For decades, you could walk into some of America’s biggest sports arenas and find statues celebrating basketball legends: Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant.
On September 20, a woman joined them.
WNBA legend Lisa Leslie was unveiled in bronze outside Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, becoming the first female professional athlete to receive a statue at the arena and the 16th sports figure honoured in its Star Plaza.
The 11-foot statue, named “The First Lady,” captures Leslie in mid-air during the dunk that made her the first player to dunk in a WNBA game.
Leslie’s famous dunk happened in 2002, five years after the WNBA’s inaugural season. At the time, women’s basketball was still establishing itself as a professional sport, and Leslie’s successful dunk became one of the league’s most recognisable moments.
She rose above the rim and finished with one hand, creating an image that would remain associated with the early history of the WNBA.
More than two decades after that moment, that same image has been cast in bronze, becoming part of the permanent landscape of Los Angeles basketball.
One of the most distinctive things about “The First Lady” is how closely it reflects Leslie herself.
She worked with sculptors Julie Rotblatt Amrany and Omri Amrany on the statue, paying attention to details that go beyond her career as a basketball player.
Her signature ponytail, earrings, polished nails and hair ribbons are represented, while the names of her husband, Michael, and her children are incorporated into the bracelets on her wrist. Four pieces of real gold are also embedded in the bronze, representing her four Olympic gold medals.
Leslie said she wanted the statue to capture both sides of her identity: the fierce competitor and the woman who never felt she had to hide her femininity to be taken seriously.
“I wanted to make sure that this statue was a perfect blend of fearlessness and the competitor that I was,” Leslie said at the unveiling, while also speaking about wanting people to see her as “a lady.”
Leslie now stands among some of the biggest names in American basketball, including Johnson, Abdul-Jabbar, O’Neal and Bryant.
She is also not far from Bryant’s statue. Leslie and Bryant belonged to the same Los Angeles basketball era, and she affectionately referred to him as her “little baby brother” during the unveiling.
Leslie entered the WNBA in 1997, when the league was still finding its footing. She spent her entire 12-year WNBA career with the Los Angeles Sparks, winning two championships and three league MVP awards. She also won four Olympic gold medals with Team USA and was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2015.
Leslie was part of an early generation of players, alongside stars such as Sheryl Swoopes and Cynthia Cooper, who helped establish professional women’s basketball and build an audience for the league.
The WNBA has since grown into a much more visible part of the sports landscape, but that growth was built on the careers of players who came before today’s stars.
Leslie’s statue gives that history a physical presence.
She is also only the second WNBA player to receive a statue from her franchise, following Seattle Storm legend Sue Bird..
