SEATTLE — Lauren Jackson has grown up.
The most decorated athlete in the history of Seattle sports explained as much after pulling off a sweatshirt and falling into a chair without so much as a smile while fulfilling her obligation last week at the Seattle Storm’s Media Day.
A few day
s after her 30th birthday, and on the verge of beginning her 11th season with Seattle’s WNBA team, Jackson was finally mature enough to come clean with a fact she’s been hiding for most of her life.
She’s actually 6-foot-6 — not 6-5, as has been reported on her bio since Jackson started play
ing international, Olympic and professional basketball 13 years ago.
“I didn’t want to be 6-6. I thought I was freakishly tall enough,” she said at Media Day last Friday. “I’m definitely 6-foot-6, and I have been since I was 17 years old.”
So why come clean now?
“I think it’s because I’m 30 years old,” said Jackson, who celebrated her milestone birthday on May 11, “and I don’t give a (rip).”
The Australian spitfire with the oft-changing hair color likes to present herself as a bit of a chameleon, but the truth is she’s become one of the few mainstays in Seattle sports. And yet superstardom in these parts has eluded Jackson, who somehow remains overshadowed in a rather lean sports landscape.
In a town that can count its current sports stars on one hand, Jackson is the proverbial underrated player who rarely gets noticed.
Look at her athletic resume and Jackson outshines anyone this town has ever seen. She is a three-time league MVP, matching the combined total of the Seahawks, Mariners and Sonics in their combined 100-plus years of existence. She has led her team to two league championships, or twice the total of the city’s three most high-profile professional teams. She is a seven-time all-star, a three-time Olympian and a gold medalist in the 2006 World Championships.
And yet Jackson said the only reason she really gets noticed when walking the streets of Seattle is because she’s 6-5 … er, 6-6.
“I think my height definitely has something to do with it,” she said. “I think if I was (5-9 teammate Sue Bird’s) height, people probably wouldn’t recognize me as much.”
In a town that has had plenty of flashy nicknames (The Glove, Rainman, Bone and The Boz), cute nicknames (Boonie, Junior and Q-Pon) and even the only major league baseball player allowed to go by a single name (Ichiro), Lauren Jackson is almost always referred to by her full name or by her initials, L.J.
It’s telling that the nickname Lo-Jack went to a former Seahawks draft-pick-turned-bust (defensive end Lawrence Jackson) before anyone thought to give it to the Storm’s biggest star.
While Jackson is as big as it gets in WNBA circles, she’s still not on par with local legends Ichiro Suzuki, Steve Largent and Gary Payton — even though she’s significantly more accomplished than any of them.
Dr. Liz Strober, a cultural anthropologist who used to teach a class on gender in sport at Seattle University, said Jackson “is a Gary Payton” but does not have the same name recognition because of gender.
“I think it is a society-wide thing that you see reverberate here in Seattle,” Strober said. “The bottom line is, sex sells. When you have a lingerie league in football, and that’s what’s on television and what’s selling ads, that says something.
“It’s hard for women to have the double standard of having to look like a Victoria’s Secret model and still be a world-class athlete.”
Elise Woodward, a host at KJR-AM radio and former color commentator for the Storm’s radio broadcast, agreed that Jackson’s stardom might be dimmed by her gender.
“That has a lot to do with it,” Woodward said. “And they draw 9,000 a game, whereas the Mariners, during a championship season, would draw 40,000 and the Sonics, during a championship season, would draw 17,000.
“Plus, the Storm is only 10 years old. She and Sue Bird are the only stars they’ve ever had, and maybe they’re taken for granted.”
On Woodward’s station, and sports-talk competitor 710 ESPN, it’s not unheard of for an entire week to go by without Jackson’s name being mentioned. And yet college athletes like Jake Locker, minor leaguers like Mariners farmhand Dustin Ackley and high schoolers like Tony Wroten Jr. are topics of ongoing conversation on the airwaves.
Jackson might have a Payton-like resume, but she doesn’t have nearly the notoriety in these parts.
“People who are insiders in basketball and really love the game have tremendous respect for the athlete she is,” Strober said. “But you could walk around Seattle and find a lot of people who have no clue who Lauren Jackson is. And with Gary Payton, he’s ‘The Glove.’ You’d have to work hard to find someone who doesn’t know about Shawn Kemp and ‘The Glove.'”
Jackson doesn’t exactly welcome the spotlight. She has few endorsements and prefers to keep a low profile.
She calls Seattle home for only about one-third of the year, spending the rest of her time playing in Europe or in her homeland of Australia. She loves the city but says she spends a lot of her time indoors. Her main passion these days is the ongoing pursuit of a correspondence degree in social work, which she plans to put toward a post-retirement career in helping victims of domestic violence.
Jackson almost seems apologetic about how boring her off-court life appears to be.
“To be honest, I don’t really do much,” said Jackson, who was known to frequent the Kangaroo and Kiwi Pub on Aurora Avenue in North Seattle when she was a 20-something. “I study, and I go to the grocery store. The people there know me, obviously. It’s like a little home. I guess I’ve been here so long that people have gotten used to me being out and about.”
Jackson is nowhere near as popular in Seattle as she is in her homeland.
“If Lauren goes anywhere on the street in Australia, she’d be recognized,” said Storm teammate Belinda Snell, a fellow Aussie. “… In women’s sports, she would be the highest-profile person in Australia, definitely.”
Since she’s turned 30, Jackson jokingly claims to have undergone a sort of midlife crisis. But in the world of team sports, she has accomplished an incredible amount before hitting that milestone age.
Although not always at the top of the superstar pecking order, Jackson has grown up before Seattle’s eyes. And she doesn’t seem to be slowing down.
“Not at all,” the Storm’s Snell said. “She’s just reaching her prime.”
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