Cynthia Cooper
The Pioneer
The frontier and an appetite for the unknown, goes first.
Cynthia Cooper is The Pioneer because she built the road before anyone paved it. She assembled her own WNBA recruitment package and cold-called the league, having already spent a decade proving herself overseas before American audiences knew her name. Becoming the first WNBA player inducted into the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame confirmed what her own framing of the Comets dynasty revealed, that she always understood herself as laying groundwork for the next generation.
“A kid from Watts, Locke High School is in the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame. Come on, man.”
“You are in charge of your own future. Nobody else is in charge of your future except you. You need to be willing to put in the work, to be humble, to go and let people know what you want.”
“We had a unique opportunity to lay the groundwork and the foundation for what was to come for the next generation, for the kids that were now dreaming of being Cheryl Swoops, Tina Thompson.”
Knuckleheads with Quentin Richardson & Darius Miles: “Cynthia Cooper”
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