Legendary basketball coach Dawn Staley discussed her new memoir on the Today show.
Staley’s Uncommon Favor: Basketball, North Philly, My Mother, and the Life Lessons I Learned from All Three, published Tuesday by Black Privilege Publishing/Atria, tells the story of the three-time Olympic gold medalist’s early life and career in basketball, from playing at the University of Virginia and for the WNBA team the Charlotte Sting to coaching at Temple University and the University of South Carolina. A critic for Kirkus called the book “instructive episodes from the rise and reign of a hardwood heroine.”
Asked how her childhood in Philadelphia, raised by a no-nonsense mother, shaped her as a coach, Staley said, “When I was growing up, I didn’t like my mother, because she was so disciplined, she was so strict. And now I find myself as a coach just like my mom.”
Staley explained the title of her memoir, saying, “When you grow up in the projects of North Philly, you’re not supposed to get out. You’re not supposed to have the kind of storied career that I have. It has to be explained in some kind of way. I think God gave me uncommon favor when it comes to anything that I set my mind to. Even through losing and failures, they were set in place for me to succeed afterwards. So if I wallowed in that failure, the success wouldn’t have been as great.”
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
