Rebecca Lobo addresses the graduating class at her alma mater.

Graduating seniors, esteemed faculty, family and friends of the UConn community - I’m so happy to be back with you all here in Storrs today. Even though I last played for Coach Auriemma thirteen years ago, my experiences here at the University of Connecticut continue to be the best of my life. I’ll always be proud of how much I accomplished here, and will be eternally grateful for everything it learned during my college career.

Which is why I’m truly honored to address the graduating class this year. I hope that all of you graduating seniors have made memories here in that you hold just as dear, and that you have dreams just as big for what you will do when you leave here today. But I also hope and pray that someone in this audience will save me from the hell I’ve been living since I left.

I know what you are all thinking. “But Rebecca - you’ve been so successful! You were one of the inaugural players in the WNBA! You’ve helped raise hundreds of thousand of dollars for breast cancer research and scholarships! You have a successful broadcast career and a wonderful family!”

Do you have any idea what the early WNBA was like? I could have earned more money working minimum wage at Wendy’s. And if I could have done that, I would have tried. But they wouldn’t let us. They fooled us all into believing in this new system - and then the day after the inaugural draft, we were dragged into a hot gym in Los Angeles, where David Stern coldly explained that he owned us for the rest of our playing lives. No more overseas contracts. No more work on the side to make ends meet. He was going to work us to the very bone. And to make sure of that, he held our families captive as well.

Don’t act like you didn’t know. Do you really think Sheryl Swoopes would have come back to the league after having her son if she hadn’t been threatened? She had to come out of the closet just to get out from under their thumb - Stern is a massive homophobe, right up until he picks his porn for the night - and when her parents “disowned” her, Stern let them go too out of pity. God, I wish I had thought of that.

I tried to escape once, in 1999 just before the start of the season. Geno booked me passage inside of a container on a ship leaving Port Newark for Ponta de Madiera in Brazil. (He always wanted to help, but there is only so much that an Italian can do in the import-export business in New York before it looks suspicious.) It would be a long, dangerous journey with no one but the rats to keep me company, but I figured I could blend in there.

But just before the ship was set to depart, Stern and his henchmen showed up and dragged me back to practice. They sliced my ACL to make sure I wouldn’t run again, then made me fake the injury in the first game of the season. I spent the next four months washing Stern’s lawn with a toothbrush. Yeah, his lawn. He doesn’t like his lawn to get dirty. Think about that.

But I learned his weaknesses during that period, and while I knew they would be watching me too closely for my own good, I could help others. So I started an underground railroad that smuggled players out of the States during the offseason, back to the European teams they had played for decades before the WNBA debacle started. It wasn’t always easy - getting body doubles for all of the “marketing trips” they made us take wasn’t cheap - but I feel like I saved a lot of women.

Mercifully, they eventually let me retire. Stern got on to me, and decided I was too great a danger to his little scheme. Plus, my threshold for pain was too high. He ended up covering it all up - made it seem like allowing players to go abroad again was his little idea. It’s a step. Diana Taurasi will thank me when she has time.

I walked away, I met Scott - I thought I was free, that I could settle down and put everything behind me. When ESPN called me about working for them, I said no. I was ready to settle down, to be a wife and mom, to move on with my life.

The next morning, I woke up in a cold Bristol basement with a searing headache and the vague feeling that I had been drugged. When I came to, I realized I was dressed in a brand new pantsuit - and there was Scott, looking down on me with that same wry but sweet smile he had on our wedding day. With David Stern and Norby Williamson standing behind him. And that’s when I knew - he was in on it. He was in on it all along. My entire life was now trapped inside of this prison, this lie, this game.

Over the next few weeks, Norby would show me that I had no idea what pain really was. And that there would be no escape for me. Ever.

So that’s how I got here today, with a ruined knee, an inescapable life of servitude, and no self worth left. So I will do literally anything you want. Make me into an Amazon hit man to take out your business competitors. Dress me in flannel and send me into your fields to be a scarecrow. Chop my legs off and cast me in stump porn. Anything. Just please save me.

So … um, congratulations to all you graduates! Go Huskies!