Cheryl Miller

American basketball player and coach, widely considered one of the greatest women's basketball players of all time with dominant college career at USC.

Cheryl Miller was born on 3 January 1964 in Riverside, California, the third of five children of Saul Miller, a jazz saxophonist turned military man, and Carrie Miller. Her father demanded excellence from all his children, once telling them that if a white coach had to choose between a Black athlete and a white athlete of similar skill, he would always choose the white athlete — teaching Cheryl and her siblings that being good was not enough, they had to be flat-out better. Her brothers Saul Jr. and Darrell (a Major League catcher) and younger brother Reggie, a future Hall of Fame NBA player, made backyard games fiercely competitive from an early age. Miller led Riverside Polytechnic High School to a staggering 132-4 record, once scoring 105 points in a single game, and became the first player of either gender named a Parade All-American four times. She led USC to consecutive NCAA championships in 1983 and 1984, winning back-to-back tournament Most Outstanding Player honours, and anchored the gold medal-winning U.S. Olympic team at the 1984 Los Angeles Games. Miller won three consecutive Naismith Player of the Year awards from 1984 to 1986 and is widely regarded as the greatest women's basketball player never to have had the opportunity to play professionally in the United States, retiring before the WNBA's founding due to a knee injury. She became the first female analyst to call a nationally televised NBA game in 1996. Miller was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1995, and moved into coaching, leading USC and later serving as head coach and general manager of the WNBA's Phoenix Mercury, continuing an influence on the women's game that shaped the sport for the generation that followed her.

Athletic forward with exceptional scoring ability and court vision

One of greatest women's basketball players ever, revolutionized the women's game

• Olympic Gold 1984
• USC Trojans 3x All-American
• Naismith Award 1984, 1985, 1986