurt, their necks hurt, and their butts hurt. They're supposed to be achy and tired. It's their living.

Not all of them show up. High-priced underachievers saunter through the seasons, athletes-as-aesthetes who suffer an endless succession of tweaks and take to their beds. Ex-Redskin Michael Westbrook comes to mind, as does the former Wizard Courtney Alexander. Then there are those who give what's expected of them but nothing more, and in the end create entropy rather than energy. Juwan Howard. Chamique Holdsclaw used to be one of them. But this season Holdsclaw has turned herself into one of the most respectable laborers in the pro leagues. She has lifted an entire franchise squarely onto her back and carried it to the WNBA playoffs, and she's done it with two sprained ankles and two sore knees.

You may not care about the Mystics or the WNBA as a whole, but you should care about Holdsclaw, because her full-body sacrifice on behalf of the Mystics is a kind of a market correction. Watch Holdsclaw, and you suddenly become aware, by contrast, of just how little some other athletes put out, or take on. She is playing on sheer integrity and motive because her legs are shot and not fully cooperative. Off the court, she wears rattling ice bags and she has discolored marks all over her body, and she walks hunched over, like an arthritic. But she restores faith; even when she isn't at her best, she manages to try her best. You can see her for $8, the price of an upper-deck seat at MCI Center. She gives great return on the buck.

Holdsclaw is not just doing the work, she is doing the dirty work. She is averaging more than 20 points and 10 rebounds a game, mopping up every loose ball around the boards, and fighting through interior defenses. The other night against the New York Liberty she helped clinch a playoff berth when she hauled down nearly half of the team's rebounding total, went 10 for 10 from the free throw line and scored a full one-third of its points. She has been doing this kind of thing night in and night out, all season long, through injuries, the death of the grandmother who raised her, and a seven-game losing streak.

"I tell my team, 'Look, you're going to get tired,' "she says. " 'The other team is tired, too. It's who deals with being tired.' "

One of Holdsclaw's more interesting qualities is that she is suspicious of herself, of her own capacity for indolence. In response, she seeks out people who push her, and this explains her curious relationship with her former Tennessee coach, Pat Summitt. It's no accident that Holdsclaw has become the player she should be in the same season that Summitt became a consultant for the Mystics, and the demanding Marianne Stanley was named head coach.

Holdsclaw doesn't trust anyone who isn't demanding.

It's by now well-known that Summitt gave Holdsclaw what-for, told her bluntly that she hadn't lived up to her talent, "And you and I both know it," she said. Holdsclaw had spent her first three years in the league floundering, gaining weight, and fussing over her feet, prone to stress fractures. What's not so well-known is that Holdsclaw called Summitt and instigated the conversation. She knew exactly what Summitt would say and went looking for it. She doesn't crave approval -- she craves disapproval. She knows it makes her better. (If only Allen Iverson felt that way about Larry Brown.) The result is that Holdsclaw recovered her ambition. Holdsclaw's fear of laziness has always been aspiration in disguise; she is not by nature lazy.

As a girl growing up in the bleak Astoria Houses housing projects in Queens, Holdsclaw played in all seasons, shoveling snow off the courts in winter and shooting until way past dark. She searched the city for bigger and better competition, wandering to other housing projects and riding the bus across town, where she would play against grown men, seeking out the hardest guys on the most competitive courts.

"They took it at her, and they took it at her hard," remembers Ron Artest of the Chicago Bulls, who grew up playing with her on the same courts. When Holdsclaw was 13, she played with Artest on a Boys and Girls Club team, and started ahead of him. "It was crazy how good she was," he said. "She'd take people to the hole, she'd play down low. Everybody respected her."

That's the Holdsclaw who finally has shown up in the WNBA -- the same Holdsclaw who won three straight championships at Tennessee. Were it not for ankle injuries that caused her to miss nine games, she would be the league's official leading scorer and rebounder. She has become the player she was hired to be, and taken responsibility for the fortunes of the franchise, both good and bad. "One thing I realized from the sidelines was that the coaches have no control," Holdsclaw says. "You have to accept responsibility and go out there and do it yourself."

Holdsclaw offers no excuses for the late-season losing streak -- they had lost eight of nine before last night's 60-54 win at Cleveland, even as she returned from her injury. "You could make 101 excuses," Holdsclaw says. "I got hurt, or one person didn't play well, or another didn't play well. But the bottom line is that we lost our poise."

How far the Mystics can progress in the playoffs is uncertain; they are fighting to finish second in their conference and retain a home-court advantage. But there is no doubt that the Mystics are on the verge of turning the corner as a franchise, thanks to the fact that Holdsclaw has turned the corner as a pro. Rookies Stacey Dales-Schuman and Asjha Jones need to do the same. Dales-Schuman has lacked stamina and Jones has played panicky, but both have All-Star written all over them if they follow Holdsclaw's example. One of these days Dales-Schuman won't lose her legs so easily, and Jones will settle down. When that happens, the Mystics will be regular contenders.

Playing hurt is generally dumb and dangerous. But playing through limited pain does have a real use: You learn to push on. Its reward is the ability to place setbacks and external disappointments in perspective, so that when a blow falls, the world doesn't end. The athlete, and the team, that learns to play with pain is not so easily destroyed. They still show up for work the next day. The term for this sobering concept is maturity, and Holdsclaw has acquired it.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

Printed without permission from the Washington Post website. Read the story along with additional history on this story at the Washington Post website.

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