March 11, 2025 • 27 mins
Rick welcomes former WNBA star Alana Beard.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Ron Barr, and this is today's edition of
Ron Barr's Sports Byline USA podcast on the eight Side Network.
Elena Bear joins US on Sports Byline. She played fifteen
years in the WNBA with the Washington Mystics, who drafted
her second overall, and also with the LA Sparks, where
she won an WNBA championship in twenty sixteen, and she
(00:22):
was a four time All Star and a two time
Defensive Player of the Year. She also played on a
National League championship teams in Israel, Poland, and Spain as well,
and she played her college ball at Duke and was
a three time ACC Player of the Year. Elena, let's
go back to where this all started. Where you grew
(00:43):
up in Shreveport, Louisiana. What kind of town was that? Oh?
Speaker 2 (00:47):
My goodness, My goodness, right, I grew up outside of
I spent my first fifteen years in Sport, Louisiana and
the city, and then at one point my parents started
with a family about seven miles report, so you know,
we we moved to sort of four acres of lands
and my house and towsand the next hill. So that's
(01:07):
how I grew up, right, and I am like really
really big on the on the on the slogan that
you could take the girl out of the country, but
you can't take the country out of the girl.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
You know.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
We had a very very small town, but obviously three
Report is the cornerstone of who I am today, so
it's always in my heart.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Tell me a little bit about your basketball roots.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Yeah, So I I started playing basketball competitively around the
age of eleven. I was always the only girl out
in the street with my brother and his friends, and
I was always kicking there at their bucks on a
on a daily basis. So I decided to try out
for my middle school team in the seventh grade. I
(01:54):
didn't I wanted to try out in the sixth grade,
but I was a little too shy, and then I
somehow found the confident to do it in the seventh grade,
and then it took off from there. I developed this
love for the game. But I think a lot of
that stems from one just watching my parents do what
they do day in and day out in terms of
having like a tremendous work ethic and never accepting any excuses.
(02:18):
If there was a way they would they would make
a way. My mom she was a she was a
talent on her high school team. I think at one
point she came in as a freshman and and basically
took over that team in high school. But unfortunately she
she had a few injuries that that you know, stopped
her from sort of transitioning to the to the collegiate level.
(02:39):
And so for for for many reasons, I think that's
why she supported me the way that she did in
terms of pushing my career forward, or happened to put
my push my career forward. So it started in the
in the seventh grade and I never looked back. And
I was very fortunate to have a really, really good
high school coach who basically taught me the importance of
respecting the game and understanding the fundamentals of the game.
(03:02):
There were times we were walking to the gym and
you know, we never touched the ball, right. His philosophy
was decent, decious defense. If you think about Tennessee and
Louisiana Tech, you know, during the nineteen ninety six fifty
two thousand, they were known as tough, those players who
didn't back down from anyone, and they truly believed that
(03:24):
defense won championships. So that's where my defensive foundation started
in high school.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Did you grow up in a large family. Did you
have a lot of kids in the family.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
No, I'm the baby of three. My sister is four
years older than me, and my brother's two years older
than me, so I had the privilege of being the baby.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
The reason why I asked that question, I recently was
talking to Ruthie Bolton. Now, I don't know if you
know how many sisters and brothers she has, but it's
double digits. It's double digits. And I asked her, I said,
which was was more difficult playing in a game in
which you had to go up against one of the
great players in the WNBA? Are getting the last piece
(04:06):
of bread at the Sunday dinner?
Speaker 4 (04:10):
And she started laughing and she said, you know, I'm
going to tell you it was getting the last piece
of bread at the Sunday dinner. So that's what I
wondered about the dynamic of your family and how that
played into your success.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Yeah, No, that was never a battle. I think the
only battle, you know, I had was always against my
mother or my brother or my father on the court.
You know, there are many times that we would just
be out in the back door playing one on one.
Whoever makes it to ten or eleven takes on the
next opponent. Right, So I come from an extremely competitive family,
(04:47):
and so no, I never had issues at the table.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Your high school team was awfully good. Tell me about it.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
So it was. It's exactly what I was sort of,
you know, mentioning early on, just having a really good
high school coach who you know, who taught me how
to respect the team. I walked into sort of uh
an organization to where they were already successful. So I
had to come in and earn my dues, and so
(05:18):
I have the opportunity to learn from all of those
players who have built that that organization is the way
that that it is. And so goodness it was. You
walk into the gym, there's no egos, right, everyone is
there working for someone. It's about bringing yourself in a
selfless manner every single day, holding yourself accountable. And there
was nothing our coach allowed us to get away with.
(05:41):
It was about paying attention to the details, respecting your opponents,
and just coming in and just working hard every single day.
And I when when people when people ask me stright
up about my my foundation, I never mentioned it without
mentioning my high school coach, these dow Is. He's been
(06:01):
super influential part of in my journey.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Might put it into perspective for the listeners out there.
Four straight state titles, a one hundred and forty four
and six record, including fifty six straight wins. I want
to ask you about defense because Dennis Johnson, the late
Dennis Johnson, was a friend of mine and we had
some long conversations about playing defense. And I asked him
(06:26):
what's the main thing. I said, you got to have talent,
But what's the main thing? He said, attitude? And I
found that interesting. Can you explain that a little bit
further to everybody listening about attitude trying to play defense?
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Right?
Speaker 2 (06:38):
I think a lot of people see defense that's hard work.
Actually defense is the work that people just don't want
to do. So, yeah, you have to approach it with
an attitude. I never believe, and I've never believed in
it being a bad defender. I just believed in it
being people who chose not to do it. So when
it comes to being elite, is about approaching it with
(07:00):
the discipline in your preparation. It's about approaching it with
the with the relentless mindset and having resiliency because you
have a lot of responsibility to do what other ships.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
Wanted to do.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
So decens came easy. Ton't because what's what's natural, It
is working hard. And as long as I had sort
of the technical know how, everything else kind of just
made thinks to me and it and I became really
good at when.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
It came to playing your college ball. How did you
get away from the clutches of pat Summit and Tennessee.
Speaker 4 (07:35):
Duke Right, No, you.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Know I got a wait, let me back up. I
got away from Louisiana Tech right like it was. It
was zone or assumed that I would go to Louisiana Tech,
Leon Barmore and chant Moki. They don't let many players
from Louisiana sort of passed through. But with Tennessee, that
(07:59):
was my dream in college. I was at a point
where I had my AAU coach send over take to
that summit and they never reached out to me. And
so apparently Tennessee has a has an Alena Beard rule
to where if anybody sends in tape, we watch every
single tape because they just skipped over me. Right, I
(08:22):
came from Streetport. I wasn't highly recruited, didn't have sort
of the means to play on these big teams that
sort of required a lot of extensive when it came
to traveling, and so I kind of just like slipped through,
you know, I just slipped through the ranks because I
(08:42):
didn't play in different states a lot. So Tennessee was.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
My dream college, yeah, because I would say towards the
end of my junior year, my parents agreed to let
me go out to LA for two weeks to.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Play with Centamanica, actually to play with this team that
had asked about me, and we ended up going to
the Oregon Trail to play in this tournament. And I
mean there it was everybody who was number who was
the top fifty playing, So it was Dana Tarasi, Ebony Hoffman,
Nicole Pale, Lindsay Wailing like all of these people there,
(09:22):
but no one knew about Elena Beard. And apparently I
I kind of grew the fox off of everyone and
so I was I was on I was on the
radar then. And so after that trip, my parents allowed
me to play with another team in Mississippi, and that's
when coach Stu saw me and Her story is that
when she first saw me, she wrote in her notepet
the best player she had ever seen. And so Duke
(09:45):
kind of came in late in the process, and my
high school coach encouraged me to give them a look,
which he never did throughout my recruiting process, and I
didn't my parents they allowed me to sort of like
hnd uh, sort of go through that process and made
the decisions and they were just there to support me.
(10:05):
But when Duke came to the table, we invited them
in for a visit. I'm big on intuition. I've always
been big on intuition, and it felt good, and so
I eventually went out to my visit at Duke. In
the moment I stepped on campus, I knew it was
the place for me, and so I eventually counseled my
last two visits because I knew in that moment Duke
(10:27):
was the place I needed to do.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
I want to talk more about that after the break here,
but Elena Beard is with us, and I will tell
you that during her four years that she played for Duke,
the team won four regular season and tournament championships. She
also helped Duke reach the Final four twice in her career,
and in her senior year, the team achieved the first
ever number one ranking in the final AP poll of
(10:50):
that year. We continue across the country and around the world.
It's good to have you with us here on America's
sports talk show Sports Byline with.
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Speaker 1 (11:57):
First, you're listening to Ron Bars Sports Byline USA podcast.
Alana Bird is with us. She played fifteen years in
the WNBA. She also won a WNBA Championship, a four
time All Star, and a two time Defensive Player of
the Year. I want to continue on talking about Duke
for just a second. I've known Mike Krzyzewski for a
(12:19):
very long time, and I'm familiar with the Duke program,
both men's and women's. There are certain things about certain campuses, programs,
and coaches that make them stick out. You mentioned how
special it was to you and you knew you didn't
have to take any more trips to visit other campuses.
What was it that jumped out at you?
Speaker 2 (12:39):
It was the standard. It was the standard of Duke,
right from from academics to athletics to the way that
fit to the infrastructure on campus. And so that's that
was That was consistent with who I was as an individual,
and so it just it just made sense. It felt
(13:00):
right and the people. The people were the most important
thing I felt comfortable at the moment I stepped on campus.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Also, was there an atmosphere there that you saw beyond
playing basketball? No matter what you did. If you went
on and played professional basketball, so be it. But it
left you with something beyond that.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Oh, with thout doubt, I say it all the time.
Rond was, if not the best, it was its top
three best decision I could have made for my life
and for my journey. I knew that, you know, like
you said, despite what happened, you know on the court,
(13:40):
that I would be prepared and set to why beyond
the court, not just from sort of the perspective of,
you know, getting an amazing education, but the people in
the community that embrace issues. You know that that's going
to be for a lifetime. And it's just I'm surprised
(14:03):
now that I knew that then at such a young age. Yeah,
but I I couldn't have picked a better, better institution.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
I'll share a story with you. I used to do
Stanford's football and basketball broadcasts, and I'll never forget being
on a charter going up to Washington State. And I
started to walk through the chartered plane and I was
looking to my right, looking to my left, and I
saw the players reading Barons the Wall Street Journal. That's
(14:34):
when I knew, you know, those type of schools were
something different.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Absolutely, oh man, I you know, just to be just
to be as transparent as possible, I chose Duke, But
Duke was it was tough, right.
Speaker 4 (14:51):
It took me.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
It took me at least a year to get adjusted
to the standard academically, to the point that my parents
because I'm so hard on myself, and you know, I
was a perfectionist back then. I'm still a perfectionist. And
my parents thought that I was going to come home.
They they honestly thought I was going to come home
because I couldn't handle getting a speech I And that
(15:16):
was that was tough, right, And so but yeah, I
think I I surprised everyone when I when I suck
it out.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Did you remember the moment when things did fall into.
Speaker 4 (15:26):
Place for you?
Speaker 2 (15:27):
Yeah, it was It was the moment my parents came
to visit me and they left and I didn't crow.
And that was my junior year.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
Well, you waited two years.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Anyway I was. I was such a homebody to where
you know, I'm coming from a small town in Streetport.
I was extremely sheltered. I didn't care anything about anything
beyond academics and basketball. So I spent my time on
campus at d if I was been in the library
(16:01):
or in my dorm room studying, I was in camera.
I had a Teta Cameron. And what I never understood
is how my teammates, our college students, could party the
way that they partied and still be successful in the
class room. But that I still can't wrap my brain
around it. But I was also a hermit because I
(16:22):
was on a mission to be the greatest, and that
that could have been my achillity too.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
You were drafted second overall by the Washington Mystics. What
did you think professional basketball for you would be like
and how was it similar to or different from what
you thought?
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Right? I think I was just just as my my
high school coach prepared me to transition to the collegiate
level without missing a beat, I would say the same
for coach Coach g coach coach go getting course, she
prepared me at the collegiate level and and prepared me
to transition to the professional level. But what I think
(17:00):
was the hardest thing for me was that people didn't
take it as serious as I did at the professional level, right.
I think it takes a tremendous amount of discipline once
you become a professional, to say the course, because there
are so many distractions, And yeah, that was the hardest part.
(17:24):
Like if we were to lose a game, I never
understood how my teammates would come into a lot of
um and act as if we didn't just lose a game,
And so I think that was my biggest adjustment. But
I would say when I got older, I started to
understand that, you know, we're all different. Everyone has a
different approach, and so I don't know, that's just what
(17:46):
it is. But it was definitely the hardest part of transitioning.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
I have always found, Elena that how you handle adversity
really tells me a lot and tells other people a lot,
and even the people that have to deal with that
a lot about themselves. You had to deal with adversity
after you started in the league with Washington in twy ten,
twenty eleven, with the injuries, what was the hardest part
(18:09):
of that adversity for.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
You figuring out who I was as an individual in
that moment, because I was my identity with basketball, and
so I had to figure out how to navigate beyond that, right,
But I also had to figure out, for the first
time ever people giving how to handle people giving up
(18:33):
on me. It was twenty ten, had a potential career
ending injury. The doctor diagnosed me supposed to serio to
deal tending to her and he told me that I
had a ten percent chance of returning to the court,
and so I never believed it, right, but he's the doctor,
So okay, I heard or diagnosis. But in my mind,
(18:55):
I started like mentally preparing myself to go through this
journey that I knew was going to be extremely tough.
But what I didn't prepare for is that the people
that were there for me in the beginning weren't there
for me when I came through. And so that was
kind of, you know, my first lesson in business run
and the fact that as an athlete, you dedicate I
(19:19):
can just speak for me, right, I dedicated my entire
being to positioning my team to be the best that
they could be, and to a certain extent, it probably
you know, it was it killed me, right, It's why
I was injured because I was obsessed with being great.
(19:40):
I was obsessed with elevating my team to a level
of greatness. And so, you know, came back, got on
the court, and you know, the team that I was
with at the time decided that they didn't want to
re up my contract. And that was my first moment
of uncertainty and not knowing if basketball was going to
ever be the same. But I kept pushing and I
(20:03):
kept pushing, and it was I ended up, you know,
taking a job in Israel during sort of that transition.
And just to back up a little bit, just to
give people a little context on the WNBA, we played
six months domestically in six months internationally, which is why
I was capable of playing in over twenty seven countries
throughout sort of my career. But you know, I ended
(20:27):
up taking a job in the WNBA off season just
to get my rhythm back because I knew that I
was then going to go to a new team. I
was going to be in LA and I just wanted
to make sure that I was ready to give my
team what they needed from me. And in that moment
is when a coach saw me just going much, just
pushing extremely hard, trying to get back to the level
(20:47):
that I was that I once was. He said, he
pulled me to the side and he said, Alena, once
you understand that you'll never be the player that you
once was, is when you'll start to take off. And
I remember that like it was yesterday, and it hit home.
And so what that told me is that it's not
about It told me that I had to reinvent myself.
(21:08):
But it also told me that I had to stick
to the basis. I had to sort of take a
step back and remember the foundation that I was built on,
and that foundation was defense.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
Right.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
It doesn't take skill to play defense. It takes discipline,
it takes preparation, it takes a willingness to sacrifice every
part of you to get the job done. And that
came easy to me, and so that's what I hung
my hat on. So that's how I reinvented myself from
being sort of that all around player that everyone relied
on to being that one dimensional player that everyone relied on.
(21:41):
So it was tough, but I wouldn't trade it for
anything in the world.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
I'm going to make an observation here, and if I'm
wrong about it, feel free to correct me. Championship season,
you're with the Sparks twenty sixteen. You're fully healthy, and
you played and started thirty four games, and you were
playing with the all star trio of Candice Parker, Christy
Tolliver and Nika Goomackay. I felt as I watched you
(22:07):
that you played with more ease because you trusted your
teammates and you were looking to blend everybody's talents to
have the success as a team. Am I correct in
that observation as they watch.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
You, that's hign You're gonna make me cry, man, You're
giving me chills. No, that's what it was. I think
for so long on this journey, when you're chasing greatman,
then when you're chasing a championship, At least in my mind,
I always tried to figure out what made teams great?
How did teams consistently win championships over and over and
over again. So throughout that throughout twenty sixteen, that was
(22:41):
a question that I consistantly asked myself, and at times
I was like, man, we're not doing it right. But
when it's all over and done with we did it right.
We did it our own way, and it takes so
many things to go right for people for a team
to win a championship. I don't think that those who
are on the outside look and then understand how every
(23:03):
single sne has to work, whether it's egos, whether it's injuries,
whether it's talent, whether it's personalities, Like everything has to
make sense. So to your point about sort of playing
with ease, I played with a ton of these because
I knew what we had. But I also was confident
more than ever in the amount of work I had
(23:25):
put in, and in that moment in twenty sixteen, I
finally figured out how to let me go right. I
think we say it a lot like just let go,
but it's easier said than done. But I literally felt
it happening throughout the season in fact, and the final
game in Game five, I remember walking out to the
(23:47):
court to warm up, as always did. I would always
get out there early so that I can just be
in my own zone, and I remember it was just
like something came over me to where my shoulders lapped.
I wasn't tent, and I told myself that I was
okay with whatever the outcome would be because I knew
(24:07):
that I had fully given one hundred percent of myself
to this journey and at the end we came out
on top.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
We only have two minutes left and that's not enough
time to get into what we want to talk about
or I want to talk about. But I'm going to
have you back. So that's the excuse I'm going to use.
But you're involved with trying to get a WNBA team
for the Oakland, California area. You have a business background,
You've worked in venture capital, so you know that side
of it. What is the challenge there? In about a
(24:38):
minute and a half, Yeah, I think it's.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Always a challenge, right because at the end of the day,
we can put in as an ownership group, right, we
can have everything in place, we can do the words,
we can bring the community, we can bring in the
community support and all the other things that are needed
to make a strong case for getting a team in Oakland.
But it's not our decision, right and so I think
(25:03):
that that is the biggest challenge here. At the end
of the day, the league and the owners of the
league will make the decision whether or not Oakland is
the viable market.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
What is that one memory when you think back over
your life and your career, Elena, that you will never forget.
It's kind of engraved in your mind.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
Ron, that is tough.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
You're going to make me choose, and I don't want
to choose, but I'm just gonna have to say that
it was the birth of my son. My son was
born in June thirty, twenty nineteen, on the day of
the game. I remember in that moment contemplating whether I
was going to call my GM and tell him that
I wasn't going to make the game. I go to
my son's first, so.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
That the moment.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
You made the right decision always remember.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
But just just being there and present in that moment,
I will never ever forget it.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
I want to thank you for giving me this time
and for us to get into this. You know we're
going to have many more conversations going forward.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
I can't wait, Ron, this is one of my favorite interviews.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
So thank you for having me, Elena. Thank you for
giving us the time. Take care, and we'll talk to
you very soon.
Speaker 6 (26:20):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
An outstanding basketball player, but more so an outstanding person,
Elena Beard. I thought many of you probably have seen
her play during an outstanding career, a fifteen year career
in the WNBA with the Washington Mystics, who drafted her
second overall, and also with the LA Sparks where she
won a WNBA championship in twenty sixteen, and she was
(26:41):
of course a four time All Star and a two
time Defensive Player of the Year. Also played internationally over
in Israel, Poland, and Spain, but she also played her
college ball at Duke, and you heard her say about
how important the Duke experience was. We continue on Sports Byline.
You have been listening to Rhnbar's Sports Byline USA podcast
(27:04):
on the eight Side Network
Hi, I'm Ron Barr, and this is today's edition of
Ron Barr's Sports Byline USA podcast on the eight Side Network.
Elena Bear joins US on Sports Byline. She played fifteen
years in the WNBA with the Washington Mystics, who drafted
her second overall, and also with the LA Sparks, where
she won an WNBA championship in twenty sixteen, and she
(00:22):
was a four time All Star and a two time
Defensive Player of the Year. She also played on a
National League championship teams in Israel, Poland, and Spain as well,
and she played her college ball at Duke and was
a three time ACC Player of the Year. Elena, let's
go back to where this all started. Where you grew
(00:43):
up in Shreveport, Louisiana. What kind of town was that? Oh?
Speaker 2 (00:47):
My goodness, My goodness, right, I grew up outside of
I spent my first fifteen years in Sport, Louisiana and
the city, and then at one point my parents started
with a family about seven miles report, so you know,
we we moved to sort of four acres of lands
and my house and towsand the next hill. So that's
(01:07):
how I grew up, right, and I am like really
really big on the on the on the slogan that
you could take the girl out of the country, but
you can't take the country out of the girl.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
You know.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
We had a very very small town, but obviously three
Report is the cornerstone of who I am today, so
it's always in my heart.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Tell me a little bit about your basketball roots.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Yeah, So I I started playing basketball competitively around the
age of eleven. I was always the only girl out
in the street with my brother and his friends, and
I was always kicking there at their bucks on a
on a daily basis. So I decided to try out
for my middle school team in the seventh grade. I
(01:54):
didn't I wanted to try out in the sixth grade,
but I was a little too shy, and then I
somehow found the confident to do it in the seventh grade,
and then it took off from there. I developed this
love for the game. But I think a lot of
that stems from one just watching my parents do what
they do day in and day out in terms of
having like a tremendous work ethic and never accepting any excuses.
(02:18):
If there was a way they would they would make
a way. My mom she was a she was a
talent on her high school team. I think at one
point she came in as a freshman and and basically
took over that team in high school. But unfortunately she
she had a few injuries that that you know, stopped
her from sort of transitioning to the to the collegiate level.
(02:39):
And so for for for many reasons, I think that's
why she supported me the way that she did in
terms of pushing my career forward, or happened to put
my push my career forward. So it started in the
in the seventh grade and I never looked back. And
I was very fortunate to have a really, really good
high school coach who basically taught me the importance of
respecting the game and understanding the fundamentals of the game.
(03:02):
There were times we were walking to the gym and
you know, we never touched the ball, right. His philosophy
was decent, decious defense. If you think about Tennessee and
Louisiana Tech, you know, during the nineteen ninety six fifty
two thousand, they were known as tough, those players who
didn't back down from anyone, and they truly believed that
(03:24):
defense won championships. So that's where my defensive foundation started
in high school.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Did you grow up in a large family. Did you
have a lot of kids in the family.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
No, I'm the baby of three. My sister is four
years older than me, and my brother's two years older
than me, so I had the privilege of being the baby.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
The reason why I asked that question, I recently was
talking to Ruthie Bolton. Now, I don't know if you
know how many sisters and brothers she has, but it's
double digits. It's double digits. And I asked her, I said,
which was was more difficult playing in a game in
which you had to go up against one of the
great players in the WNBA? Are getting the last piece
(04:06):
of bread at the Sunday dinner?
Speaker 4 (04:10):
And she started laughing and she said, you know, I'm
going to tell you it was getting the last piece
of bread at the Sunday dinner. So that's what I
wondered about the dynamic of your family and how that
played into your success.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Yeah, No, that was never a battle. I think the
only battle, you know, I had was always against my
mother or my brother or my father on the court.
You know, there are many times that we would just
be out in the back door playing one on one.
Whoever makes it to ten or eleven takes on the
next opponent. Right, So I come from an extremely competitive family,
(04:47):
and so no, I never had issues at the table.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Your high school team was awfully good. Tell me about it.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
So it was. It's exactly what I was sort of,
you know, mentioning early on, just having a really good
high school coach who you know, who taught me how
to respect the team. I walked into sort of uh
an organization to where they were already successful. So I
had to come in and earn my dues, and so
(05:18):
I have the opportunity to learn from all of those
players who have built that that organization is the way
that that it is. And so goodness it was. You
walk into the gym, there's no egos, right, everyone is
there working for someone. It's about bringing yourself in a
selfless manner every single day, holding yourself accountable. And there
was nothing our coach allowed us to get away with.
(05:41):
It was about paying attention to the details, respecting your opponents,
and just coming in and just working hard every single day.
And I when when people when people ask me stright
up about my my foundation, I never mentioned it without
mentioning my high school coach, these dow Is. He's been
(06:01):
super influential part of in my journey.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Might put it into perspective for the listeners out there.
Four straight state titles, a one hundred and forty four
and six record, including fifty six straight wins. I want
to ask you about defense because Dennis Johnson, the late
Dennis Johnson, was a friend of mine and we had
some long conversations about playing defense. And I asked him
(06:26):
what's the main thing. I said, you got to have talent,
But what's the main thing? He said, attitude? And I
found that interesting. Can you explain that a little bit
further to everybody listening about attitude trying to play defense?
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Right?
Speaker 2 (06:38):
I think a lot of people see defense that's hard work.
Actually defense is the work that people just don't want
to do. So, yeah, you have to approach it with
an attitude. I never believe, and I've never believed in
it being a bad defender. I just believed in it
being people who chose not to do it. So when
it comes to being elite, is about approaching it with
(07:00):
the discipline in your preparation. It's about approaching it with
the with the relentless mindset and having resiliency because you
have a lot of responsibility to do what other ships.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
Wanted to do.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
So decens came easy. Ton't because what's what's natural, It
is working hard. And as long as I had sort
of the technical know how, everything else kind of just
made thinks to me and it and I became really
good at when.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
It came to playing your college ball. How did you
get away from the clutches of pat Summit and Tennessee.
Speaker 4 (07:35):
Duke Right, No, you.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Know I got a wait, let me back up. I
got away from Louisiana Tech right like it was. It
was zone or assumed that I would go to Louisiana Tech,
Leon Barmore and chant Moki. They don't let many players
from Louisiana sort of passed through. But with Tennessee, that
(07:59):
was my dream in college. I was at a point
where I had my AAU coach send over take to
that summit and they never reached out to me. And
so apparently Tennessee has a has an Alena Beard rule
to where if anybody sends in tape, we watch every
single tape because they just skipped over me. Right, I
(08:22):
came from Streetport. I wasn't highly recruited, didn't have sort
of the means to play on these big teams that
sort of required a lot of extensive when it came
to traveling, and so I kind of just like slipped through,
you know, I just slipped through the ranks because I
(08:42):
didn't play in different states a lot. So Tennessee was.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
My dream college, yeah, because I would say towards the
end of my junior year, my parents agreed to let
me go out to LA for two weeks to.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Play with Centamanica, actually to play with this team that
had asked about me, and we ended up going to
the Oregon Trail to play in this tournament. And I
mean there it was everybody who was number who was
the top fifty playing, So it was Dana Tarasi, Ebony Hoffman,
Nicole Pale, Lindsay Wailing like all of these people there,
(09:22):
but no one knew about Elena Beard. And apparently I
I kind of grew the fox off of everyone and
so I was I was on I was on the
radar then. And so after that trip, my parents allowed
me to play with another team in Mississippi, and that's
when coach Stu saw me and Her story is that
when she first saw me, she wrote in her notepet
the best player she had ever seen. And so Duke
(09:45):
kind of came in late in the process, and my
high school coach encouraged me to give them a look,
which he never did throughout my recruiting process, and I
didn't my parents they allowed me to sort of like
hnd uh, sort of go through that process and made
the decisions and they were just there to support me.
(10:05):
But when Duke came to the table, we invited them
in for a visit. I'm big on intuition. I've always
been big on intuition, and it felt good, and so
I eventually went out to my visit at Duke. In
the moment I stepped on campus, I knew it was
the place for me, and so I eventually counseled my
last two visits because I knew in that moment Duke
(10:27):
was the place I needed to do.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
I want to talk more about that after the break here,
but Elena Beard is with us, and I will tell
you that during her four years that she played for Duke,
the team won four regular season and tournament championships. She
also helped Duke reach the Final four twice in her career,
and in her senior year, the team achieved the first
ever number one ranking in the final AP poll of
(10:50):
that year. We continue across the country and around the world.
It's good to have you with us here on America's
sports talk show Sports Byline with.
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Speaker 1 (11:57):
First, you're listening to Ron Bars Sports Byline USA podcast.
Alana Bird is with us. She played fifteen years in
the WNBA. She also won a WNBA Championship, a four
time All Star, and a two time Defensive Player of
the Year. I want to continue on talking about Duke
for just a second. I've known Mike Krzyzewski for a
(12:19):
very long time, and I'm familiar with the Duke program,
both men's and women's. There are certain things about certain campuses, programs,
and coaches that make them stick out. You mentioned how
special it was to you and you knew you didn't
have to take any more trips to visit other campuses.
What was it that jumped out at you?
Speaker 2 (12:39):
It was the standard. It was the standard of Duke,
right from from academics to athletics to the way that
fit to the infrastructure on campus. And so that's that
was That was consistent with who I was as an individual,
and so it just it just made sense. It felt
(13:00):
right and the people. The people were the most important
thing I felt comfortable at the moment I stepped on campus.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Also, was there an atmosphere there that you saw beyond
playing basketball? No matter what you did. If you went
on and played professional basketball, so be it. But it
left you with something beyond that.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Oh, with thout doubt, I say it all the time.
Rond was, if not the best, it was its top
three best decision I could have made for my life
and for my journey. I knew that, you know, like
you said, despite what happened, you know on the court,
(13:40):
that I would be prepared and set to why beyond
the court, not just from sort of the perspective of,
you know, getting an amazing education, but the people in
the community that embrace issues. You know that that's going
to be for a lifetime. And it's just I'm surprised
(14:03):
now that I knew that then at such a young age. Yeah,
but I I couldn't have picked a better, better institution.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
I'll share a story with you. I used to do
Stanford's football and basketball broadcasts, and I'll never forget being
on a charter going up to Washington State. And I
started to walk through the chartered plane and I was
looking to my right, looking to my left, and I
saw the players reading Barons the Wall Street Journal. That's
(14:34):
when I knew, you know, those type of schools were
something different.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Absolutely, oh man, I you know, just to be just
to be as transparent as possible, I chose Duke, But
Duke was it was tough, right.
Speaker 4 (14:51):
It took me.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
It took me at least a year to get adjusted
to the standard academically, to the point that my parents
because I'm so hard on myself, and you know, I
was a perfectionist back then. I'm still a perfectionist. And
my parents thought that I was going to come home.
They they honestly thought I was going to come home
because I couldn't handle getting a speech I And that
(15:16):
was that was tough, right, And so but yeah, I
think I I surprised everyone when I when I suck
it out.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Did you remember the moment when things did fall into.
Speaker 4 (15:26):
Place for you?
Speaker 2 (15:27):
Yeah, it was It was the moment my parents came
to visit me and they left and I didn't crow.
And that was my junior year.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
Well, you waited two years.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Anyway I was. I was such a homebody to where
you know, I'm coming from a small town in Streetport.
I was extremely sheltered. I didn't care anything about anything
beyond academics and basketball. So I spent my time on
campus at d if I was been in the library
(16:01):
or in my dorm room studying, I was in camera.
I had a Teta Cameron. And what I never understood
is how my teammates, our college students, could party the
way that they partied and still be successful in the
class room. But that I still can't wrap my brain
around it. But I was also a hermit because I
(16:22):
was on a mission to be the greatest, and that
that could have been my achillity too.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
You were drafted second overall by the Washington Mystics. What
did you think professional basketball for you would be like
and how was it similar to or different from what
you thought?
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Right? I think I was just just as my my
high school coach prepared me to transition to the collegiate
level without missing a beat, I would say the same
for coach Coach g coach coach go getting course, she
prepared me at the collegiate level and and prepared me
to transition to the professional level. But what I think
(17:00):
was the hardest thing for me was that people didn't
take it as serious as I did at the professional level, right.
I think it takes a tremendous amount of discipline once
you become a professional, to say the course, because there
are so many distractions, And yeah, that was the hardest part.
(17:24):
Like if we were to lose a game, I never
understood how my teammates would come into a lot of
um and act as if we didn't just lose a game,
And so I think that was my biggest adjustment. But
I would say when I got older, I started to
understand that, you know, we're all different. Everyone has a
different approach, and so I don't know, that's just what
(17:46):
it is. But it was definitely the hardest part of transitioning.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
I have always found, Elena that how you handle adversity
really tells me a lot and tells other people a lot,
and even the people that have to deal with that
a lot about themselves. You had to deal with adversity
after you started in the league with Washington in twy ten,
twenty eleven, with the injuries, what was the hardest part
(18:09):
of that adversity for.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
You figuring out who I was as an individual in
that moment, because I was my identity with basketball, and
so I had to figure out how to navigate beyond that, right,
But I also had to figure out, for the first
time ever people giving how to handle people giving up
(18:33):
on me. It was twenty ten, had a potential career
ending injury. The doctor diagnosed me supposed to serio to
deal tending to her and he told me that I
had a ten percent chance of returning to the court,
and so I never believed it, right, but he's the doctor,
So okay, I heard or diagnosis. But in my mind,
(18:55):
I started like mentally preparing myself to go through this
journey that I knew was going to be extremely tough.
But what I didn't prepare for is that the people
that were there for me in the beginning weren't there
for me when I came through. And so that was
kind of, you know, my first lesson in business run
and the fact that as an athlete, you dedicate I
(19:19):
can just speak for me, right, I dedicated my entire
being to positioning my team to be the best that
they could be, and to a certain extent, it probably
you know, it was it killed me, right, It's why
I was injured because I was obsessed with being great.
(19:40):
I was obsessed with elevating my team to a level
of greatness. And so, you know, came back, got on
the court, and you know, the team that I was
with at the time decided that they didn't want to
re up my contract. And that was my first moment
of uncertainty and not knowing if basketball was going to
ever be the same. But I kept pushing and I
(20:03):
kept pushing, and it was I ended up, you know,
taking a job in Israel during sort of that transition.
And just to back up a little bit, just to
give people a little context on the WNBA, we played
six months domestically in six months internationally, which is why
I was capable of playing in over twenty seven countries
throughout sort of my career. But you know, I ended
(20:27):
up taking a job in the WNBA off season just
to get my rhythm back because I knew that I
was then going to go to a new team. I
was going to be in LA and I just wanted
to make sure that I was ready to give my
team what they needed from me. And in that moment
is when a coach saw me just going much, just
pushing extremely hard, trying to get back to the level
(20:47):
that I was that I once was. He said, he
pulled me to the side and he said, Alena, once
you understand that you'll never be the player that you
once was, is when you'll start to take off. And
I remember that like it was yesterday, and it hit home.
And so what that told me is that it's not
about It told me that I had to reinvent myself.
(21:08):
But it also told me that I had to stick
to the basis. I had to sort of take a
step back and remember the foundation that I was built on,
and that foundation was defense.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
Right.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
It doesn't take skill to play defense. It takes discipline,
it takes preparation, it takes a willingness to sacrifice every
part of you to get the job done. And that
came easy to me, and so that's what I hung
my hat on. So that's how I reinvented myself from
being sort of that all around player that everyone relied
on to being that one dimensional player that everyone relied on.
(21:41):
So it was tough, but I wouldn't trade it for
anything in the world.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
I'm going to make an observation here, and if I'm
wrong about it, feel free to correct me. Championship season,
you're with the Sparks twenty sixteen. You're fully healthy, and
you played and started thirty four games, and you were
playing with the all star trio of Candice Parker, Christy
Tolliver and Nika Goomackay. I felt as I watched you
(22:07):
that you played with more ease because you trusted your
teammates and you were looking to blend everybody's talents to
have the success as a team. Am I correct in
that observation as they watch.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
You, that's hign You're gonna make me cry, man, You're
giving me chills. No, that's what it was. I think
for so long on this journey, when you're chasing greatman,
then when you're chasing a championship, At least in my mind,
I always tried to figure out what made teams great?
How did teams consistently win championships over and over and
over again. So throughout that throughout twenty sixteen, that was
(22:41):
a question that I consistantly asked myself, and at times
I was like, man, we're not doing it right. But
when it's all over and done with we did it right.
We did it our own way, and it takes so
many things to go right for people for a team
to win a championship. I don't think that those who
are on the outside look and then understand how every
(23:03):
single sne has to work, whether it's egos, whether it's injuries,
whether it's talent, whether it's personalities, Like everything has to
make sense. So to your point about sort of playing
with ease, I played with a ton of these because
I knew what we had. But I also was confident
more than ever in the amount of work I had
(23:25):
put in, and in that moment in twenty sixteen, I
finally figured out how to let me go right. I
think we say it a lot like just let go,
but it's easier said than done. But I literally felt
it happening throughout the season in fact, and the final
game in Game five, I remember walking out to the
(23:47):
court to warm up, as always did. I would always
get out there early so that I can just be
in my own zone, and I remember it was just
like something came over me to where my shoulders lapped.
I wasn't tent, and I told myself that I was
okay with whatever the outcome would be because I knew
(24:07):
that I had fully given one hundred percent of myself
to this journey and at the end we came out
on top.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
We only have two minutes left and that's not enough
time to get into what we want to talk about
or I want to talk about. But I'm going to
have you back. So that's the excuse I'm going to use.
But you're involved with trying to get a WNBA team
for the Oakland, California area. You have a business background,
You've worked in venture capital, so you know that side
of it. What is the challenge there? In about a
(24:38):
minute and a half, Yeah, I think it's.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Always a challenge, right because at the end of the day,
we can put in as an ownership group, right, we
can have everything in place, we can do the words,
we can bring the community, we can bring in the
community support and all the other things that are needed
to make a strong case for getting a team in Oakland.
But it's not our decision, right and so I think
(25:03):
that that is the biggest challenge here. At the end
of the day, the league and the owners of the
league will make the decision whether or not Oakland is
the viable market.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
What is that one memory when you think back over
your life and your career, Elena, that you will never forget.
It's kind of engraved in your mind.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
Ron, that is tough.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
You're going to make me choose, and I don't want
to choose, but I'm just gonna have to say that
it was the birth of my son. My son was
born in June thirty, twenty nineteen, on the day of
the game. I remember in that moment contemplating whether I
was going to call my GM and tell him that
I wasn't going to make the game. I go to
my son's first, so.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
That the moment.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
You made the right decision always remember.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
But just just being there and present in that moment,
I will never ever forget it.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
I want to thank you for giving me this time
and for us to get into this. You know we're
going to have many more conversations going forward.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
I can't wait, Ron, this is one of my favorite interviews.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
So thank you for having me, Elena. Thank you for
giving us the time. Take care, and we'll talk to
you very soon.
Speaker 6 (26:20):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
An outstanding basketball player, but more so an outstanding person,
Elena Beard. I thought many of you probably have seen
her play during an outstanding career, a fifteen year career
in the WNBA with the Washington Mystics, who drafted her
second overall, and also with the LA Sparks where she
won a WNBA championship in twenty sixteen, and she was
(26:41):
of course a four time All Star and a two
time Defensive Player of the Year. Also played internationally over
in Israel, Poland, and Spain, but she also played her
college ball at Duke, and you heard her say about
how important the Duke experience was. We continue on Sports Byline.
You have been listening to Rhnbar's Sports Byline USA podcast
(27:04):
on the eight Side Network
Host
Ron Barr
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