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The Louvre is overwhelming. There's so many pieces of priceless art in such a large museum, that one does not have the time to appreciate them all. With their time budgeted, people look at the first few works, but after another 50 yards, justify giving the rest a passing glance by thinking "well, you HAVE to see the Mona Lisa."
Everyone runs to the Mona Lisa to see her famous smirk, and ponder what her expression means. When you get to the Mona Lisa's room, it resembles a stormed court (without the jumping). Amid the scrum, there was no opportunity to admire it, because you couldn't get close and it's pretty small compared to most works. We couldn't get good pictures because people were holding up cameras in front of ours. Along the walls around the room hang another two or three dozen works that hardly anyone gazes at because of the crowd, the heat, and the smell (the climate control is set for the paintings' comfort, not ours).
I'm thankful to be on this trip for the role of documenting the team's endeavors. Most of that role consists of shoving my video camera in the players' faces and asking them what they think and feel. In doing so at the Louvre, I discovered their appreciation for the rest of the museum ran deeper than what I assume the average tourist has, and that my team has a core belief system and was really surprised that the rest of the world doesn't share the same vantage point.
Individually, they answered my questions with this paraphrased consensus: "We saw the Mona Lisa because it's so famous. But it is of one woman and the size of a legal pad. Of course it's good, but some other guy drew an enormous, incredibly detailed painting of about 30 people on the other side of the rooms and no one even looks at it! What makes any one of these paintings more famous than the others? All the sculptures have intricate detail of a subject's entire body. Venus de Milo is the most famous; is it kind of lazy to sculpt a person without arms?"
At first, that hardly shows appreciation at all. But I realized that unknowingly, they had put the Louvre in basketball terms: The best player or team is not just who's most popular or most talented. My team looked at the other pieces in the Louvre, and didn't automatically think of the Mona Lisa or Venus de Milo as the MVP. They had asked themselves "who worked
the hardest?" and appreciated effort over hype.
Only a team that prides itself on making the extra pass, hitting the floor for loose balls, making their opponents work their tail off on every possession and leading by example could shrug off Da Vinci's masterpiece as if they heard a player's scoring average and asked "but do they get after it on defense?" Should it be a surprise that this team wasn't impressed solely by a big name like Da Vinci? This team welcomed big-name teams like Florida and Arizona State to the Spanos Center last year, and without batting an eyelash out-worked both for victories.
There's a phrase that's been ingrained in them since they stepped foot on campus. A mantra they've heard in practice and the weight room almost daily. Today they proved to me that they not only heard it, but have bought into it so completely that it shapes their view of the world (even if it makes them controversial art critics). The preface is that in their world of Division I Basketball, everyone has talent.
Whenever I hear about the mystery of Mona Lisa's smile and what she might be smirking at, I am always going to think her sly grin is because the Pacific women's basketball team lives by what they've been taught, walked into the Louvre one day and concluded "It's not how much talent you have, it's how hard you work to get the most out of that talent."
-- Media specialist Kevin Wilkinson, August 16
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