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Chamique Holdsclaw, basketball player

The six-foot two-inch basketball player Chamique Holdsclaw is widely regarded as the "female Michael Jordan." A forward who developed her scoring and rebounding skills on the outdoor courts of a housing project in the New York City borough of Queens, Holdsclaw led the Christ the King Regional High School women’s basketball team to four consecutive championships while the team compiled a 106–4 record. As an undergraduate she helped the University of Tennessee’s Lady Volunteers gain three straight championships while she became the all-time leading scorer and rebounder among men and women in the school's history, with a total of 3,025 points and 1,295 rebounds. She also became only the fifth women’s basketball player in the history of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) to score at least 3,000 points. In 1999 Holdsclaw was the only college player chosen in the first round of the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) draft. That year, as a player with the Washington Mystics, she started 31 of 32 games, scoring an average of 16.9 points per game and earning the league’s Rookie of the Year Award. With the Mystics, Holdsclaw did not experience the same success that she had enjoyed as a Lady Vol. In the 2000 WNBA Eastern Conference play-offs, the team failed to make it past the first round, and in their second postseason appearance, in the 2002 WNBA Eastern Conference Finals, the team was again defeated. In 2004 Holdsclaw took a leave of absence because of depression. After requesting that she be traded, she returned to the WNBA in 2005 as a player with the Los Angeles Sparks. Holdsclaw finished the 2004–05 regular season ranked third in the league in scoring, with an average of 17.0 points per game.

Chamique Shaunta Holdsclaw was born on August 9, 1977 to William Johnson and Bonita Holdsclaw in the Flushing section of Queens, New York. Her father, an auto mechanic, and her mother, who held a civil-service job in data entry, never married but lived together during her early years. When she was five the family, which included her younger brother, Davon, moved to Jamaica, in another part of Queens. Holdsclaw’s childhood memories include both fond recollections of barbecues and picnics and troubled ones stemming from her parents' arguments. "The fighting . . . always came after the drinking," as she recalled in her book, Chamique: On Family, Focus and Basketball, written with Jennifer Frey. "My mom drank the most, though I think my dad had a problem too. I just remember hearing them scream at each other at night." Holdsclaw and her brother spent much time on weekends and school holidays and during the summer in a public housing project in Astoria, Queens, at the home of their maternal grandmother, June Holdsclaw. A medical-records clerk at a local hospital, their grandmother, and her mother as well, had played basketball as youngsters themselves. During the children's visits to Astoria their mother’s brother, Thurman, who then played basketball as a Manhattan private-school student, introduced Holdsclaw to basketball on the large court at Astoria Houses. Although she was not a naturally gifted athlete, she became passionate about the sport. "When I played, it was like everything was okay. Basketball became my shield, a way to protect myself from what was going on in my life," she explained in her book. Indoors, she would practice shooting for hours, using a pair of rolled-up socks and a hoop made with bent clothes hangers. As a youngster Holdsclaw often looked out for her brother. As she wrote in her book, "My parents weren’t ready to raise kids. . . . They had their own lives to figure out, their own demons to fight. So Davon and I, we became our own little family. I was the mom, he was the kid . . . he looked to me to bring him dinner, to watch over him, to take care of him, no matter what."

When Holdsclaw was 11 her parents separated, and she and her brother moved in with their maternal grandmother, who provided them with much-needed stability. "My grandmother was older and wiser. She put a lot of restrictions on me. I kind of liked it," Holdsclaw told Maria M. Cornelius for the Knoxville News-Sentinel (August 30, 1998). She later became her grandmother's permanent ward. (Her brother returned to their mother's home after two years.) By her own account, Holdsclaw soon became troubled and depressed. "I talked back to my grandmother," she recalled in her book. "I got into more and more fights. . . . I started to reject things that had always been important to me or had made me happy. Once a good student who’d liked school, I stopped caring about my classes." At the local intermediate school in Astoria where she had enrolled, she began to play hooky; once, she skipped school for three days in succession, traveling into Manhattan to play pickup basketball. Rather than repeat sixth grade, as her school's administrators deemed necessary, she gained admission to a small private school, Queens Lutheran School, in Astoria; her grandmother paid the tuition. At Queens Lutheran Holdsclaw began playing organized basketball, on the boys’ team, wearing the number 23 on her jersey. (The number refers to Psalm 23, in the Old Testament of the Bible, which, her grandmother advised her, as Holdsclaw told Milton Kent for TV Guide [March 13, 1999], "would carry me through whatever happens in life.") Under the close supervision of her teachers, Holdsclaw’s grades improved; the stricter rules that her grandmother set (with regard to fixed mealtimes and nighttime curfews, for example) strengthened her psychologically.

Holdsclaw spent her Saturdays at the local Boys and Girls Club, and she was required to attend Sunday church services as a condition for playing basketball. At age 12 she joined the local Police Athletic League (PAL) boys’ basketball team, coached by Tyrone Green. She developed her outside shot, fadeaway, and crossover dribble by competing against older neighborhood boys in one-on-one or three-on-three pickup games in which she was usually the only female player; on some days she would remain on the court for as many as eight hours, sometimes until darkness fell. "The boys never liked when I beat them, so we had to keep playing," she told Kelly Whiteside for Newsday (March 14, 1999). "They would try to beat me again." Before long she was being chosen ahead of other boys for their pickup teams.

At age 13, as a student at Queens Lutheran School, Holdsclaw and her teammates on the school's girls' basketball team won the Eighth Grade Championship title. Eager for Holdsclaw's talents to develop, in July 1991 Tyrone Green invited to a PAL practice session Vincent Cannizzaro, the coach of Christ the King Regional High School in Middle Village, New York (considered one of the top girls' secondary-school basketball programs in the nation). Holdsclaw’s first play, in which--in one fluid motion--she made a quick move against a defender to receive the ball and elevated herself above her opponents to score a basket, so impressed Cannizzaro that he soon recruited her for Christ the King High School.

Holdsclaw made the varsity team, the Royals, in her freshman year at Christ the King (becoming only the fourth girl to accomplish that feat in the school's history), but she went virtually unnoticed, primarily because the team's five starters were all excellent, veteran players, all of whom received Division I college scholarships at the end of the school year. "A lot of times I didn’t want to go in the game," Holdsclaw told Michael Dobie for Newsday (November 6, 1994). "I didn’t want to play in front of a bunch of people. I was hiding at the end of the bench." During her first season Holdsclaw averaged six points per game in limited playing time. Her first start came during her freshman year, in the Catholic High School Athletic Association (CHSAA ) Class A State Championship game against St. Peter’s in Staten Island, which the Royals won , 58–43. After a 71–42 victory against August Martin High School in the state Federation Class A girls' basketball semifinal, the Royals captured their third straight Class A state Federation Championship, following a 63–43 win against Hopewell Junction John Jay High School. Speaking of the victory against St. Peter's, Cannizzaro told Dobie, "That was the first game she was asked to step up and do something and she did. From then on, the level of play she’s been at is phenomenal."

During Holdsclaw's sophomore year, Cannizzaro, whose experienced starting players had all graduated, relied increasingly on Holdsclaw’s offensive skills. "She can score inside, she can score up on the perimeter, she can shoot three-pointers as well as any of the guards," he told Dobie for Newsday (December 6, 1992). "Her leaping ability is phenomenal, she’s almost dunking the ball. Her explosiveness off the floor will be heart stopping. She’s the type of player who not only can dominate a game but can create a lot of outstanding moments during the game. She can add a dimension of entertainment to the game." Christ the King was undefeated (26–0) in 1992–93 and captured their second consecutive New York State championship later that season, against Shenendehowa High School, in Clifton Park, New York, thereby earning USA Today's top national ranking; with 22 points and 20 rebounds in the championship game, Holdsclaw recorded a double-double and was named the tournament's top female player. She was similarly outstanding in her junior and senior years, leading her team to two additional state championships in 1994 and 1995. During her senior year she averaged 25 points per game. Over her four-year high-school career, she scored 2,118 points, while the Christ the King team set a remarkable win–loss record of 106–4. As the top female high-school player in the U.S., she was recruited by the University of Virginia, Penn State, the University of Connecticut, and the University of Tennessee. She chose the last-named, in part because her grandmother believed that Pat Summitt, the head coach of Tennessee's Lady Volunteers (familiarly known as the Lady Vols), would prove to be a strong positive influence on her.

Holdsclaw graduated from Christ the King in 1995 and made an apparently seamless transition to college basketball. She became the only freshman in the history of the University of Tennessee Lady Volunteers to start every game. Mickie DeMoss, who was then a Lady Vols' assistant coach, told Wendy Smith for the Tennessean (May 3, 1999), "Our first game when she was a freshman, she nailed some jumpers with people right in her face. I kept saying surely this is going to wear off pretty soon, this freshman thing. Then she did it the whole year. She was able to score against big time defenders when she was a freshman. She’d have seniors guarding her. It didn’t matter. They couldn’t stop her." In her first three games Holdsclaw averaged almost 13 points per game; her 19 points in a November 1995 exhibition against the 1995–96 USA Women’s National Team was equally impressive, leading observers to compare her to the Women’s Basketball Hall of Famer Cheryl Miller. On March 4, 1996, in the Southeastern Conference (SEC) title game against the University of Alabama, Holdsclaw--the Lady Vols’ leading scorer during the early part of the 1995–96 season--suffered a partial tear of the medial collateral ligament in her right knee, forcing her to miss the final games of the regular season. On March 16, following nonsurgical rehabilitation, which included wearing a protective brace, Holdsclaw returned to the lineup for the first round of the NCAA tournament, against Radford University, a winning effort in which she recorded 14 points and eight rebounds. Tennessee reached the tournament’s Final Four, where they faced the University of Connecticut Huskies (whose 59–53 win during the regular season game on January 6, 1996 had ended the Lady Vols’ home-game winning streak at 69); Holdsclaw scored 13 points as the team beat the Huskies, 88–83, in an overtime victory that advanced the Lady Vols to the NCAA championship game, against Georgia. In that contest, Holdsclaw’s 16 points and 14 rebounds were part of a successful, balanced offensive attack by the Lady Vols lineup: all five starting players reached double figures in scoring and vaulted the team past Georgia, with an 83–65 victory. In addition to being part of the 1996 NCAA championship-winning team in her freshman year, Holdsclaw was the team's leading scorer (an average of 16.2 points per game) and rebounder (an average of 9.1 per game). She became the first Lady Volunteer rookie to be selected as a Kodak All-American and was named SEC Freshman of the Year; she was also voted to the All-American team by the Associated Press, the U.S. Basketball Writers Association, and United Press International.

During the 1996–97 season, when Holdsclaw was a sophomore, the Lady Vols won only six of their first 16 games. Before the start of the season, the team had lost its back-court leader and point guard Michele Marciniak, who had graduated, and struggled to overcome the successive absences of two injured point guards, the sophomore Kellie Jolly and the junior Laurie Milligan. That season's team achieved the distinction of being Tennessee’s first female team to lose to both the University of Arkansas and the University of Florida. "We were setting so many bad records, we were wondering if anything positive would come out of the season," Holdsclaw said to Kelli Anderson for Sports Illustrated Online (April 7, 1997). Holdsclaw carried the bulk of Tennessee’s offense, with an average of 20.6 points per game and 9.4 rebounds per game. She also got career high marks in assists (eight), in a game against Mississippi State University; in steals (seven), in a game against the University of Wisconsin at Green Bay; and in blocked shots (four), against the University of Memphis. At a team meeting held in January 1997, Holdsclaw, frustrated by the Lady Vols' sixth loss of the season (which marked the first time since the 1989–90 season that they experienced a six-game losing streak), demanded more effort from her teammates. "I think as a basketball team, you need five players on the floor who are committed to doing the same thing. If you have one individual standing out and the other four not making a contribution, everyone is not giving what they can . . . ," she told Lorraine Kee for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (March 20, 1997). "I'll joke with them but when it comes to basketball, I try to be serious about it. And they knew they weren't getting the job done." Perhaps inspired by her words, and demonstrating the benefits of additional workouts, the Lady Volunteers won 13 of the next 17 games; nevertheless, for the first time since 1986, the team dropped out of the top 10. Tennessee still managed to advance to the Final Four, thanks to a 91–81 win over Connecticut. They followed up with a semifinal victory (80–66) against Notre Dame. With her 24 points and seven rebounds, Holdsclaw led the Lady Volunteers past Old Dominion in the final game for their second straight NCAA title. (The only other team to earn the title two years in a row was the University of Southern California, in 1983 and 1984; later, the University of Connecticut did so as well, in 2002 and 2003.) Holdsclaw received the NCAA Women's Final Four Most Outstanding Player Award, having led in points (803), assists (114), turnovers (139), blocks (35), and steals (93) during her sophomore year.

In the summer of 1997, Holdsclaw was selected as a member of the USA World Championship Qualifying Team and went on a 13-game pre-competition tour, during which the American team suffered only one loss, capturing a silver medal and a berth to compete in the 1998 World Championships. Holdsclaw missed part of the pre–World Championship tour due to school-related obligations; in four of the six games in which she participated, she was a starting player. The only college player, she led the team in both scoring (an average of 13.1 points per game) and rebounding (an average of 6.5 per game). She rejoined the U.S. women’s team weeks later at the World Championships, during which she averaged 10.9 points per game and 5.4 rebounds per game and ranked third in scoring and rebounding averages, thus helping the team bring home a gold medal. Rather than leave school to join the WNBA or the American Basketball League (ABL), Holdsclaw returned to the University of Tennessee for her third year. "I don’t think females should be allowed to decide to go pro. The leagues need mature young ladies who have their degrees," she told Kelli Anderson. As a junior Holdsclaw teamed up with two freshmen players, Tamika Catchings and Semeka Randall (the trio became known as the "Three Meeks") to lead the Lady Vols to a 39–0 record. The team dominated that year's SEC Tournament, achieving a 92–54 victory against the Lady Rebels of the University of Mississippi. In the NCAA championship game, against Louisiana Tech, Holdsclaw’s 18 points, seven rebounds, and five assists, which were all scored before intermission, propelled Tennessee to a 22-point lead and a third consecutive national title. She completed her junior year with her highest season points-per-game average (23.5) and as the team leader in rebounds (an average of 8.4 points per game). That summer Holdsclaw and Team USA received another gold medal at the World Championships, thanks to a 71–65 victory over the Soviet Union in the final. After her return to the U.S., Holdsclaw, who had had difficulty adjusting to the more physical style of play that prevailed in international competition, began a weight-training program, which added muscle to her slender build, helped improve her passing, and increased the agility of her legs.

In Holdsclaw’s senior year she was considered by many to be the best female player in the U.S., and the Lady Vols were the overwhelming favorites to capture a fourth national title. The team advanced into the Final Eight before being defeated by Duke University in the NCAA regional finals, in March 1999; during that game, Holdsclaw landed only two of 18 shots before fouling out and leaving the court in tears. After she graduated from college, where she had majored in political science, in 1999, the Washington Mystics signed Holdsclaw as the number-one overall pick in the WNBA draft. The WNBA immediately recruited her for an 11-city summer tour as an ambassador for the league, which was just three years old. The WNBA's president, Val Ackerman, likened Holdsclaw’s appeal to that of Michael Jordan, telling Sports Illustrated Online (May 5, 1999), "There are players in sports who transcend the consciousness and it seems she has the potential to perhaps bring herself into that category, that very special class of athlete."

In her first season with the Mystics (1999–2000), Holdsclaw averaged 16.9 points, 7.9 rebounds, and 2.4 assists per game and provided a powerful offensive complement to the guard Nikki McCray (the team leader in scoring, with an average of 17.5 points per game). Although, with a record of 12 wins and 20 losses, the Mystics performed better than they had in 1998, when they won only three of their 30 games, they failed to make the play-offs. Holdsclaw, though, was named the 1999 WNBA Rookie of the Year and earned more votes (31,002) than any other player when she was chosen for the inaugural WNBA All-Star Game. In that meet (won by the West, 79–61) she served as starting forward for the East.

With the addition of the starting point guard Andrea Nagy and the forward Vicki Bullett, the Mystics' prospects seemed to be brighter when the the 2000–01 season opened. Holdsclaw’s offense improved, from 16.9 points per game in her 1999, rookie season to 17.5 points per game in 2000, despite two stress fractures in her right foot, which were discovered in March 2000, and an undesired weight gain of 20 pounds. Rumors of conflict between Holdsclaw and the Washington Mystics' head coach, Nancy Darsch, began to spread after Holdsclaw was benched in July 2000, following a loss to the Sacramento Monarchs. Holdsclaw publicly criticized Darsch, telling Rick Freeman for the Washington Post (July 15, 2000), "I think we’ll win basketball games with [Darsch], but I don’t think we’ll ever be a great team." Darsch resigned several weeks later and was replaced as interim head coach by the team’s assistant general manager, Darrell Walker, a former Knicks player. Under Walker the team made it to the postseason for the first time, with a 14–18 record; they then suffered a first-round defeat by the New York Liberty. In 2001 the Australian Olympic coach Tom Maher was hired to replace Walker.

In the summer of 2000, Holdsclaw traveled to Sydney, Australia, where she won a gold medal as a member of the U.S. women’s Olympic basketball team. Also during the off-season, thanks to a conditioning program, she lost 20 pounds and developed more muscle. Although her rebounding numbers had improved, from an average of 7.5 rebounds during 1999–2000 to 8.8 during 2000–01, her points-per-game average dropped, to 16.8 points from 17.5. Holdsclaw and her teammate McCray carried on a public feud with each other in the media . The Mystics finished the 2001 season with a record of 10–22, leaving them in a tie for eighth (and last) place in the Eastern Conference. Maher resigned and was replaced by assistant coach Marianne Stanley, and Pat Summitt was hired as a consultant. McCray was traded to the Indiana Fever for forward Angie Braziel and draft picks. Holdsclaw's position changed from small forward to power forward, and she changed her jersey number from 23 to 1.

The death of her grandmother before the start of the 2002–03 WNBA season forced Holdsclaw to miss two games. She later missed 12 more games, because of an ankle injury. Nevertheless, the Mystics ended the regular season with their best record ever (17–15). In the Eastern Conference Finals, the Mystics defeated the Charlotte Sting in two games before losing to the New York Liberty. Holdsclaw was the regular season's league leader in scoring (19.9 points per game, on average) and rebounding (11.5 per game, on average); she also made her fourth straight All-Star Game appearance. During the 2003 off-season, Holdsclaw played with a team belonging to the Women’s Korea Basketball League. During the 2003–04 season she averaged 20.5 points and 10.9 rebounds per game; she missed the final six games due to an injury to her right ring finger. Despite her efforts the Mystics finished last in the Eastern Conference, with nine wins and 25 losses.

Holdsclaw turned down an invitation to train with Team USA for the 2004 Olympics. In July of that year, with 10 games left in the regular season, she took a leave of absence from the Mystics, citing "undisclosed medical reasons." In the fall she revealed that she had been battling severe depression, triggered by her grandmother’s death, and was under the care of a psychiatrist; she was also considering retirement from the WNBA. In an effort to regain her enthusiasm for the game, she played overseas for Ros Casares, a team based in Valencia, Spain; she performed well, averaging 18.8 points per game. Her team reached the second round of the Euroleague play-offs before being defeated by the Russian team VBM-SGAU. When she returned to the U.S., Holdsclaw asked the Washington Mystics to trade her. On March 21, 2005 the Mystics announced that she would be traded to the Los Angeles Sparks, in exchange for Delisha Milton-Jones and a first-round pick. As a member of the Sparks, she has been surrounded by three established All-Stars (the center Lisa Leslie and the guards Nikki Teasley and Mwadi Mabika) and has not been expected to carry the offense. Under the Sparks’ first-year coach, Henry Bibby, in the 33 games of the 2004–05 season, she averaged 17 points, 6.75 rebounds, and 3.2 assists per game. The Sparks reached the 2005 WNBA Western Conference Finals, where they were defeated by the Sacramento Monarchs.

Holdsclaw lives near Venice Beach, California.