Lisa Leslie’s 12-season career with the Los Angeles Sparks and Team USA was filled with iconic performances, championships, personal accolades, and records. The Los Angeles Sparks icon is now being honoured with a statue at Crypto.com Arena’s Star Plaza.
Watch What’s Trending Now!
During her historic unveiling speech, which the Sparks shared on X, Leslie reflected on those battles and the responsibility she carried throughout her career to make the game bigger than herself.
“Everybody can’t afford to come and have a seat in here. Back then it was affordable. But I’ll tell you, I still was thankful because every opportunity I had was a moment to change the mind of a man who was a hater.”
“It was a chance to convince somebody who didn’t believe in women’s basketball. It was an opportunity to let a little girl believe that she could be me and my teammates out here. Because it’s all about love and hope, and at the end of the day, it’s more than a sport,” Leslie told the crowd.
It’s an opportunity to change people’s lives. It’s an opportunity to build community. And it’s an opportunity to bring people together. So if you don’t remember anything about me, I thank God that I have a statue out there to remind you — but remember, it’s always been about love and basketball,” she added.
Following her emergence as a star on the iconic 1996 U.S. Olympic team, Leslie became a founding cornerstone of the WNBA in 1997, giving the league immediate star power from its very first season. By the time she retired twelve seasons later, she had collected two WNBA Championships, three WNBA MVP awards, two WNBA Finals MVP honours, and four consecutive Olympic gold medals.
Few careers in the history of women’s basketball have been more deserving of a permanent monument, and conversations about honouring Leslie with a statue first began as far back as 2019. However, it was not until May of this year that the project was officially announced. On Sunday, September 20, it became reality.
The unveiling was planned around the Los Angeles Sparks’ game against the Portland Fire, which the Sparks won 105-84. And Leslie delivered her moving halftime speech inside the arena to the assembled crowd. The main curtain-drop ceremony itself, however, took place earlier, outside at Star Plaza ahead of the 4:00 PM PT tip-off, in front of fans who had gathered specifically to witness the historic moment.
The statue itself was designed by Chicago-based sculptors Julie Rotblatt Amrany and Omri Amrany, the same artists behind statues for Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. Standing 11 feet tall atop a 4.5-foot granite base and weighing 750 pounds, the bronze monument immortalises Leslie performing her legendary July 30, 2002 slam dunk, the first in-game dunk in WNBA history.
The statue also features signature personal details: her distinctive hair ribbons, her characteristic ponytail, clear lipstick, and polished fingernails. And embedded within the statue are four pieces of real gold, one for each of her four consecutive Olympic gold medals.
With this unveiling, Lisa Leslie becomes the 16th person honoured with a statue in Star Plaza and the first Los Angeles Sparks player and the first female athlete represented with her own standalone monument there. She now stands permanently alongside Kobe Bryant, Magic Johnson, Shaquille O’Neal, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, among the most celebrated names in the history of Los Angeles sports.
For Lisa Leslie, this statue represents more than a collection of accomplishments frozen in bronze. It stands as a reminder of the battles she fought, the doors she helped open, and the generations of players and young girls who now get to see what she once hoped they could become.