Fever

I can tell you the exact moment I knew nothing would ever be the same. It was this “Aha” moment that clicked for me, back in May. We were getting ready to play New York at home, and my aunt hit me up. She is not a sports person at all. And she calls me like, “Kelz, how do I get tickets to the game?” I’m like, “Now, hold the hell up!” Aunt Stephanie is trying to see us play?? I must be dreaming. I think everybody in the league has a version of that story by now. It wasn’t the sold-out arenas. The media attention. It was that one person hitting you up. People that never really had an inclination before to watch women’s basketball all of a sudden wanted to be a part of it. Now, they wanted to see the WNBA. 

And not just the W..… They wanted to see the Fever. 

If you’re a real one, I’ll rock with you forever. “Real” is being a witness to somebody’s journey. It’s recognizing, Hey, she’s been with the Fever since the beginning, and she’s still standing. So to the ones who’ve been here, and have had a respect for me even before all this, I have nothing but love. For those who have taken the time to get to know me and show respect to my game, I’m extremely humbled. I had a small fan base when I got to Indiana six years ago. Y’all know who y’all are. I wouldn’t have made it here without you. Anyone who knows me will tell you I’m not one to do too much talking. It just isn’t my strong suit. But, being the person I’ve grown into, I just wanted to take a second to say thank y’all from the bottom of my heart. It’s why I wanted to step outside my comfort zone to write this.

This was one of the hardest seasons I’ve ever been through, in basketball and in life. Because for the first time, I had to learn how to do it without my dad. 

My OG best friend. 

I love my mama like no other, but the love of hoop my Dad and I shared was just a tad bit different. I’ve always been a daddy’s girl and loved my dad to the core. He was a coach, and I went to every basketball practice he had, every game coached, every ride to drop his players off at their homes. Everything I’ve achieved in basketball came from following the blueprint he laid out for me, since I was little. I have twin brothers, Kevin and Cameron, they’re 32. And then I have a twin sister named Chelsea. My mama had two sets of twins, Kevin and Cam, Kelsey and Chelsea — two Ks and two Cs (Yes haha, she’s a soldier). 

I remember I used to sit in my big jersey at the end of the bench at my brothers’ rec basketball games, kind of like a mascot, getting water for them. My sister would go do cheerleading stuff — I knew for sure I was not into that (No offense, sis! Lol). So I chose to sit on the bench and found myself falling in love with the game. I can remember this one time, one of their players fouled out, and my brothers’ team needed a fifth player. I was like four years old. They subbed me in, and from there, the rest was history. I found something I truly loved. It was like hoop became a love language between me, my twin, my brothers, my mama, and my dad, because we all love it the same way.

I’ve always been a daddy’s girl and loved my dad to the core.

I’m from Cinci, but my mama came from huge roots in Memphis. Orange Mound to be exact. So we would go down there every year, right? In Memphis, if you wanted to go learn about the kind of hooper you were, you went outside. I remember when I finally got old enough to play with my brothers and big cousin Freddy at what they called The Precinct. Like five or six courts next to the Memphis police station. 

At The Precinct we played against every kind of walk of life. Respectfully, we were going up against dudes from the trenches. My dad wanted us to experience that, I think. He wanted us to see that basketball was universal, and we weren’t the only ones who played it. Now, I’m not sure why my mama let us go … but she trusted our dad. So he’d take us to the courts at night, and that was kinda the worst time cuz ain’t no telling what’s poppin’ off. I came from an atmosphere that was different from what the vibe was at The Precinct. I learned a different type of street knowledge those nights. What to do, what to say, and how to move. I think Pops was trying to instill in us a certain kinda survival mode. But we’d find ourselves playing eight or nine games till one o’clock in the morning. 

Down south hoopers, man, they could shoot the lights out the ball, with crazy IQ and handle. And I could tell they kinda looked at me like, Whoever she is, she ain’t about to come in and outshine us. 

I remember this one time we had won a few in a row. More and more people started walking over like, “How they running the court?? Why nobody beating them??” No one knew where me and my brothers were from. They probably were looking at my dad thinking, Who that fat man sitting on the bench? Hahah. 

So this team of dudes come through. They were legit like tween, tween, cross, cross, step back…… 

I couldn’t guard them to save my doggone life. Oh, man, I’ll never forget it. 

My dad calls timeout. 

He’s like, “Get your ass over here!!!” 

He said, “Take the challenge.” He told me to have no fear.  It was first to 12, and at that point, we were down like nine to three, but crazy as it is, we ended up coming back and winning. 

That’s basically my pops in a nutshell. I kid you not, he had us playing everywhere you can imagine in Cincinnati. Price Hill, Avondale, Millvale, West End … the list goes on. My parents as a whole, really were like that. That was their mentality: You’re going to hoop against everybody. You’re going to experience how everybody plays basketball. You’re going to take the challenge and respect the game for what it is.

Fast forward to the morning of the draft. The biggest day of my life. Growing up in Cinci, you see New York on TV shows and watch the Knicks play, but you never really visualize being there … you never picture getting out of Cincinnati. 

So I’m looking up through all the tall buildings with stars in my eyes like a kid in a candy store. I was even romanticizing the traffic y’all forreal!! Hahaha. All in my head like, Even the traffic is cool … Damn, welcome to New York. I was so nervous that morning, all I wanted to do was hoop. So my agent, Allison, found me a gym uptown at Columbia, and I got a workout in with my dad. He was my passer, and I went through my workout with him, thinking about what the draft could be for me, what the night was going to be like. After we finished, my homegirl’s mom came up and brought me my stuff. I did my makeup and put on my dress. I got drafted second, but my stomach felt like I was going to get drafted 30-ish or something. The whole day was surreal, but one of the best parts about it was my dad and me doing what we always do, getting a workout in and getting better at basketball.

I’m super grateful to the Fever organization, for taking me when they did and giving me an opportunity to be a part of this thing for as long as I have. Every season brought more growth to our team. I was really looking forward to this one, especially, getting to know my rookies, and seeing what we were going to be … I was getting excited about training camp … And then, out of nowhere it’s like the rug was pulled from under me. 

My dad suddenly passed away in March, at the age of 56. You don’t expect your dad to die at 56. That sent a shock through our whole family and everyone that knew him. It hurt more than I could ever put into words.

Pain and trauma makes you look at life a little different. I didn’t know what would happen next, if I was going to play this season … how I was supposed to play this season. 

Basketball is the heart and soul of my family. We had a chance to meet, and love, and share so many memories with so many people through hoop. My dad touched so many people in his life, that when he passed, not only was I impacted, the coaches that he worked with felt it, too. Ohio State University felt it. His kids that he coached at Taft High School felt it….  It’s like all of Cinci and the basketball world took on that grief with me and held my hand through it. And I’m forever grateful for that because I didn’t feel like I was alone when my dad left the world.

I’d never done basketball without my dad before. I didn’t know what that was going to look like. The first time I picked up a basketball again, I was like, Oh shit, I don’t know how to DO this.

For a while, I would shoot cryin’, trying to grasp such a big transformation. But things got a little easier as I got closer with God and started to see my purpose. I knew I had to keep going. There were games that I cried in the locker room before tipoff. But you wouldn’t have known. I wasn’t letting people see me like that.

When I think about some of the stuff I was able to accomplish this year, even through grief, it’s like even that came from him. My dad finished his coaching career at Wilberforce University, which is an HBCU in central Ohio, down in Dayton. I was training right up until he passed, with his kids. And so I thought, I’d be a fool not to want to compete. I was going to give my best to show the world what my dad showed me.

That’s kind of one of the craziest things about our season. We obviously had a new spotlight on us, with Caitlin being drafted, who I’m proud to call a teammate. That was exciting in its own way, with the fans it brought to the arena, and the opportunity it gave our squad. But I think, in a weird way, the outside noise kind of made people forget sometimes that we’re still human, if that makes sense? The microscope got smaller and smaller, and I don’t think anybody was really thinking about the fact that my dad just died, or Katie Lou’s a mom trying to figure out  motherhood and being a WNBA pro all in one, you know? We all had real things we were going through. 

I’ll be honest, the spectacle was unsettling sometimes. Some of the newer fans have been really hateful online to the incredible women in our league, and to me and our Fever players as well. 

At its best, there’s a purity to the game of basketball that’s kinda hard to define. When you sign up to be a fan, being pure and genuine is a part of that. Sometimes it was hard to see who was really in it for the love of the game and who wasn’t. And I felt it. It affected me a lot on the court and in the post-games, when we’d get questions about it. At times, it took away the purity for me. I shouldn’t even have to say this, but our team doesn’t condone any racism, sexism, homophobia, or hate against any group. That has no place in our fanbase. Period. I have no problem using any influence I have to say that, but I also hope that the powers that be will do a better job of advocating for us and making that clear to everybody. We need more institutional support.

But we leaned on each other to get through it. There were moments throughout the season when Katie Lou checked on me, and I checked on her. Kristy Wallace was there for me in Chicago, when I couldn’t hold back my emotions about my dad during shootaround, and she noticed and gave me a safe space to just bawl my eyes out. Damiris was back and getting into her own rhythm, so Temi and I would check on her and see how she was adjusting. And Damiris would check on Grace if she was going through something, and Grace would check on Lexie, and Lexie checked on EDub and Temi, while EDub checked on Lyss, AB, and V.... Basically, none of the chaos seeped into our locker room. We really held each other down. So our 11, who were professional, competitive, and selfless through it all, I wouldn’t trade them for the world. I wouldn’t have asked to do this with anybody else. And I have so much respect for Caitlin, especially, and how she handled it as a youngin’. I hope we did a good job of being there for you, too, C ❤️. I gave her her flowers early in the game because the eyes she brought shined a light on all of us, too.

When I look back at my journey with the Fever, from 2018 to now, and everything I went through, I feel like it was just supposed to happen this way. And it’s hard to know what the future holds. I’ll be honest, I don’t know what colors I’ll be wearing next year, which just makes me cherish this season and our group even more. I’ve never been through free agency, so I’m looking forward to the opportunity to explore that for the first time in my career and have a say in my future as a basketball player. 

The one thing I know for sure, is that whatever comes next, it’ll suck not having my dad to do it with. I be thinking about that morning a lot, when we were just having a normal workout before the draft. I had a lot of nerves, but seeing his face just calmed me down. My whole life, he was there, building this unshakeable confidence within me. No matter what I was worried about, he would always say: 

“No, go out there, kid. You’re prepared.” 

Whether I was in The Precinct, getting my tail kicked in every kind of way, or even dislocating my finger playing at the infamous Cincinnati LaSalle…. 

OK, one last story. 

I was playing with my dad’s high school squad one time. After school, my grandparents would take me to their open gyms … I was basically on the team. Lol. Well, we playing, and I go up for a rebound. Next thing you know, I’m hollerin’. I dislocated my finger. I ran over to my dad, and he just popped it back in a matter of seconds. He calmed me down, comforted me, being a dad first of course. Seconds later, he’s back in Coach Mode. 

“Get back out there, kid.” 

Memories like that are priceless because it reminds me of what it felt like to look at his face and know I could do anything in the world. Now, he’s not here anymore, so I can’t look at him and immediately be reassured. But I still feel him all the time. I envision and select his seat in every arena I go to. Y’all don’t know where he is in there, but I do.

To the fans: THANK YOU. The real ones (you know who you are), old and new. If you love me, I love you back. We made memories together that will last a lifetime. 

And to my Pops:

I sucked it up and punched it in the mouth, as you’d say. Hahah.

I’m doing it.

Love always,

Kelz