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Betty Lennox: Veteran Warrior Has Learned to Relax
By Sue Favor
Correspondent
Photo Caption: A smile is a new addition to the repertoire of hard-working WNBA veteran Betty Lennox.
Photo Credit: Courtesy NBAE/Getty Images
Long known as a fighter and a work horse, Betty Lennox has brought a new perspective to her latest home with the Los Angeles Sparks. Lennox, still a reliable spark plug, has added a smile to her tool kit as she has learned to find joy in her work.
Betty Lennox is a fighter.
Watch her as she lowers her shoulder and slashes to the basket - the lone guard among the “trees” - and lays it up and in. See her dive for the ball every bit as hard at 32 years of age as when she was rookie of the year in 2000. And notice when she has some of her best games: when her team is struggling, sometimes losing the game.
Many a time while playing for the Seattle Storm Lennox would pull out a team-high, double-digit individual point total when her squad came up on the short end of the game. Win or lose, she has carried that work ethic with her to each team on which she has played. During their most recent home game on July 5, LA was losing badly to Phoenix when Lennox, now with the Sparks, went to work, reeling off nine straight points in the fourth quarter to try and even it up. Though the Sparks lost, Lennox tied for team scoring leader with 17 points.
“I see why Betty continues to be one of the best guards in the league, ” Sparks General Manager Penny Toler said. “She is the first one in the gym and the last one to leave. She is constantly working to improve her game.”
Though Lennox has been no stranger to hard work from the time she was a child, it’s only been relatively recently that she’s been able to enjoy the labor of love that is her basketball career.
It was immediately noticeable this spring, when Lennox reported to her new WNBA team and began making appearances. Gone was her trademark intense, serious expression and in its place: a smiling, relaxed Lennox who seemed to be lighter in spirit, as well. She told Full Court Press that she “just wanted to have fun” at this point in her career, and as if to prove the point, she danced with her teammates a few times at a May open practice. Lennox also talks frequently with her teammates during down time at practices and at games, in contrast to her previously quiet demeanor.
She said part of her new attitude comes from re-framing her perspective, and part from genuinely being happy on her new team.
“I’ve never been a player that has smiled while I was working, because I’ve always been taught that there’s no joy in work,” Lennox said.
“But when you’re actually doing something that you are truly blessed to do and that you’ve dreamed of doing since you were a kid—that’s where the (new found) happiness comes in. Sadly, it took me 10 seasons to figure that out, but that’s a life learning process that you go through.”
Lennox said her experience playing with the Sparks so far has met every expectation she had, both professionally and personally.
“I’m very happy here—very happy here,” she said. “And I’m displaying that happiness a lot more than I have been in the last nine years.”
Part of that display also seems to be in her statistics, which have been solid so far this season. Lennox’s rankings have fluctuated between number 18 and 24 in the league in points per game, and she has maintained a spot in the low 20s in rebounds per game. She only missed starting a game once, with a minor injury.
“(Playing in LA) has fulfilled my personal goals, which are to get better and to have fun,” Lennox said. “That’s what I’ve been doing.”
The road to bliss has been a long one for the 5-foot-8 Lennox, who counts the Sparks as her sixth WNBA team after two of her previous franchises folded. In fact, nothing seems to have come easy for Lennox, who spent the first 14 years of her life on a small farm in rural Oklahoma.
The eighth of nine children, Lennox and her siblings were expected to help out on the family farm when they weren’t in school, which entailed long hours of tough, physical work. To make matters even more challenging, Lennox’s three sisters were among the first born, and were all at least a decade older than she was. This effectively left her the lone girl surrounded by five brothers.
“I was raised with my brothers, and I didn’t have anyone around to say ‘stop,’” Lennox said. “This really made me fight - I had to fight for everything. You know, like fighting over the TV, them taking my food—things like that.”
Lennox’s family moved to Independence, Missouri, when she was in ninth grade, and this gave her a chance to start playing basketball on a competitive team. She became a solid contributor, putting up 20 points per game. After one semester at Butler Community College in Kansas, she transferred to Trinity Valley Community College in Athens, Texas, where she helped her team to the National Junior College Championship. Lennox will soon be inducted into the Trinity Valley Community College Hall of Fame.
“That’s something that I’m looking forward to,” she said of the upcoming ceremony.
Her success at Trinity brought Lennox to the attention of Louisiana Tech, where she played two years under then-coach Leon Barmore. Coach and player clashed often during Lennox’s junior year, buying Lennox a rep as a “difficult” player. But Lennox also built a a solid name for productivity. As a senior she centered her focus on playing, and averaged 18 points and six rebounds per game while helping lead the Techsters to the Elite Eight in the NCAA Tournament.
The Minnesota Lynx selected Lennox sixth in the 2000 WNBA draft. But an injury the following year slowed her progress, and only a few games into the 2002 season, the Lynx traded Lennox to the Miami Sol. At the conclusion of that season, the Sol franchise folded. Lennox was then drafted by the Cleveland Rockers, only to see that club, too, dissolve at the end of the 2003 season—a year that also saw her statistics decline sharply.
By the time the Seattle Storm picked her up in 2004, Lennox had a reputation for having a chip on her shoulder. That and her disappointing seasons since her rookie campaign made some skeptical that she could help out her new team. But Lennox proved the doubters wrong.
The Storm won the WNBA Championship that year, lead by the performance of Lennox, who was named Most Valuable Player of the Playoffs. As she accepted the award amidst fluttering confetti and the back slaps of teammates, Lennox closed her eyes and broke into what was then an all-too-rare smile.
“2004 was the best year of my WNBA career because we reached the ultimate goal and won the WNBA Championship,” she recounted. “It was my dream, and especially my unexpected MVP award.”
But after that, the luster faded. Though Lennox stayed with the Storm for three more seasons, she said her tenure there “caused her pain” because her game was limited. She said that in hindsight, the experience “wasn’t something I’d want to do again.”
“The coaching system didn’t work for me,” she explained. “It’s when you are held back—when you can’t do much of anything. It was frustrating…. There weren’t so many ‘do’s for me—there were a lot of ‘don’t's. I was held back and couldn’t really show what I was able to do.”
Lennox said it may have been disappointing to fans, who were used to seeing her make far more substantial contributions when playing for the Storm. But when she left the team and played for the Atlanta Dream last summer, Lennox said fans there saw that there was much more she could do.
“Let’s put it this way—and this is a stat from last year,” Lennox said. “If I was in Seattle, I would have never, in no possible way, had the opportunity to score 44 points under that coaching system.”
When Lennox left the Storm, she felt like “there was nothing anybody else could to do me that hadn’t already been done.” But playing for a brand new franchise in the Dream, the veteran again found a new challenge—having several young teammates who hadn’t had a lot of playing experience.
“It was difficult,” she said. “I felt like I was a mother in the situation, just starting all over again. I did everything possible to lead the way, on or off the court, as a captain.”
So late last winter, when Atlanta cut Lennox while she was overseas playing in Russia, she was concededly shocked. Then on April 15, that disappointment turned to joy when the Sparks signed her as a free agent. At the time, Lennox said playing for former NBA guard Michael Cooper was a dream come true for her. She has responded in kind with eagerness and hustle, both in practices and games.
“The thing that has so impressed me about Betty is her complete focus on her game and her intensity in trying to always make sure she is playing her best basketball,” Sparks co-owner Kathy Goodman said. “She is a competitor in the best sense of that word—focused on being her best and wanting to play against the best. She is also one of the nicest people off the court.”
Yet, there is still a small chorus of voices, albeit fading, that like to point to Lennox’s volatile past, which has included a few game-time fights here and there. Lennox herself admits she used to have a chip on her shoulder—an “edge,” she calls it. It’s an edge she came by honestly, one borne of years of struggle.
“That’s just the way I was raised,” she said. “The chip on my shoulder is to let everybody know: you’re not going to run over me. Because if I let someone run over me, what does that say about me?”
Some of the edge was worked to her advantage. It has made her almost stoical in facing hardship. To cite just one example, Lennox characterizes her last several years playing for Russia’s Orrenberg team, where she often rides in small trains for up to 30 hours between games with a minus-30 wind chill factor to deal with once she gets there, with phrases like, “those are the cards that I am dealt.”
Lennox said she accepts the labels often associated with her—“intimidating” and “sore loser” to name just two—because she does want to be intimidating on the court, and she hates to lose.
“I’m a person you could easily approach off the court, because once you get to know me, you can’t shut me up. I’m full of jokes,” she said. “On the basketball court, though, that’s my goal: I want to be intimidating to whoever the opponent is.”
Unsurprisingly, given her background, Lennox is a notoriously hard worker. She talks about “setting goals that people don’t think you can reach.” She acknowledges that she sometimes tries things she doesn’t think she can do because “you’re never going to be successful if you don’t put forth the effort.” Not only have the Sparks noticed this, but so have those who have played with her in the past.
“Betty’s a great athlete who works extremely hard,” said forward Janell Burse, Lennox’s former Storm teammate. “She’s also a great teammate because she can change her role and do what’s needed to get the job done. She’s never scared to do the dirty work.”
This includes hard work off the court, as well.
While playing for the Storm, Lennox set up a non-profit organization (lennox22.org) to raise money to help abused and neglected children. She personally collects donations from businesses and individuals, and takes the proceeds to shelters. Lennox still works with a shelter in Seattle, as well as one in Kansas City, Missouri. She hasn’t had time yet to establish similar connections in Los Angeles, but she plans to do so.
Lennox said she took up the cause for abused and neglected children because she’s been witness to so many such cases from watching friends, acquaintances and others over the years.
“I see the kids’ situations where they’re left at home, don’t have any clothes, they don’t have the right nutrition, don’t have the right food, don’t have toothpaste,” Lennox said. “There are so many kids being abused by not being loved. They’ve been neglected by never being told, ‘I love you,’ by never having had a story read to them—stuff like that.”
Her reward, she said, is seeing children made happy when she brings in donations.
“The return I want to see are the smiles on these kids faces saying, ‘I want to be a doctor,’ or ‘I’m able to do this or that,’” Lennox said. “That’s the ultimate goal I want to achieve through my foundation.”
As for her career with the Sparks, it’s a good thing Lennox is a hard-worker: Lennox and her teammates have their work cut out for them this month, as they try to turn around a slow start to the season with a strong, month-long road trip. After finally knocking off their first road win in New York on July 9, and lost a close one to Washington, July 11. Next up, today, is Connecticut, currently the fourth-place team in the East.
Only time will tell whether Lennox will still have a smile on her face when the season is over, but if not, it won’t be because she has given it any less than her all.
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