Kayla McBride knows about stepping away from the game you love.
She spent much of her professional basketball career going through the full cycle of two seasons per year — one in the WNBA, the second overseas. But, after the 2019 WNBA season, McBride made the decision to stay home that offseason. Rather than play overseas, she joined the coaching staff at Notre Dame, her alma mater.
Not an easy decision, but one she deemed necessary.
“I felt like I needed a break from basketball. There was something that was like a block,” the 28-year-old Lynx guard recalled. “Obviously, I don’t want to (not play). That’s the way I make money. That’s how I provide for myself and provide for my family. But I knew I wasn’t going to be myself if I went to go do that.”
The circumstances are different, McBride noted, but she certainly can relate to tennis superstar Naomi Osaka, who withdrew from the French Open after she was fined for declining to attend her post-match press conference after her first-round victory.
“This isn’t a situation I ever imagined or intended when I posted a few days ago,” Osaka posted on her Instagram account Monday. “I think now the best thing for the tournament, the other players and my well-being is that I withdraw so that everyone can get back to focusing on the tennis going on in Paris.”
Osaka revealed she has endured long bouts of depression dating back to the 2018 U.S. Open. Osaka is a self-described introvert who experiences social anxiety. She experiences anxiety when speaking with the press, and already was feeling anxious and vulnerable prior to the tournament.
So she announced in the days leading up to the tournament that she wasn’t planning on participating in post-match press conferences, and would wait until after the tournament to speak with the media. But after her first match and the subsequent fine, Osaka decided to withdraw.
“I’m gonna take some time away from the court now,” Osaka wrote, “but when the time is right I really want to work with the Tour to discuss ways we can make things better for the players, press and fans.”
Walking away from something you love, McBride noted, is a difficult decision.
“Because we’ve been doing this since we were little. It’s hard, and you know you’re going to get backlash from it, but choosing yourself and choosing your mental health is probably the strongest thing that she could do right now,” McBride said. “The French Open, there is eyes on her constantly, so for her to make that decision to choose her, she should never get backlash for that. Because, at the end of the day, if she’s not performing to the highest expectation of who she is — Naomi Osaka — then everyone is going to be asking, ‘Why?’ She shouldn’t have to explain herself if she wants to put herself first. I think that goes back to the mental health aspect.”
McBride knows about that well. She has spoken out about her own battles with mental health, detailing them in great detail last year in a Players Tribune piece. Those struggles dated back to her childhood, and the 5-foot-11 guard particularly struggled last year when she was unable to play basketball — her lifelong escape — amid a pandemic.
“Mental health is something that, as athletes, sometimes our egos can get in the way of that, but I think speaking about it and making decisions for us is part of being human. I think, sometimes, as athletes, we focus on being an athlete all the time,” McBride said. “Like, ‘OK, I’ve got practice, I’ve got this, I have this.’ And then you have the media and I want to say the right things. Sometimes, it takes (the focus) off what really matters, and that’s the game, it’s having fun, it’s why we picked up the ball in the first place or picked up the racket.”
McBride said even had Osaka continued to play and potentially won the tournament, sometimes how you feel and the aftermath of that success can be more difficult to deal with than not performing at all.
McBride is “super thankful” for Osaka’s decision to share her journey. As an athlete, McBride said choosing yourself can be “one of the hardest things.” More athletes have chosen to share their stories in recent years.
“The reciprocation that you get from that, and the gratification that you get from that, because you’re basically taking your control back,” McBride said. “Mental health, obviously, you feel like you’re out of control. You feel like you don’t have control of your emotions, things like that. Taking that back is such a big thing as an athlete, as a person, as a human.”
McBride said the conversation about such topics has opened considerably in recent years.
“When I played, mental health was not talked about. You just were not to talk about whatever feelings you had,” Lynx coach and general manager Cheryl Reeve said. “It’s very, very different today.”
Reeve said everyone has to be mindful that athletes are people, and they should be fully supported and have the ability to come to an organization and say, “I’m struggling and I need help.”
“There should not be consequences to that,” Reeve said.
In fact, Reeve said teams should be able to reach out to the league and say, “Look, so and so, this week, is not going to be available to media as they work through whatever the situation is.”
“No questions asked,” Reeve said. “I think players are mature enough and professional enough that we know it’s important, especially in the WNBA. We know it’s important for us to be able to engage with media and have media tell our story, so it’s not reasonable to think that we shouldn’t have to connect and talk about our stories.”
But not at the expense of mental health.
“No one should be penalized and be put in that situation (Osaka was), and obviously look what happens,” Reeve said. “We’ve got to find a different way to support the athletes.”