The blessing and curse of UCLA's Lauren Betts' 6-7 height

LAUREN BETTS DUCKS as she walks through the conference room door. She hunches her shoulders. She bends her head. Still, her high bun bumps into the door frame as she enters the room at The Heldrich Hotel a mile from the Rutgers campus in New Jersey.

The heralded UCLA junior basketball player spots a few chairs in the corner of the room and makes her way toward them. Halfway there, she stops. She turns around and backtracks to one positioned in the center.

Her shoulders still slumped, she plonks down. Muscle memory kicks in. She extends her legs in front of her and slides down the chair as much as gravity will allow. She's closer to eye level with the other players who are settling in around her now. She takes up less vertical space this way. Most importantly, she blends in.

An assistant coach turns on the projector and a UCLA highlight reel set to "Work" by Rihanna plays on the screen. It's mostly Betts scoring, rebounding, defending, drawing the defense and passing to open teammates. The Bruins snap their fingers. Betts averts her eyes. After years of trying -- and failing -- to camouflage, attention still feels awkward.

But as the UCLA staff reviews its strategy for that January night's game against Rutgers, it's clear that Betts is at the center of it all. The Bruins' success -- including a shot at the program's first national championship -- depends on her ability to get comfortable with that. To get comfortable knowing that more eyes than ever before will be scrutinizing her game. To get comfortable knowing that her 6-foot-7 frame is the single biggest asset the Bruins bring to March.

She made a promise to someone she loves dearly that she'll do all that -- and more.

AN 11-YEAR-OLD Lauren Betts stands outside Laredo Middle School in Aurora, Colorado, and tries to pump herself up to go inside. Walking down the hallway to her classroom, clear at the other end of school, has become a perilous journey.

Three, two, one. Get ready. People are going to talk about you. Make fun of you.

Go.

Classmates line the hallway. They point at her. Laugh at her. She's already close to 6 feet tall.

They wait until she passes them. Then someone jumps on her from behind. She jerks in fear and scampers away.

The bullying had been getting worse by the day since her family moved from Spain -- where her dad was a professional basketball player -- when she was 8 years old.

Some people made fun of her accent, a cross between British and Spanish. Sometimes it was her deep voice that drew unwanted attention. Mostly it was that she was bigger than all of her peers. Many adults too.

"I was like, no one understands what I'm dealing with besides me because I'm the only person who looks like this," Betts says. "I felt like an alien."

She'd grown to 5-foot-6 inches by the time she was in third grade.

Dane Swanson, her third grade teacher, remembers Betts looking crestfallen every day. Swanson was new to the school, too, but not to Betts' predicament. He spent most of his childhood as the tallest kid in his school. The shy Betts gravitated toward her 6-foot-6 teacher. He became her only friend.

"There is nothing about this you can change. You are who you are," he told her practically every day. "Don't allow them to take your power away from you."

To her parents, Andy and Michelle, it seemed like she was growing every night in her sleep. Everyone noticed.

Sometimes parents stopped to stare at her at malls. Sometimes they pointed her out to their own children. Sometimes Michelle was unable to contain her anger and cursed at them. "Why should my child be the only uncomfortable one here?" she said to them. Lauren never said a word. There was no way she was going to bring more attention to herself.

She began wearing oversize, muted clothes, usually black and gray. She stopped getting new hairstyles. What was the point? She already stood out enough.

"If I could [have], I would literally shrink," Betts says. "Or I would become invisible so that no one could see me. I just was so tired."

Another day in middle school, after giving herself her practiced pep talk to walk down the hall, a group of boys surrounded her.

Oh god, what now?

"You must weigh a lot," one said.

"You look like a giraffe," another said.

"Alien. Alien. Alien," yet another called.

Betts burst into tears and ran to the bathroom.

I can't do this anymore.

Tears spilled from her eyes. She fumbled for her phone and called her mom. Michelle grabbed lunch and drove to school. Lauren got in her mom's car and sobbed.

"I know my height is a good thing, but I don't even want to be me," she told Michelle. "I just want to be shorter."

Michelle's heart broke. She spent the next 15 minutes telling her daughter she wished she could protect her from her bullies, she wished she could walk into school with her every day and physically shield her from them.

"Your height is a blessing," she said. "You'll see it one day. The world will see it one day."

BETTS SITS IN the back of her eighth grade classroom. A familiar figure stands in the front.

Her basketball coach, a former NBA player named Ervin Johnson (not that one), has been invited to talk to her class.

Before he begins his speech, he points to Betts and beckons her to join him. Betts squirms, takes a few deep breaths, hunches her shoulders and makes her way to the front.

"This young lady," Johnson says. "Remember her. She's going to be really good one day."

A small smile appears on her face.

"He basically had just told all these people who I'm terrified of, like, watch out for me. Like, I'm going to be something someday," Betts says. "Like, 'She's gonna make it. This girl who you guys keep making fun of all the time ... she's gonna make it.'"

Betts came to basketball -- and Johnson -- through trial and error. She started with soccer, but struggled enough that one of her teammates' parents suggested she give basketball a shot.

She joined a rec team. She wasn't the most coordinated or the most knowledgeable, but her height made her an instant force.

"She could impact a game more than other people because she's so tall on defense, it's tough for kids to shoot over her," Andy says. "On offense she just had to be in the right position near the basket, and they could throw it up, and she could just turn and shoot it."

Johnson, who ran a club team called EJ Hoops, saw more than just her height. Betts could run the floor and she had really good hands. He began coaching her three times a week. By the time she entered eighth grade, she was 6-5. She began traveling the country playing in tournaments.

The summer before high school, she represented Team USA in a U-16 tournament. College coaches called Johnson and peppered him with questions about Betts' game and her demeanor. Johnson made her sit down and write her goals. You can play anywhere you want, he told her.

Maybe I can play DI basketball, she wrote in her journal.

When she was a freshman, she grew to her full height -- 6-foot-7 -- and she was named the No. 1 recruit in the country.

"It was crazy how fast everything happened," Andy says.

One thing that didn't change: the attention on her height. Especially at away games, where parents were loud with their opinions.

"She wouldn't be half as good if not for her height."

"All she has going for her is her height."

For so long, Betts had stifled her aggression on the court. She didn't want parents to say she was throwing her height around. But Johnson encouraged her to use every last inch.

"Use your strength," he said. "Don't pay attention to the naysayers."

During her junior year, college coaches -- so many that her high school coach organized them into spreadsheets -- called to recruit her. Teammate Marya Hudgins remembers Betts taking video calls before and after practices and sometimes when she came over to Hudgins' house.

Johnson was right: Betts could pick any school. But she had her sights on one: Stanford.

To Betts, Stanford represented greatness. It was the perfect way to tell her bullies -- the families at the mall, the parents in the stands, the kids in the hallway -- that she'd made it.

She titled her application essay "How my curse became my blessing."

Betts flourished in her senior year. She averaged 17.1 points, 10.6 rebounds and 3.4 blocks per game. She was named Colorado's Gatorade Player of the Year for the second straight year. She sat with her teammates and watched as she was named a McDonald's All American. She played in the Jordan Brand Classic.

In January 2021, three months before the Cardinal won their third national championship, Betts committed to Stanford over offers from UConn, South Carolina, Oregon, UCLA and Notre Dame.

"I walked with my shoulders back," she says. "I was like, 'OK, people know who I am. I'm respected.'"

BETTS SLUMPS IN the locker room after a practice a few weeks into her freshman season. Life at Stanford is not panning out the way she had envisioned. No matter how hard she tries, she feels like she can't be the player whom coaches want her to be.

That day, a nickname an assistant coach gave her churns in her brain.

"Big girl."

She tells her teammates how much she hates it. They assure her the coach means it as a term of empowerment, but Betts doesn't believe them.

Giraffe. Alien. Big girl. To Betts, it all sounds the same.

Her teammates urge her to share her feelings with the coach. She does. But nothing changes. The coach continues to refer to Betts as "Big girl." (Former head coach Tara VanDerveer says she was unaware of the situation. "If something was ever bothering someone, if they ever brought it to me, I would address it," she says.)

As days turned into months, Betts sat on the bench and watched. She felt like her basketball dream, her salvation, was slipping away.

"Freshman year was one of the worst years of my life," Betts says. "I think I was in constant fear of not being good enough."

It didn't help that she was on the same roster as Cameron Brink and Kiki Iriafen, talented post players and projected WNBA draft picks, who already were familiar with the Stanford system.

"[Stanford's] offense was built for more of the flowy post players than the big, get-in-there, stay-in-there type of post players," says former Stanford forward Fran Belibi, a senior on that 2022-23 team. "There were a lot of times where [Betts] is seeing things that Kiki and Cam are doing and the coaches are seeing that, and they want to insert her in there in that same kind of role, and it just wasn't really working for her."

Betts called her parents crying. She scrolled through Twitter and read all sorts of comments about how she was never good enough, how she should never have been a No. 1 recruit out of high school, how her height was all she had.

"Lauren became a shell of herself," says Haley Jones, an Atlanta Dream guard/forward who was a senior on that Stanford team. "She put up walls, she started second-guessing herself and being anxious about even going to practice."

When Betts did play -- she averaged nine minutes per game -- she felt pressure to be perfect. Andy could feel her fear from the stands.

"She was so afraid to make any mistakes whatsoever that she wasn't really trying to play her game at all," Andy says. "She was so in a box of what she was told she could do and allowed to do. She felt like, 'If I do anything outside of this little tiny box I've been put in...' she knows she's going to immediately come out of the game."

Michelle noticed more than fear in her daughter. She saw intense anxiety. Lauren started getting headaches every day. She felt nauseous all the time. She started to lose her hair.

"To see her go through that was like, 'Oh my baby. No,'" Jones says.

Betts credits her teammates for helping her get through the season. (Belibi remembers Betts trying to drag them out to parties while Jones remembers Betts performing carpool karaoke.) Toward the end of the year, Betts began talking to Jones about transferring.

"Transferring is not a sign of weakness," Jones told her. "It's you choosing you and what you need for your career. ... Think about everything you can gain."

After Ole Miss stunned the top-seeded Cardinal in the second round of the NCAA tournament, Betts gathered with her teammates in the locker room. "I won't be back," she told them, averting her gaze. Days later, after a meeting with VanDerveer and several conversations with her parents, Betts entered the transfer portal.

"We were disappointed," VanDerveer says. "She's a tremendous basketball talent."

UCLA HEAD COACH Cori Close was sitting in her office when she heard one of her assistant coaches scream across the hallway. "Lauren Betts is in the transfer portal," Tasha Brown yelled. "Call her. Call her right now."

Close, who had recruited Betts in high school, picked up her phone. Betts didn't answer, so Close called Michelle.

Betts' phone was in a perpetual state of ringing, but her confidence was too shattered to pick up. She didn't trust her own instincts, and she didn't trust coaches, either. Forty-eight hours after Close called her, Betts called her back.

They spoke for over an hour.

"She sounded wounded," Close says.

Close's motherly demeanor comforted Betts. Close invited her to visit and gathered the team for a dinner at her home in Los Angeles. Close made an announcement that evening: If Betts committed, she'd jump in the pool. Clothes and all. At the end of the evening, Betts walked outside to call her mom.

I don't know if I trust myself, but I do know this feels different. Maybe UCLA is the place for me.

She walked back inside, her shoulders hunched and her gaze to the floor. In a soft voice, she said, "Guys, I'm committing."

"We're going to be so good," one teammate yelled. The celebration erupted. Somebody pushed Close into the pool.

But Betts wasn't in a celebratory mood. She didn't share her teammates' optimism. She didn't even believe she could be a good basketball player again.

A few weeks later, Close asked Betts to rate her confidence on a scale of one to 10.

"Three," Betts said. "Maybe."

WEARING HER WHITE UCLA jersey, Betts sprints down the court at Pauley Pavilion. Charisma Osborne has the ball, and she's in go-mode. Osborne passes ahead to Londynn Jones, who delivers it to Angela Dugali, posting up on the block. Betts cuts toward the basket as Dugali turns to shoot a baseline 3-footer. One defender stays on Dugali. Three converge on Betts. Dugali's shot is off by a hair and ricochets off the rim. Sandwiched between two defenders, Betts extends her left arm and bats the ball off the backboard. She grabs it, leans to her right and muscles her way up between two defenders. She shouts something between a "come on" and a "woohoo" as the ball goes through the hoop and the referee calls a foul. "Let's go," she yells. She makes the free throw to give UCLA an 11-5 lead.

Never has there been a more perfect shooting performance than the one Betts had that day in UCLA's 77-74 win over Princeton. She was 9-for-9 from the floor and 3-for-3 from the line. She added 10 rebounds to her 22 points. Through her first four games at UCLA, she averaged 19.5 points and 10.8 rebounds.

"She started off almost too well," Close says. "She was not ready to have all that expectation -- 'You're our go-to player' -- or any of that. It was too much too fast."

Betts became UCLA's most important player the second she stepped on campus. Close knew it. And she pushed Betts. Pushed her hard. The "I'm not good enough" thoughts started bouncing around Betts' brain. Again.

She put pressure on herself to be perfect on the court. When she did slip up and miss a shot or two, she didn't know how to brush it off. She spent hours fixating on every miss. And the misses multiplied.

She called her mom before games, panicking.

"I am terrified to play," she said. "I'm horrible."

"I can't get it together," she said. "People are going to talk about me."

"I'm going to look like crap on national television," she said.

Michelle could feel her daughter slipping. She flew to UCLA. Michelle noticed a pattern: Lauren talked only about the mistakes she made.

"What is everybody going to say about me now? What are they going to think now?"

"They're going to realize that they're right -- that I'm not very good."

Before Michelle returned home to Colorado, she asked her daughter to set up an appointment with a therapist.

Lauren started attending therapy sessions, and a doctor prescribed her medication. Michelle texted Lauren every morning to remind her to take the medication. Sometimes, Lauren would confirm she'd taken it. Other times, she texted back that she'd forgotten.

Sleep became elusive. In her bed, Betts envisioned every missed shot, picturing people watching her and ridiculing her inability to do simple things on the basketball court. Her heart beat fast every time she imagined a social media comment that mocked her mistakes.

On Jan. 19, 2024, UCLA played Colorado in Betts' home state. Her former teammates and classmates came to watch. She scored 20 points but missed some easy layups. UCLA won that game and, according to the headlines and the box score (20 points, 8-for-16 from the field, 13 rebounds), Betts shined.

But the only thought on Betts' mind: I can't believe how many easy shots I missed.

I suck.

Three days later, Betts and the Bruins traveled to play Utah. "Lauren is physically here, but she's not present," Close thought. Michelle could see her daughter's eyes had no light.

Betts turned the ball over on the first play of the game. She missed a layup. She sat on the bench. To Betts, every missed shot felt like a hundred missed shots. So she stopped taking them. Close benched her seconds into overtime. Betts finished 3-for-6 with five rebounds and five turnovers.

Michelle sensed that it was more than a bad game. The misses, the benching. This is going to bring back memories of sitting on the bench at Stanford, she thought. This is going to shatter her. This is not good. This is really not good.

The next day, Lauren Betts told Close she needed time off. She spent the next few days in bed consulting with the team doctor. On the morning of Jan. 28 -- a few hours before UCLA's 1 p.m. tipoff against Washington State -- Betts found it difficult to muster up any energy at all. Even brushing her teeth and showering seemed too much.

"I got into a state, the lowest state I've ever felt in my entire life," Betts says. "To a point where I was like, 'I can't be here. Like, I can't be here. I can't do life anymore,'" Betts says.

The team doctor picked her up and drove her to the hospital.

Doctors decided to admit her. One of them dialed Betts' mom's number and handed her phone back over.

"Mom, I am at the hospital."

Michelle, who was folding laundry and preparing meals for the week, burst into tears. She told Lauren to stay put. She'd get on the next flight to L.A.

Point guard Kiki Rice remembers walking into the film room and seeing teammate Izzy Anstey drop her phone. Lauren Betts had texted Anstey that she was in the hospital. They didn't know the details, but worry enshrouded the Bruins as they began watching film.

Close didn't even know if she could field a team that day.

"Everybody was on the verge of tears -- it was like a movie," Close says. "I mean, we really wanted to play. ... And at the same time, we know that people's lives and hearts are the most important things."

In the end, the Bruins decided to play.

"I'm in my hospital gown, sitting in that bed, and I'm watching them play, and I'm like, 'I can't believe this is happening right now,'" Betts says. "That was a huge wake-up call for me. I was like, 'I need help.'

"I have to put myself first. This is my life. Like, this is my health. It's way bigger than basketball."

Close held back tears in the postgame news conference. It had nothing to do with the 85-82 loss.

"This one will be measured by everybody else in the outside by the score, but it won't be measured that way for me," Close said. "What Kiki [Rice] and the rest of her teammates -- what they showed from the inside out -- you have no idea."

Reporters asked Rice to talk about Betts' absence. Rice glanced at Close before answering. She told reporters that Betts was greatly missed. What she didn't say was that her worry went way beyond basketball.

"I'm like, it's so much bigger than just missing her presence on defense," Rice says. "We were all worried about Lauren and wanted her to be OK." Close drove from the arena to the airport to pick up Michelle. They went to the hospital and sat next to Lauren.

Michelle stroked Lauren's hair and hugged her through tears. "I am so sorry," Lauren whispered to her mom.

Close apologized to Lauren. "I was really hard on you, and I thought I was doing the right thing, but obviously I wasn't."

"I wanted to be the one that could handle that, because I knew why you were doing it," Betts said. "But I -- I just wasn't ready."

Doctors discharged Lauren the next day, and Michelle went home with her. Lauren told her mom that she needed help. That she wanted to learn how to prioritize herself. For so long, she played to silence her childhood bullies, to show the families at the mall that her height was a blessing, to show the parents in the stands that she brought more to the game than her size.

She told Close all of that was going to change.

"I feel like I've been playing for everybody but myself," she told Close. "I need to start showing up for myself."

She began therapy in earnest and took her medication regularly. She missed four games, including one against Stanford, in which UCLA suffered a blowout loss.

Betts vowed to eliminate the unfair expectations she put on herself. She would show up to practices and games. If she did well, great.

On Feb. 9, after an 18-day break from basketball, doctors cleared her to return against Arizona. Things looked different. Close, for one, stopped giving direct instructions to Betts. She triangulated through associate head coach Shannon LeBeauf to give Betts some space. Rice and her teammates focused on giving Betts consistent encouragement. Betts scored six points and went 2-for-6. That was OK.

On days when she felt heavy, she was honest with her coaches. That was radical and new for her. And it helped. Immensely. The coaches adjusted their practice plans to give her time to breathe.

UCLA made it to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament before falling to LSU. Betts had 14 points, 17 rebounds and 4 blocks.

"She came back, and I think it got better enough for her to get through [the season]," Close says. "She survived."

UNDER THE BRIGHT lights of Jersey Mike's Arena in Piscataway, New Jersey, Betts shuffles to the center of the court. It's moments after UCLA's dominant win over Rutgers. A TV producer wants to set up an interview after Betts had a game-high 25 points, 13 rebounds and 5 blocks. She hunches forward so he can place a headset on her head.

A group of girls holding posters scream for her from the far corner of the court. Betts looks up and motions for the producer. "Do I have a moment?" she asks. He nods. She hands him the headset and runs over to the girls. She spends the next 90 seconds taking selfies with them and signing posters. More girls run over. She waves at them and says, "I'll be right back." The producer is beckoning her.

She runs back and takes a deep breath. She has grown comfortable with the interactions with young fans. TV interviews still make her squirm. She exhales. Just think about how far you've come. This time last year you were in the hospital. Now you're being interviewed on national TV.

It had taken her months after the 2023-24 season ended to even begin thinking about basketball. She traveled to Colombia to spend time with her sister, Sienna, who was playing for Team USA. They ate arepas and empanadas, and Lauren allowed herself to be a curious visitor in a new country.

She went to therapy -- sometimes multiple times a week -- parsing through all the bullying she'd been through and how external voices shaped her inner opinion. How can I break that pattern? She asked her therapist over and over again.

For the first few weeks, the questions poured out of her. Then, once she'd asked them all, she began to arrive at answers. She needed to take time to find her inner voice. To listen to her instincts. To really understand her own thoughts.

Her parents and therapist urged her to scale back on social media, to stop looking up her name on the internet, to stop giving strangers the power to get in her head.

Betts agreed to try.

One day last spring after a nail appointment, Betts wandered into the UCLA gym. There, a group of freshmen were shooting free throws and giggling. It stirred something in Betts: a desire to feel happy on the court.

When she returned to the gym later that spring, it was just her and her teammates. The coaches told them to enjoy themselves on the court. It was the first time she didn't feel watched. She could run around and be goofy. She could sway her hips holding onto the shoulders of 5-foot-4 Jones and giggle in delight. She wasn't playing to prove anything to anyone. She was just playing. Her inner voice told her: This is fun.

To start the 2024-25 season, the Bruins took a trip to Paris, one of Betts' dream destinations. She bought new outfits and packed them for the trip. The team toured the city, visiting the Eiffel Tower, going to dinner together and tasting gelatos on walks. She texted her mom.

"Mom, this is the best I've felt in a really long time."

Prior to the season, Betts made two promises to herself.

I will not look myself up on the internet or click on the comments of any post made about me.

I will listen to my voice before, during and after each game. I will play for me.

She homed in on the little things she could improve. She spent hours on her footwork in practice. She focused on passing out of double- and triple-teams.

"Now it's funny, because I never used to get guarded at the high post in the beginning of the season, and I started hitting those shots," Betts says. "And now people end up guarding me from the high post and it makes me feel good, 'cause I'm like, now you have to actually guard me from up here, so it's the biggest compliment to me."

Betts, who averaged 19.7 points and 9.9 rebounds per game, led UCLA to a historic season. The Bruins went 30-2 and were ranked No. 1 for the first time in program history. They won the Big Ten tournament title. On Sunday, UCLA was named the No.1 overall seed in the NCAA tournament.

Betts will forever remember November and beating top-ranked South Carolina, the first win over a No. 1 team in program history. Time seemed to slow down as Betts gazed up at the clock and the sold-out crowd erupted. As the seconds wound down, she looked at her teammates and her family jumping and screaming. Afterward, her sister Sienna, who will join Lauren at UCLA next season, came to the locker room and gave her the biggest hug.

"It was the biggest, most amazing game I've ever played with this program," Lauren Betts says.

After jumping in the locker room with her teammates and enjoying dinner with her family, she got in her bed. She was happy. And proud. She had focused her energy on herself, her teammates and her family. She had given no time to strangers on the internet. Sleep enveloped her.

Two months later, in January, Betts enhanced her player of the year rsum when UCLA faced No. 8 Maryland on the road. Betts scored a career-high 33 points. She ran the floor "like a gazelle," Andy says. She shot 14-of-15.

But the biggest game of Betts' career came earlier this month against USC -- the only team that has beaten the Bruins this season (twice) -- in the Big Ten championship.

With UCLA up 64-58 and 2:04 left in the game, USC star JuJu Watkins drove to the basket. Watkins stepped through at the rim, and Betts swatted the ball away. Her third block in the final 10 minutes of play. Then, with 45 seconds left, Betts muscled her way into the lane to score a left-handed layup, putting UCLA up 66-60. Not only that, it was Betts' 1,000th point with UCLA.

As confetti dropped from the ceiling after UCLA won its first Big Ten tournament title 72-67, Betts jumped in a team huddle, hugging Rice and Gabriela Jaquez. She threw on a hat that said "Champions." She smiled.

Like so many times this season, a TV producer wanted to talk to her on the court. She shared her thoughts -- openly and passionately.

"I don't think you guys understand... I am so freaking proud of this team. We earned that game. We worked our butts off. We stayed together. We learned. We could have given up after we lost to them back-to-back. We would not be denied this game. And I'm so freaking proud of everybody. This means so much to UCLA."

Betts and Rice, who have been talking a lot about winning a national championship, looked at each other after the interview. "We're one step closer," they said.

Betts was named most outstanding player of the tournament. Social media filled up with positive comments.

She didn't look at any of it.

BETTS CROUCHES THROUGH the narrow door of Semicolon Cafe in downtown New Brunswick. She strolls to the counter and places her order, smiling softly. As she waits for her latte, strangers turn in her direction. As always. She glances at them as her eyes continue to scan the cafe.

A few minutes later, latte in hand, she walks over to our table and slides down the chair. She's wearing an oversize blue sweatshirt and matching pants. Her nails have tiny colorful flowers painted on them. ("I love getting my nails done," she says.)