A 'unicorn' when she started with the Golden State Warriors, Kiwi physio Chelsea Lane drove into territory few women had gone before in the NBA. Now she's home to share her skills, she tells Ashley Stanley.
Chelsea Lane came back to New Zealand from the United States with more than just two glittering NBA championship rings.
After six years working with two of the world's best basketball teams, the sports physio-turned-NBA executive returned home earlier this year with a ton of new knowledge and a unique set of skills.
Now she wants to share it all across the two worlds of sport and business.
Her insight into what it's like being a “unicorn” in a professional US sports team - as the first woman to oversee an NBA’s training department; how she managed to get through the misconceptions, and why it’s important to treat athletes as humans, first and foremost.
Lane, an Australian by birth but a Kiwi by choice, initially moved to Oakland in 2015 to take up the head performance therapist role at the Golden State Warriors. They had sent her an email wanting to have a conversation about the nature of her work in New Zealand.
Next thing Lane knows, she's on a plane to the US and three years fly by. In that time, she was promoted to the head of physical performance and sports medicine for her last two years - both seasons where the Warriors were crowned NBA champs.
In 2018, Lane made the move to the Atlanta Hawks, who'd just finished last in their conference, to take up the position of executive director of athletic performance and sports medicine.
Again, she was there for three years and eventually was promoted to vice president of athletic performance and sports medicine. An executive position, and one of only two women at that level.
But the pull of family was enough for Lane and her Kiwi husband, Matt Dallow, a two-time Winter Olympics bobsledder and an athletics coach, to call time on their American adventure.
“We added up some family stuff and how great our experience had already been in the States, and we really had nothing to lose to come home,” says Lane, who only intended on going over for one year.
Along with the rewarding experiences in one of the world’s most popular sporting leagues, Lane also returns with a new understanding and appreciation of how difficult it is, in some parts of the world, to have women in sporting roles.
“When I first arrived [in the US], it was pretty lonely on the female front,” says Lane. “They were fantastic people, fantastic teammates, but I was a bit of a unicorn - and very much across the league as well - and that was challenging for lots of people.”
It was confusing for Lane. She knew in her “heart of hearts'' her ability to do her job, and do it extremely well, had nothing to do with her gender. She already had over 15 years experience in the field and had been working with Olympic and national athletes at High Performance Sport New Zealand before leaving for the US.
“I was like ‘You should be more worried about the fact that I don’t know how many players are on a basketball team’, you shouldn’t be worried about my gender,” laughs Lane.
And true to form, she showed people what she was capable of. She was the first woman responsible for a team of experts that ensured every athlete had an individualised health plan, so they could essentially spend as much time on court as possible.
"...to think there wasn’t even a women's bathroom five years before that, and now there are two women who are vice presidents in that room, speaks to the vast change that has occurred and continues to occur.”
Her technical skills and ability to relate to players during her time at Golden State saw Lane praised by NBA champion and coach Steve Kerr, and global superstars such as Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson.
Impressive, considering Lane never aimed to work in the NBA, or professional sport for that matter. Her dream had always been about pushing her skills and boundaries. “Testing yourself and putting yourself in an environment where you are fearful you might fail," she explains.
“If everyone is telling me I can't do this, I'm female, it's foreign, and I've never worked in basketball, they're probably right and so I should run at that."
There weren't many women in her line of work when Lane arrived in the US, so there were “absolutely lots of barriers.”
“Ones that I had not given enough respect and understanding to. It was mind-blowing how unusual, and what a break from tradition it was, to start putting women into those roles,” says Lane.
“The flipside is that it has changed relatively quickly and with enthusiasm over the last six years. There are more female refs, way more women on performance teams, and I would sit in executive meetings [at the Hawks] and there would be me and another woman.
“I say that like it’s enough, but to think there wasn’t even a women's bathroom five years before that, and now there are two women who are vice presidents in that room, speaks to the vast change that has occurred and continues to occur. But we're not there yet."
There were a couple of things helping Lane get through the tough times: being strong in who she is, having support at home and learning more diverse voices are needed in sport.
“And there is just enough mongrel in me that if you suggest that I haven’t got what it takes, I’m certainly going to push back on that and try and show you. So that drive to prove people wrong helped keep me entertained and warm,” Lane laughs.
Having her husband as her “greatest supporter” meant she was always backed at home (even when they were living in different countries to begin with). And one point Lane didn’t think would ever be a reason to keep going was getting more diverse voices to the table.
“I quickly realised in certain parts of the world, and certain sectors and industries, there was so much work to be done if we were ever going to get to a place of equality on the diversity front," she says. "And I don’t just mean gender, I just mean diversity.”
With the door opening up to Lane, it was a “huge responsibility” to make sure no reason was given to block others wanting to come through, too.
“When you’ve got that sitting on your shoulders as well, it just gives you a little more reserve, a little bit more energy to suck it up when maybe you felt like feeling a bit sorry for yourself.”
Why does Lane think she was successful across two franchises?
She knew she had the qualifications needed to do the work. “That should always be the leaping-off point. Have you got the chops? Have you got the pieces it takes to put the puzzle together? And so many of us do,” she says.
“And I was an old hat by the time I started, which helps because you’ve seen a few things and been around the block a few times. But I also think there's a lot to be said for meeting people as humans.
“Sometimes in big professional sporting leagues where these are big businesses, you can lose sight that these super-talented, super-impressive individuals are at the core just humans, too.
“And if we don’t meet them there and start there, we won't have the impact on their lives and their careers that they deserve. And same with your staff.”
It was those fundamental skills Lane perfected on the ground that she carried into the boardroom when she moved to the Atlanta Hawks.
Lane admits there were a lot of lessons when transitioning roles though. “That learning curve was so steep, I've still got splinters in my fingers from dragging myself up it,” she says.
“But the human interaction skill is universal, that whole meeting a person and learning their motivations and being respectful and then trying to motivate them. That's universal across industries I believe, it's just like meeting someone down at the Four Square.”
The business side of basketball was where Lane had much to learn. It’s why she will be forever grateful, to again, be given the opportunity to be challenged.
“The level of trust that was placed on me to really get involved and try and push for new things - it's a very big leap of faith to hand over something that big and that important to someone who is still trying to catch up,” she says. “It drives you to make sure you don’t let anybody down.”
The unique set of skills and even wider outlook on high performance means Lane is wanting to help where she can back in New Zealand.
“Essentially my passion still lies in the welfare of athletes and that human piece, and also pushing them to levels of exceptional outcomes that maybe they don’t even know they are capable of,” says Lane.
“That is really the reason I get out of bed in the morning. How exactly that will be applied and how helpful I am, will be ever-evolving. But as long as it's that, I'm in, boots and all.”
At next week's Sport NZ Women + Girls Summit, Lane will share some of the tools that helped her prepare for different situations throughout her career.
“I would really like to impart a few things that helped me build my armory, that made me feel resilient to misconceptions and perceptions that weren’t helpful,” Lane says.
“So while we are waiting for the rest of the world to catch up and understand that diversity isn’t a problem, there are some practical things people can just do within themselves to make them a bit more resilient.”
* The Sport NZ Women + Girls Summit, delivered by Women in Sport Aotearoa and The Shift Foundation, is a one-day online event on Wednesday, September 29. You can register to attend here.
