Why Dawn Staley said now was time to write book about mom, Philly, South Carolina success

COLUMBIA — South Carolina women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley can now add “published author” to her long list of accomplishments.

She broke the news via social media on Friday that her book, “Uncommon Favor: Basketball, North Philly, My Mother and Life Lessons I learned from All Three” will be available on May 20.

To go along with a picture of her book, she posted a video saying how for a long time friends, family members and even strangers have told her to write a book or have questioned when she will.

“Number one I just got tired of people asking me,” Staley said Friday when asked how she decided when was the right time to write the book, especially since she’s still working. “Two, I had to do it before I forgot everything and three, I think the season that we had last year made me really thankful for what I described as an uncommon favor or career.

Staley has used frequently mentioned “uncommon favor,” which is the belief that God gives blessings in unexpected ways. Each year the team selects one word as a theme and after going 38-0 last year, the word for 2024-25 is “uncommon.”

She alluded to the third national title and all the success she had in 2023-24, and she felt it only fitting to put that in context of her life and share it with people.

“Writing a book, you have to think about a lot of things,” Staley said, emphasizing how exhausting it was and said how as people age, it’s easier to lose context and forget who was involved in certain aspects of her life. “The good stuff is in it. Things that were impactful to my life, starting out growing up in North Philly in the projects. Everything has a correlation to that, everything has a correlation back to my mother, everything has a correlation to the successes and it was just cause of the foundation that I had.”