The College Basketball Star Who Received an NBA Education

Wall Street Journal

04-04-2025

Tampa, Fla.
When you're a 6-foot-7 female basketball player, you have some obvious advantages. It sure helps when you tower over everyone else on the court.
But as UCLA center Lauren Betts has discovered, it also comes with a specific problem: There's almost no one who can match up with you in training.
Back when Betts was a teenager, she settled on a solution. In addition to working out with the best women players she could find, she honed her game by practicing against a small and exclusive group of people who think a 6-foot-7 basketball player is nothing out of the ordinary.
She trained with NBA players.
Growing up in the Denver area, Betts played on two different teams coached by former pro basketball players. The lessons she learned from them are starting to pay off. Now averaging 20 points and nearly 10 rebounds a game, Betts has led UCLA into its first-ever NCAA Women's Final Four and emerged as the most dominant inside player in the women's game.
In high school, Betts played on an elite team led by 6-foot-10 Keith Van Horn, the 1998 NBA all-rookie team member with the New Jersey Nets. Before that, in eighth grade, she trained for more than a year with Ervin Johnson, the 6-foot-11 center who played for four NBA teams over 13 years.
Those experiences helped transform her from a reluctant, contact-averse athlete into a powerful force.
'It's incredible, right—two NBA dudes?' said Lauren's mom, Michelle Betts. 'Who gets that lucky?'
In seventh grade, Betts already was approaching her full height and was painfully self-conscious. On the court, she had a rudimentary game of layups and put-backs, but little else, her mother recalled.
Johnson, who was working as a Denver Nuggets ambassador and coaching an area girls' team, recruited Betts from another squad. When the two of them met, Betts would hunch her shoulders and avoid eye contact.
'She'd probably get mad at me saying this: She felt so bad at blocking people's shots,' Johnson recalled. 'I said, 'No, don't feel bad. That's what you're supposed to do. You can't help that you're taller.''
Johnson taught Betts to run the floor hard and post up in transition before the defense got set. To finish with her right hand and her left. To hold the ball high—otherwise, he said, 'Those little guards are going to get it.'
Johnson didn't call fouls in practice. He wanted Betts to get used to contact.
In games, Johnson said, 'she used to come to me and say, 'They're grabbing and holding me.' I'd say, 'Well, you've just got to get used to it. That's what they do in the paint.''
It was a tough education, but Johnson praised Betts's parents for letting him be that way. Michelle played volleyball for Long Beach State. Andy Betts was a second-round 1998 NBA draft pick who played more than a decade in Europe.
'We find people that we trust, and we let them do what we entrusted them to do,' Michelle said. 'He's always been fantastic with her.'
When Johnson decided to retire from youth coaching, Michelle was distraught. ('I remember crying in my bathroom,' she said.) His advice: Send her to Keith. At the time, Van Horn was coaching with Denver-area youth club Colorado Premier.
The No. 2 pick in the 1997 NBA Draft, Van Horn also worked to make Betts comfortable with pushing and shoving. Her mother still has a video of him bumping Lauren with pads as she backs into the basket. But Van Horn was a different kind of big—a lanky outside shooter. He encouraged Betts to extend her range.
'I have really pushed her to get comfortable catching on the perimeter, shooting from the perimeter and making passes from the perimeter,' Van Horn said. This season, Betts's assists have nearly tripled, to 2.8 per game.
Johnson said he admires Betts's huge strides. Most of all, she's become more comfortable in her body and confident on the court. Betts's shouting, celebratory foot-stomp after she drew a foul in the Bruins' Elite Eight win over LSU has become a signature moment of the tournament. In that game she had 17 points, six blocks—and no apologies.
'He basically taught me everything I knew in the post,' Betts said of Johnson. 'My footwork would not be where it is without him. He really taught me everything inside.'
Write to Rachel Bachman at [e-mail]