Women's Hoops Guru

(Guru's note: Olympic veteran Lisa Leslie, a top WNBA player for the Los Angeles Sparks, is providing the Associated Press with a diary from the Beijng Games. Here is her first offering, which was written from the first week of training at Stanford, prior to leaving California for Asia. There is video that accompanies this, according to the wire, but you'll have to search elsewhere for that technological graphic presentation as Jonathan has just set out on a two-week cross-country train trip on vacation.)

By Lisa Leslie
For The Associated Press

PALO ALTO, Calif. — Welcome to the Olympic diary of Lisa Leslie. We
just finished three days of training camp at Stanford. It’s been great
training, very grueling getting ready to go to Beijing.

One of the things that is most exciting for me is that this will be my
last Olympics as an athlete. It’s been a tremendous run for me, going from
being one of the youngest players in 1996 to being one of the older — more
seasoned players as I like to say.

I’ve worked hard after having Lauren and taking a season off from the
WNBA. Motherhood has changed me, being a mom full time, a basketball
player part time and now an Olympian once again. I feel like a great role
model, to go out there and compete at the highest level but still be a
mommy. Get the bottles and change the diaper. I always have my hands full,
but I’m loving every minute of it.

The U.S. women’s team lost in the world championship so we kind of
have that hanging over our head. We lost to China in a pre-tournament we
played in April. So this is going to be a challenge for us, but we have
won the Olympics the last three times.

I have three gold medals to prove it and we’re going for our fourth in
a row. We might not be the favorites going in, but in the end, we’re going
to be listening to our national anthem.

We’re on hiatus from the WNBA. We got Diana Taurasi, an awesome point
guard who plays the 1 and the 2. We got Sue Bird, who will start at the
one and who did a great job in Athens. Katie Smith, who is the co-captain
along with myself. And Tina Thompson, who was also a 2004 gold medalist.

That’s our starting lineup, then we have an array of great talent coming
off the bench. You have DeLisha Milton, Candace Parker, Sylvia Fowles,
Seimone Augustus, Cappie Pondexter and Kara Lawson oh my God, the roster
is just amazing.

This will be the first time my husband, Michael, and my family will
get to see me play in the Olympics. I have two stepdaughters, Gabriel and
Mikaela, and everybody knows about baby Lauren who is 13 months.

But it will be an exciting time for the whole team, a lot of people
are bringing family and friends. We will meet up with the men’s team in
Shanghai before we play another little tournament before the Olympics.
We’ll get a chance to hang out with the guys, friends, family one big
happy family with one goal: win the gold medal.

Though practice was tough, overall we’ve had a really good time. We
went to a luncheon honoring ESPN and ABC broadcaster Robin Roberts, who received the 2008 Inspiring Women award. I was able to present her with it and all the players got
autographs from her. I was psyched about that.

There was a lot of joking on the bus rides. And obviously everyone was
talking about the little brawl we had with Detroit. We were talking about
Candace being the baby, how she feels out of the crib and mom tried to
help when the big bear knocked her down. Then Auntie “D” stepped in,
trying to hit, though it didn’t quite work out that way, we all got fined,
missed a game and it’s all behind us now.

The next time I will see you all will be in Beijing and until then I
want you to practice two words, Ni hao (NEE-haOW), which is how you say
hi; and fie Xie xie ni (Shay shay NEE), and that means thank you very
much.