Rebecca Lobo’s Basketball Hall of Fame Enshrinement Speech

welcoming Rebecca to the Hall of Fame, your Geno Auriemma, ladies and gentlemen, Rebecca Lobo. I thought you sat on a throne just a few years ago, having worked a Yukon game as a sideline reporter. I saw Coach Auriemma and he said: Rebecca in the future, when you interview me, could you please take off your damn heels? Since then, that's what I've done when I interviewed him and when I asked him a couple of months ago if he'd be willing to show up tonight, I said I promise I'll take off my heels and he said I'll show up as long as you let me wear your heels. heels.

We'll save it for later. I grew up 15 miles from here in Southwick Massachusetts, my high school coach Lynn Larabee and my high school. Coach Jim Vincent taught me how to play. The people of that city helped raise me and I hope they are all proud of this. The people who really raised me, supported me, took me to practices and sacrificed were my parents, my father. Here dad, thank you, I love you. I started playing

basketball

because I wanted to be like my older brother and older sister. I adored them and wanted to emulate them. My brother Jason played

basketball

at Dartmouth.

He is now a judge in Connecticut, we like to say. that his college career prepared him well to sit on the bench, my sister Rachel and I played together for two years in high school and this was the late '80s, so we both had long hair and the exact same hairstyle as Eddie Van Halen then and now. Maybe because of that distraction I scored a lot of points in high school, but half of them were thanks to her assists, so thank you Rachel for being here now. I went to UConn because I wanted to play for Coach Auriemma and Chris Daly and it was the best basketball decision of my life Now, when I work games, whether I'm in an arena calling a game or in the studio, I get texts from Chris daily for almost every game and about 50% of the time the text just says I just hit mute so CD who's here?

You can't press mute tonight. Thank you very much for the role you have played in bringing me here and the role you have had in my life. My senior year at UConn was one of the most magical seasons ever. from women's college basketball Pam Jamel Kara Carla Keyshia thank you for making this trip so much fun Jen Rosati is here and she is one of my best friends and best teammates and Jen, thank you so much for being by my side for so much of my basketball . Career Now Professional basketball didn't exist in the United States when I was growing up, but playing professionally was a dream of mine when I was in sixth grade.

I wrote a letter, it's Red Auerbach, and I said, "I'm going to be the first girl." playing for the Boston Celtics wasn't, but thanks to David Stern Adam Silver Valley acraman Renee Brown I was able to make that dream come true in the WNBA now I can see my oldest daughter light up when she talks about Breanna Stewart or my 11 year old when she puts on her jersey by Tina Charles. I have three daughters who play basketball, so the WNBA means even more to me now than when I played in it. We like to watch a lot of women's basketball at our house because that's my job and when my oldest daughter was about five, it was March Madness, so I was on the road calling a basketball game and my husband was watching the UConn men's team and my five year old son came in and watched TV and she said daddy are those kids who play basketball and he said yes, and she said I didn't know that kids play basketball too.

I spent the first few years of the WNBA in New York and my Liberty teammates were special. Her spoon Kim Kok Wiese thank you for her friendship and help in bringing me here when I retired from the game. I had the opportunity to, as my kids say, talk baseball when ESPN hired me. I am grateful to Pat Lowry and Tina Thornton for giving me the opportunity to do this job I love. but no one tells you how to do it except everyone on Twitter. I thank her, my mentors and friends in particular, and that is Doris Burke and Holly Rowe, they are great friends who have been with me on this journey and I thank them.

Being here tonight, my husband and I met the old-fashioned way at a seedy Irish bar in New York City and he wasn't a Sports Illustrated columnist and I read his columns all the time and about two weeks before we knew each other. He had written this article in Sports Illustrated and he had a throwaway line that he said very much like Wilt Chamberlain. I also slept with 8,000 women last night. He was at a New York Liberty game, so that night when I met him, I said, I know who you are. Aren't you the guy who wrote that joke about the New York Liberty and blushed even redder than he did now and said yes, I am and I said well, how many games have you been to and he said none and I said well.

Obviously, otherwise he would have slept with 12,000 women because that's how many fans we average, but since then he's been to hundreds of women's college and WNBA games and, the most exciting of all basketball games in the AAU for ten year old girls, when I found out. They were inducting me into the Hall of Fame. I texted Steve and told him that tonight you get to sleep next to a Naismith Hall of Famer and his response was a big exclamation point. Larry Bird, question mark and Larry, yes, we know you have to stay at least 15. feet away my four children Siobhan Maeve Thomas Andros I'm so proud of all of you, mainly for behaving tonight, it's a long night.

If anyone has ever coached their own children, they know the joy of doing it, but there are also great c

hall

enges. I coached my kids and If you coach your kids you know they don't listen to you and my oldest daughter played for the first time about a year ago and she had the opportunity to be coached by a different coach and she was in the driveway working on a subsequent movement. and I walked over and said, come on, if you want to do the pole move, you have to bend over. I want you to know, take a low dribble, lower your center of gravity and then explode.

She said yes, but what we work on is a practice. Coach D showed us the high dribble and to get closer I said: I know, but you're tall and Indy and he's showing it to a guard. You're tall, you need to get down. I want your low dribble and go up. she kept arguing with me no coach D said we should do it this way I said Siobhan coach D is an orthodontist 5/8 when I was in third grade it was the first time I had the opportunity to play on a basketball team where I signed up the city of Southwick in the park and recreation league to play and my mom got a call and they said sorry, only two girls signed up so there is no team in Rebecca that I can't play and my mom said No, that just means you.

I had to let her play on the boys' team and then she knocked me down. The other girl decided not to play and I was the only girl on the team and my mom told the coach: I want you to treat Rebecca exactly the same way you do. She treats all the kids if they run sprints, she runs Sprint's, if you're yelling at them, you should yell at her, so the only exception is if you play in t-shirts and masks. I want her on the t-shirt team, no one would have liked this room. of Fame honor more than my mother I love you mom and no one would have appreciated more to see you on my heels when you recruited me you knew that I belong to that Yukon you knew that I was destined to play for you and fortunately I knew it too and you followed my heart and you have completely changed my life and for that I thank you, you have changed my life and I am here tonight completely thanks to you, thank you.