She wasn’t supposed to fly. She wasn’t supposed to lead. In the dim, sweat-stained chrysalis of the Flint Street Community Center in a small gym, a wooden beech floor whispering the word, survive, survive, survive, survive a twelve-year-old Emma Cannon held a basketball her coach Daughtery gave to her which was a foreign thing to her.
It was in that gym that Cannon, who now plays for the Los Angeles Sparks in the WNBA, played against boys that did a lot of trash talking and showed no mercy when she drove to the basket. “They put that dog in me,” Cannon says now, and you can still hear the growl in her voice beneath the grace. During her early years playing basketball she was a preteen girl in an unfamiliar place. She had never played basketball. She was a caterpillar in a concrete garden.
Then came the slow dissolve. The metamorphosis.
In the beginning of her basketball career, she was late to the games, late to dream, late to everything but the truth. Rochester, New York taught her a lot about the game of basketball. Nothing given. Everything earned. Not privilege. Not pity, but persistence. She learned to outwork, outlast and out-believe. Going undrafted after stints at Central Florida University and Southern Florida University, Cannon headed overseas where her transformation deepened in Germany, Australia, Hungary, Turkey, Israel, Russia, China, each country a leaf, each locker room a lesson. Adapt. Listen. Bend. Wings began to form strength in silence.
“Leadership isn’t about being a dictator. Say what you mean. Mean what you say,” Cannon said. No fanfare. No fury. Just the steady pulse of a heart learning to beat for others. “You stop being selfish,” she said. Suddenly, the game wasn’t everything. It was part of everything. Losses became lessons. Teammates became family. Leadership became less about roaring and more about radiating. Less command, more compassion. Her voice, once hesitant, now hums a vibration felt in every huddle, every film session and every flight on the plane. “I’m a butterfly. I get along with any and everybody.” And oh, how she floats.
In the Sparks’ ecosystem, she’s the pollinator. The connector. The veteran who talks to rookies like equals, shares her radiant smile with the equipment manager, and treats the janitor like the CEO, because to her, character is currency. Her leadership? An intricate and illustrious blend of grit and grace, truth and tenderness, accountability and affection. No dictatorship. Only dialogue. No storms. Only stillness.
“Love and respect above everything,” said Cannon. “When it’s time to get serious, they listen,” The hardest truth? She isn’t always the star. Sometimes, she starts. Sometimes, she sits. Always, she serves. Her wings adjust and never break. Her father calls her “butterfly” for her social ease, but the name now fits her even deeper. She emerged from darkness not to dazzle but to nurture. To lift. To linger where growth is needed.
Ask Cannon about legacy. “I want to be remembered as a great person who did her job, with a smile,” Cannon said. No statues. No scoring titles. Just the soft imprint of impact of a great teammate.
Back in Rochester, the 12-year-old Cannon with snacks in hand, dreams not yet born, wouldn’t believe this flight. “Man, I’ve been through a lot,” Cannon recollects, and the weight of that lot hangs in the air like a chrysalis swaying in the wind. But here’s the miracle. From that cramped gym, from those no-mercy practices and games, from every “no” that meant “not yet,”…
She took flight.
And now? She soars, not above her teammates, but beside them. Not with the flash of a hawk, but with the quiet purpose of a butterfly, delicate in approach, unshakeable in purpose, leaving everything she touches richer.
Cannon started her WNBA career in 2020, and she has played for six different teams. She hopes the Sparks will be her last stop in a career that hopes to end one day with a championship.