The elevator ride to Chiney Ogwumike ’s Century City penthouse began in silence and ended with the steady thump of Afrobeats.
It was a random Tuesday afternoon, but Ogwumike was moving and talking faster than the music, whirling around a condominium that is a monument to multitasking. In a downstairs gym, Chiney Ogwumike has prepared for her upcoming season with the WNBA’s Los Angeles Sparks. Upstairs, the baller-slash-broadcaster has arranged her office around a tidy bookshelf that serves as a backdrop for remote television appearances.
Her phone was always nearby and rarely dormant, and she mumbled verdicts on a stream of incoming requests without losing her train of thought. Ogwumike stepped onto her deck to enjoy the sunshine — but only for a moment. There was too much to discuss about her dual careers, not to mention her secret dream of chronicling the Hollywood dating scene.
For the next two hours, Ogwumike held court from her couch, shifting effortlessly and inexhaustibly through an array of more serious topics: her painful rehabilitation from two major surgeries, her exhausting rise to become an NBA analyst for ESPN, the petroleum industry, gender inequity in sports, sexism in broadcasting, the Ukrainian refugee crisis and social media criticism.
With a gleaming smile and active hands, she noted twice that her brain never turns off and chalked it up to her full legal name: Chinenye Joy Ogwumike. Her first name means “God gives” in the Igbo language. The joy is self-evident. Her last name translates to “Tireless.” Together, it’s as fitting as a name gets.
Chiney Ogwumike, who turned 30 on March 21, is in a contract year with the Sparks and with ESPN. Between the age milestone and the career crossroads, she was in an introspective mood and had listened intently to Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Senate confirmation hearings. Jackson recalled feelings of homesickness and doubt as a Harvard undergraduate and told a story about a sidewalk encounter with “a Black woman I didn’t know” who apparently sensed Jackson’s uneasiness and provided a single word of advice: “Persevere.”
The anecdote reminded Chiney Ogwumike of her freshman year at Stanford, when she felt like an outsider and couldn’t bring herself to participate in class discussions, even though she was a star recruit and a straight-A high school student.
In stepped Condoleezza Rice, who joined the Stanford faculty after serving as President George W. Bush’s secretary of state. Summoning Ogwumike for a heart-to-heart conversation, Rice insisted the teenager speak up and informed her she would be requesting regular progress reports from her professors.
Evading quicksand
Peter and Ifeyinwa “Ify” Ogwumike were born in Nigeria and raised by well-to-do families before immigrating to the United States as teenagers to study at Weber State and settling just outside Houston. They expected perfect test scores and community involvement from their four daughters: Nneka, Chiney, Erica and Olivia. All four went on to play college basketball, and the sport was a driving force for the family.
But Chiney, a 6-foot-3 forward who won two state championships at Cy-Fair High, was also active in student government and a civil rights club. Even as a young child, she enjoyed watching CNN’s global news and eavesdropping on her parents’ conversations about African politics.
At Stanford, Ogwumike majored in international relations and studied abroad in her parents’ home country, where she saw both ends of the economic spectrum. One day, she was job-shadowing officials at the Ministry of Petroleum. The next, she was attending Access2Success basketball camps, where hundreds of children, many of whom lacked shoes and proper athletic attire, squeezed onto two outdoor courts. She returned to Palo Alto with a newfound gratitude and graduated as the Pac-12’s all-time leading scorer.
Two years after Nneka was the No. 1 pick in the 2012 WNBA draft, Ogwumike was selected first by the Connecticut Sun and appeared poised for a dominant professional career. Unfortunately, injuries intervened. While Nneka led the Sparks to the 2016 title and was named league MVP, Chiney endured nagging knee pain and underwent microfracture surgery in 2015.
She went home to Texas to recover, shielding her disappointment from the outside world. Laid up on a couch in her parents’ bedroom, she refused prescription pain medication after her first Vicodin pill made her nauseous.
Once healthy, Ogwumike returned to play for the Sun and competed overseas in China. While playing for the Henan Phoenix in 2016, she tore her Achilles’ tendon. To get back to the United States for surgery, Ogwumike embarked on a 72-hour journey that included a train ride across Hunan province, two lengthy flights and wheelchair rides through multiple airports.
Ogwumike spent her second rehabilitation watching ESPN’s morning debate shows, seeking a connection to the sports world. She remained confident that she could still compete in the WNBA but decided playing year-round was no longer an option, leading her to consider joining the media.
Starting over
Despite her elite basketball pedigree, Ogwumike was a 25-year-old broadcasting rookie. She had dabbled with a few ESPN appearances since joining the Sun, but pitching herself to media executives as an on-air talent during her playing career was more complicated. She prioritized opportunity over compensation by channeling Shonda Rhimes’s “Year of Yes” philosophy.
Want to interview college mascots? Yes. Want to analyze Pac-12 games in the studio? Yes. Want to anchor “SportsCenter Africa”? Yes. Ogwumike, who is now a regular on ESPN’s “NBA Today,” knew she needed to raise her profile because she wasn’t a household name like Lisa Leslie or Candace Parker.
Before long, she had constructed a frenzied day-to-day existence in Uncasville, Conn., where the Sun plays. Three or four times a week, she would wake up at 4:30 a.m. and drive an hour to ESPN’s headquarters in Bristol, arriving early enough to attend production meetings and get her hair and makeup done before her first “SportsCenter” hit at 7 a.m. Her appearances would continue throughout the day, and she would sneak in a quick cafeteria lunch when possible.
Ogwumike would head out by 4:30 p.m. to work out, make the hour-long drive home and tune in to the first set of NBA games at 7 p.m. When the games were done after midnight, she would log plays and send notes to her producers for use on the next day’s shows.
Meanwhile, at her night job, Ogwumike averaged 14.4 points and 7.3 rebounds for the Sun, earning her second all-star nod in 2018. Yet she felt stuck in an endless loop: apart from her family, living in team housing and driving a team-owned Hummer.
As her ESPN responsibilities increased, Ogwumike experienced a heavy dose of impostor syndrome, much like when she was a Stanford freshman. Former Houston Rockets star Tracy McGrady, her childhood idol, was sitting next to her on set, and she felt added pressure following the departures of several high-profile female hosts. Network executives took note of her diligence and professionalism, but some colleagues struggled to pronounce her name and viewers nitpicked her appearance.
Rounding out
A 2019 trade from the Sun to the Sparks reunited Ogwumike with Nneka and enabled her to contribute more frequently to ESPN’s NBA coverage from the network’s L.A. studio. The cross-country move also prompted an unsparing self-assessment.
Ogwumike now has a checklist for her next 10 years: marriage, children and launching a media business that will combat systemic inequality through narrative storytelling. Her off-court causes have piled up: In addition to serving as a vice president for the WNBA’s players union, she has spearheaded voting rights initiatives, campaigned for more equitable treatment for female college athletes and launched a fundraiser for African students fleeing the war in Ukraine.
A potential political future will need to wait. After playing just seven games over the past two seasons, Chiney Ogwumike has trained for the upcoming season with 5 a.m. workouts and regular sessions with a basketball coach, osteopath, track coach and trainer. Retirement would have its benefits — less physical toll on her body, more time for everything else — but she isn’t ready.
Something will have to give. The WNBA season begins in May, leaving Ogwumike unsure about her availability to cover the NBA Finals in June. Sparks Coach Derek Fisher said he was “optimistic” that Ogwumike “will report to camp healthy and contribute to our on-court success,” adding that the team has “always supported our athletes pursuing careers” outside the WNBA. Roberts said ESPN’s leaders will be “flexible and nimble” to make the juggling act work.
As Chiney Ogwumike ramps up for another basketball comeback and builds her broadcasting reputation, she recited one of her mother’s favorite sayings: Small drops of water make a mighty ocean.
Source : washingtonpost.com
