Lauren Jackson (born May 11, 1981 in Albury, Australia) is an Australian professional basketball player. She is a forward/center with the Seattle Storm of the WNBA and the Canberra Capitals of the Australian WNBL . She is universally considered to be the best Australian female basketball player of all time, and one of the best players in the world.

Early career

Both her parents represented Australia at basketball, and she took up the game at age four. A teenage prodigy, she moved to the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra as a teenager. She played for the Australian women's team, the Opals, in 1997 as a 16-year-old. She led the Australian Institute of Sport team, made up of the country's best 16 to 18 year-old players, to two premierships in the Australian Women's National Basketball League , the Australian women's professional league, in 1998-1999 - an unprecedented achievement for a youth team. Ineligible to continue with the AIS team, she joined the other Canberra-based team, the Canberra Capitals, and led them to three consecutive wins in 2000-01, 2001-02, and 2002-03.

International career

In the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia, Jackson scored 20 points and took 13 rebounds in a losing side to the United States in the gold-medal game. The silver medal was Australia's first in international competition.

In the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece, the Opals went on to repeat as silver medalists, losing again to the United States in the Olympic final.

WNBA

When Jackson declared for the WNBA draft in 2001, she was an automatic first selection to the Seattle Storm, which she has played for since.

The 196 centimetre (6'5") Jackson is very effective in offence, combining her height with a good shooting percentage - even from three-point range (she led the WNBA in three-point percentage in 2004), athletic ability, and not least a little bit of "mongrel" (mental toughness and agressiveness) to deal with the highly physical defensive tactics usually laid on to stop her. Earlier in her career, her defence was perhaps the weaker aspect of her game, but these days that area has also improved, making her a leading defensive rebounder and shot-blocker in the WNBA. In 2003, despite the fact that her WNBA team, the Seattle Storm did not make the playoffs, she was voted the Most Valuable Player in the WNBA.

She was part of the 2004 Seattle Storm team that won the 2004 WNBA championship.

Off the court

Outside of basketball, Jackson has posed nude in an Australian magazine, Black + White, that features Olympic athletes who will compete in Athens in the 2004 Olympics. The expensively-printed magazine/book has been produced for the last three Olympic Games, and by the 2004 edition was considered relatively uncontroversial in Australia with its "artistic" approach to nude photography and its equal coverage of male and female athletes. While Jackson considered it an honor to be in the magazine, it was the subject of some controversy in Seattle. Jackson also posed for the 2005 edition of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.

External links

• Unofficial fan site