South Carolina coach Dawn Staley's basketball success will be smallest part of her legacy | Opinion

MINNEAPOLIS — Dawn Staley was a three-time Olympic gold medalist, two-time national Player of the Year and Hall of Famer. As a coach, she’s won one national title, been to three other Final Fours and twice been chosen coach of the year.

It is what the South Carolina coach is doing off the court, however, that will ultimately be her greatest achievement.

Over the last two years, Staley has become the conscience of college basketball. She has used the platform her success affords her to challenge inequities and systemic racism. She has made it a priority to champion coaches of color, particularly younger ones. She has spoken up for those who can’t, and helped others find their own voices in the process.

“I'm just doing what I'm supposed to do,” Staley said last week, before coming to the Final Four. “I'm comfortable in my skin, and I'm comfortable being uncomfortable and making other people uncomfortable when it's for the right thing.

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“I think what I want is to have generational impact,” she added. “Not to just impact my current players, but to have impact on people who will have impact on people who will have impact on other people.”

Staley has always had influence. She’s one of the greatest point guards the game – men’s or women’s – has ever seen, and she has the respect of, well, everyone. But for much of her coaching career, she concentrated on making a mark on her players.

She is unsparing in her honesty; as a player, she always preferred people to tell it to her straight, even if it hurt her feelings, rather than sugarcoat or play games, so that is what she’s done with her own players. To the wider world, outside her program, she let her actions be her example.

But she has realized that isn’t enough.

Following the murder of George Floyd, she used her Twitter account to call attention to the racism that remains baked into our society. Last season, the first after Floyd’s death, South Carolina did not stand for the national anthem as a silent protest, and Staley backed her players despite heavy criticism.

“She gets a lot of stuff thrown at her, a lot of people say reckless things,” South Carolina guard Brea Beal said. “For her to still have the courage to continue to speak up, continue to be a leader, especially as a woman of color, it’s just amazing to watch.”

When Sedona Prince’s video comparing the miniscule rack of dumb bells at the NCAA women’s tournament with the expansive weight room at the men’s event went viral, Staley had had enough. She released a pointed and powerful statement, calling out the NCAA for its shabby treatment of women athletes.

“We cannot as leaders of young women allow Mark Emmert and his team to use us and our student athletes at their convenience,” Staley wrote. “Women's basketball is a popular sport whose stock and presence continues to rise on a global level. It is sad that the NCAA is not willing to recognize and invest in our growth despite its claims of togetherness and equity.”

The inequities remained a flashpoint throughout the tournament, and Staley addressed it again and again. Even when the tournament ended and the issue of inequities got pushed aside by something else, Staley continued to point out the toxic effect that disparities like these, as well as the attitudes that fostered them, have on women, particularly women of color.

A few months later, before the start of the season, snippets from a basketball net began arriving at the offices of young, Black women coaches across the country.

After Carolyn Peck became the first Black female coach to win a national title, she sent Staley a piece of the net from the game. It was meant to inspire, reminding Staley that she, too, was capable of reaching the pinnacle of the coaching profession.

When Staley won the national title in 2017, she had sent Peck a piece of net. Now she was doing the same with other coaches, letting them know that they always had someone in their corner, believing in them, and hoping this net would inspire to reach even higher.

“I just feel like Black female coaches have been the voiceless, the ones that don't really get the opportunity to fail,” Staley said. “We don't get the opportunity to fail. It is win at all costs, and if you don't, don't seek another opportunity.”

About this time, Staley also was negotiating a contract extension. Rather than accepting what someone else deemed to be her value, Staley hired an attorney to negotiate a contract that made her the highest-paid Black coach in women’s basketball, and put her on par with Geno Auriemma, the highest-paid coach in women’s basketball, period.

Groundbreaking as Staley’s deal was, it wasn’t the dollar figure that mattered. It was what it told the world. In a sport played predominantly by Black women, it was a Black woman who was at the top of the game.

And it wouldn’t be long before others joined her.

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“People say it all the time, that representation matters. But being a person of color, it really does matter,” Aliyah Boston, the player of the year, said. “To see that it’s somebody of color, talking about inequities and everything that’s happening in the world, I think it’s important.

“It might be easy for a white person or someone else to be able to speak about what they think is happening and what’s inequity to them. In reality, they still don’t know what it’s like being a person of color,” Boston continued, her voice picking up speed.

“For coach Staley, especially having the platform she has and being my coach, it’s special to see. I see this woman every day, and she’s not afraid to use her voice and she’s not afraid to be who she is. Which just continues to give me a boost because I know I have a platform, and if I think something is wrong or I think something’s not happening, then I should be able to speak up on it.”

Boston and her teammates know the impact Staley has made on them. But they see it at every game, too, in the little girls who are soaking up everything Staley is saying and doing.

“These girls are having courage in themselves because of this woman right here and because of the team she leads, that’s majority women of color,” Beal said. “It’s just so amazing.”

This wasn’t a role Staley envisioned for herself when she got into coaching. She simply wanted other young women to have the opportunities she did, and to use basketball to open doors they otherwise wouldn’t have known existed.

But she is where she is now because of the “foremothers” in the game, the women who challenged stereotypes and prejudices. That work isn’t done, and it never will be unless people with a platform and a presence demand accountability.

People like Staley.

“I’ve always been able to see the big picture, and I've carried that,” Staley said. “It doesn't matter if it's basketball or if it's just life. I'm a point guard, so we're trained to see it all. We're trained to see the big picture.”

Staley is already a titan of the game, and what happens in Sunday night’s national championship game won’t change that. But she is also a titan of a person and, because of that, she can change everything.

Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on Twitter @nrarmour.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Dawn Staley's impact reaches far beyond college basketball court