Women’s Basketball Has Never Been Bigger. Ann Meyers Drysdale Is a Major Reason Why

So what happened from there?

I forfeited my amateur status. Two days of tryouts. I had been playing against men my whole life. It was more pressure for them than it was for me. If you made a shot, it’s like, “A girl beat you.” If they blocked my shot it’s like, “Oh, it’s just a girl.” But the media was very attacking, very negative. Saying things like “You’re too slow,” “What are you doing?” “You’re going to get hurt.” I was taken aback by how much I was attacked. I never turned on TV or read the newspaper, magazines, or listened to the radio. 

Looking back on it, do you feel like the Indiana Pacers gave you a fair chance, or did it seem like a publicity stunt?

You’d have to ask Sam Nassi, though he’s no longer alive now. My brother, David, was playing for the Bucks by then, so I knew a lot of NBA guys, but it was like, should I actually do this? Was it publicity on their part? I’m sure that was a part of it. That was the first year of the 3-point shot in the NBA, too. I was undrafted, signed as a free agent. As an athlete I’m thinking, I’m gonna play. But my brother Mark was thinking about the long-term thing: what if I don’t make it? Whether I made the team or not, I would be with them to do public relations and broadcasting. I had done a few UCLA games in ‘79 as a broadcaster and that was parlayed into my contract with the Pacers, so I did about a dozen games with them. I was young at the time, and I still wanted to play. I was still working out. I was with the Pacers for maybe two and a half months, and I just wanted to play. The WBL was going on, too. I loved my opportunity with the Pacers but I just wasn’t ready for all the PR and speaking. They released me from my contract, and I returned to the WBL [to play for the New Jersey Gems].

WNBA players deal with significantly more barriers than their NBA counterparts — often having to play overseas. The recent imprisonment of Brittney Griner might be the clearest example of that inequity. How was that for you, as a member of the Phoenix Mercury, and how is she doing?

We wanted to bring her back. Every broadcast we talked about her. Brittney had been playing in Russia and China for a while; it wasn’t her first year playing overseas. She’s not the only one; Sue Bird, Diana Taurasi—they also played in Russia. Lots of players go overseas—Turkey, France, Monte Negro. They’re often getting their citizenship in other places, too. You can only have two U.S. players on most international rosters so they get their citizenship to play in those leagues sometimes. Brittney, in particular, had been playing USA basketball at the time and was going back to Russia to make good money for a few games. I don’t know the full details, but I know it was a great opportunity for her. And she got caught with, you know, something that, in this country, would be nothing. It’s difficult listening to people around the country talk about her: how she’s gay, how she doesn’t respect this country and the flag. I was stunned. She’s one of the kindest, sweetest human beings I’ve known, and she’s a two-time Olympian who represents and plays for this country. When all this came out about Brittney, some people were saying to just leave her there, good riddance. It was sad. Brittney and her wife are now working to help people who have been incarcerated in other countries, and she has a foundation to help homeless people in Phoenix. She does stuff on her own to help others. You gotta make a stand for people to notice. The WNBA has a history of players like her taking action. Just look at Maya Moore of the Minnesota Lynx [a league MVP who left the WNBA in order to pursue activism and helped to release a wrongly accused man from prison].