Leslie’s Statue a ‘Dream Come True’

From Compton to Bronze: Lisa Leslie’s legacy stands taller than a statue

LOS ANGELES — What is Lisa Leslie’s greatest accomplishment?

Is it becoming the first player to dunk in a WNBA game? Winning two WNBA championships, three league MVP awards and four Olympic gold medals? Is it having her No. 9 jersey retired, entering the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame or becoming the first woman honored with a statue at Star Plaza outside Crypto.com Arena?

Those achievements tell us what Leslie did, but they still do not fully explain who she is.

On Sunday, Sept. 20, Leslie’s journey from Compton to Inglewood, USC, the Los Angeles Sparks and basketball immortality was permanently cast in bronze. Her statue, named “The First Lady,” now stands among Los Angeles sports legends, near Magic Johnson and across from Kobe Bryant.

For Leslie, however, the monument is not simply about preserving her accomplishments. It is meant to give future generations permission to imagine themselves standing there, too.

Quoting Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Leslie reminded the crowd, “In spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream.”

She then added, “This is a dream come true.”

“I want little girls and boys to walk out here and have an opportunity to dream, to want to be me, to want to be a statue, to want to be immortalized here,” Leslie said.

Compton Built the Foundation

Leslie did not separate this moment from the places that raised her.

She spoke proudly about spending her childhood in Compton, traveling to her aunt’s home in Carson and later attending Morningside High School in Inglewood. Before she belonged to basketball history, she belonged to Southern California.

“I’m from L.A., but I also feel a certain level of pride,” Leslie said. “I feel like we’re such good people.”

Her journey challenges the idea that a person’s environment automatically determines the limits of their future. Compton may not have provided every resource, but it gave Leslie something just as valuable: drive, adaptability and the determination to build something from what she had.

Sometimes a community that appears not to have everything still gives its children exactly what they need to survive and succeed.

Leslie could have allowed difficult circumstances to fold her potential. Instead, her potential motivated her. Her environment did not determine who she would become, but it helped define the strength she carried into every part of her journey.

That hunger started at home.

Leslie described her first team as her mother and her sisters, Dionne and Tiffany. Her mother worked as a mail carrier before attending trucking school, purchasing an 18-wheel truck and becoming a cross-country driver to create a better life for her daughters.

“My mom is the best mother and father I’ve ever had,” Leslie said. “She was a leader in our family, and she understood that there was no time to have a pity party.”

When her mother’s work required her to be away, Leslie accepted more responsibility at an early age, particularly in helping care for her younger sister. What looked like hardship from the outside became leadership training inside their home.

That family foundation helped develop the discipline the basketball world would later celebrate.

Basketball Is What She Did

Leslie’s husband, Michael Lockwood, offered the most personal description of the woman standing beside the monument.

“When the statue is unveiled, we’re going to see an image of one of the greatest basketball players to ever play the game,” Lockwood said. “But today, I want to tell you about the woman behind the statue, because basketball is simply what she did. It’s not who she is.”

He spoke about Leslie as a wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend and woman of faith. He described the person who stops to help strangers, answers calls from loved ones seeking encouragement and recently dropped everything to assist an elderly man down the stairs of a Paris subway.

He also recalled Leslie caring for him when he became seriously ill with COVID-19. She studied the situation, created a plan and ultimately insisted that he go to the hospital when his condition became dangerous.

“You hit the shot at the buzzer,” Lockwood told her. “Except this one wasn’t for a championship. This one was for me. You fought for me when I couldn’t fight for myself.”

Those moments will never appear in a box score, but they may explain Leslie’s legacy better than any statistic.

“Bronze can capture her height,” Lockwood said. “It can capture her uniform, her pose and her intensity, but bronze can’t capture her heart.”

Leading With Love

Leslie’s message extended beyond sports. She warned about allowing social-media algorithms to repeatedly feed people negativity, conflict and anger.

“You really have to learn to control your algorithms and what you see and what you’re feeding yourself,” Leslie said. “If you see negativity and you get fed negativity, guess what? You’re attracting negativity.”

Her response is simple: lead with love.

“I love people. I try to be kind and communicate,” she said. “Whether it’s the president or the janitor, it doesn’t matter. It’s the human being.”

That belief is part of why this statue carries meaning beyond basketball. Leslie is not only the first woman represented among the statues at Star Plaza. She is a Black woman raised in Compton whose likeness will remain visible to generations who may not have been alive to watch her play.

Years from now, when today’s crowds are gone, another child will stand beneath that statue and ask who she was.

The answer should include the championships, MVP awards, Olympic gold medals and historic dunk. It should include the retired jersey and Hall of Fame induction.

But it should also include the daughter who watched her mother sacrifice, the big sister who helped protect her family, the wife who fought for her husband, the mother who raised her children and the woman who never forgot the community that helped shape her.

Lisa Leslie’s statue preserves what she accomplished.

Her life tells us why it matters.

Lead photo of Lisa Leslie with Earvin “Magic” Johnson. Photo by Felicia Enriquez