Lisa Leslie Breaks Down Dawn Staley With 3 Words

Basketball icon Lisa Leslie only needed three words to encapsulate South Carolina Gamecocks coach Dawn Staley.

Mar 30, 2025; Birmingham, AL, USA; South Carolina Gamecocks head coach Dawn Staley signals to her team during the first half of an Elite 8 NCAA Tournament basketball game against the Duke Blue Devils at Legacy Arena. Mandatory Credit: Vasha Hunt-Imagn Images / Vasha Hunt-Imagn Images

The South Carolina Gamecocks women’s basketball team is making its 5th consecutive NCAA Tournament Final Four appearance and 7th overall on April 4, when they face off against their SEC rival Texas Longhorns.

It’s truly incredible what Dawn Staley has built during her time running the Gamecocks’ program, and her success should not be taken for granted.

One person who appreciates Staley is basketball legend Lisa Leslie, who made her adoration apparent during her April 2 appearance on the Good Follow show.

When show host Ros Gold-Unwude asked Leslie what she saw in Staley as a player, teammate, and friend that she now recognizes as a coach, Leslie said, “Loyalty is probably number one. Trust is number two. And just authentic.

“Those three things have probably rang significant to me, in my head, with this friendship since I was 16 years old,” Leslie added. “I feel like we’re the same kind of person, in terms of our work ethic, our loyalty to people, to want to make people in where we are better when we come in. And that part is just contagious.”

She later said, “Her vocal leadership and her will to want to win is contagious… she makes you kind of want to run through a wall for her, if that makes any sense. And that was just my teammates. But it’s just because of how hard she works and her work ethic, that just becomes contagious.”

“We just played ball in a way that we just loved every moment, every opportunity. And I think you can see that translate to her as a coach,” Leslie continued. “Her players want to run through a wall for her. She is very loyal, she is trustworthy, she is authentic.

“Those are the three things that I felt that she was as a teammate, and I see that she is as a coach.”

Loyalty, trust, and authenticity are three powerful attributes for anybody to encompass, and they do a great job of conveying why Staley has taken her team to five consecutive NCAA Tournament Final Fours.