Candace Parker Built the Can-Do Mindset and Then Kept Using It

Before she was a two-time WNBA MVP, before the Hall of Fame and before the boardrooms, Candace Parker was a kid in Naperville, Illinois, who was afraid she would not measure up. Her father Larry had played at Iowa. Her older brother Anthony was on his way to the NBA. So she played soccer instead, because if she did not play basketball, nobody could compare her. Her mother had other plans for her confidence. She shortened Candace to Can, then stretched it to Can-Do. Tying her shoes. Free throws. The ACT. Whenever Parker doubted herself, the nickname was already waiting.

At 14 she dunked for the first time. The girl who had been dodging the family sport became the first woman to win the McDonald’s All-American dunk contest. The nickname stuck, and a few decades later it became the title of her memoir, The Can-Do Mindset. More than that, it became the operating system for a career that kept getting interrupted and kept going anyway.

Pat Summitt’s Light Was Already On

A torn ACL before her senior year of high school threatened the whole path. She came back. At Tennessee she played for Pat Summitt, who once kicked her out of practice for not rebounding hard enough. Parker decided she would show up the next morning before her coach did. She got there early. Summitt’s office light was already on. The standard did not move for anybody, including the most talented player in the country. Parker won back-to-back NCAA titles in 2007 and 2008, took home the Naismith and Wooden awards and left as one of the most complete players the women’s college game had ever seen.

Rookie of the Year and MVP in the Same Season

The Los Angeles Sparks drafted her first overall in 2008. She scored 34 points in her debut. That season she averaged 18.5 points and 9.5 rebounds and became the only player in WNBA history to win Rookie of the Year and MVP in the same year. She also won Olympic gold in Beijing, then added another in London in 2012.

The body kept sending bills. She had multiple knee surgeries. She gave birth to her daughter Lailaa in 2009, right after that historic rookie season, and missed the start of the next one. Every few years the game asked her to adjust, and she did. In 2016 she led the Sparks to their first title since 2002 and was named Finals MVP. In 2020 she won Defensive Player of the Year. In 2021 she went home to Chicago and helped the Sky win the franchise’s first championship. In 2023 she signed with the Las Vegas Aces, played 18 games before a foot injury ended her season and still earned a ring when Vegas won. She is the only player to win a WNBA title with three different franchises. The Sparks and the Sky have both retired her No. 3, and in 2026 she was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.

Motherhood Was in the Middle, Not After

Most athletes talk about family as something waiting on the other side of the career. For Parker it ran right through the center. Lailaa came on road trips. She was there for the nursing between games, the championships and the near-misses. Parker has said becoming a mother made her a better teammate. She later married Anna Petrakova, a former professional player, and they have two sons, Airr and Hartt. The boys have only ever known their mom as retired. She has called Lailaa her favorite teammate.

That is why the ending looked the way it did. After the foot injury in Vegas, she did the math. One more season was not worth sitting in the car on Halloween while her kids went trick-or-treating, missing beach volleyball with them or not being able to walk without pain. In an Instagram post months later she wrote that her heart and body already knew it was time, even if her mind needed longer. She had promised herself she would never cheat the game and would leave it better than she found it. She walked off with her daughter beside her, no farewell tour.

The Boardroom Is Just Another Floor

She did not take a gap year. She became President of adidas Women’s Basketball, a role that covers product, roster direction and growing the women’s side of a brand she has represented for years. She kept building a broadcasting career with TNT Sports and Amazon Prime, calling NBA games and the NCAA men’s tournament. She has invested in Angel City FC and League One Volleyball, talked openly about ownership ambitions in both the WNBA and NBA, co-founded a sports-card shop in Charlotte, launched an HBCU sports media fellowship and started a podcast.

In her retirement announcement she said she was going after business, private equity, ownership, broadcasting, production and boardrooms with the same intensity she brought to basketball. It reads like a shot list. It is also the Can-Do nickname, scaled up. The rooms are different. The question her mom taught her to ask, “Can I do this?”, has the same answer.

How She Trains Now

During her career, Parker mixed heavy lifting, explosive work, yoga for mobility and conditioning that tightened as the season got closer. She has talked about making a contract with herself the night before a hard session, so the decision was already made before the alarm went off. Retirement changed the goal, not the habit. Now she rides Peloton regularly, lifts with bench, lunges and pull-ups and spends time in the sauna. With three kids, mornings start early, and the workout is how she creates space before everybody else needs her. She is not training for a playoff series anymore. She is training so the rest of her life still works.

The Can-Do Session

This one is built around the mix Parker describes: strength, lower-body power and mobility. All you need is a kettlebell or a pair of dumbbells and a little room.

Warm-up (6–8 minutes). Easy walking or light bike, then hip circles, walking lunges with a twist, arm swings and a few bodyweight squats. Finish with 30 seconds of jumping jacks or high knees.

Strength and power circuit (3–4 rounds). Goblet squat, 10–12 reps. Single-arm row, 8–10 per side. Walking or reverse lunges, 8–10 per leg. Push-ups or dumbbell floor press, 8–12 reps. Kettlebell swings or medicine-ball slams (or squat-to-stands with no equipment), 12–15 reps. Rest 60–90 seconds between rounds. Stay controlled on the strength moves and bring some snap to the swings.

Mobility finish (5 minutes). Hip flexor stretch, pigeon or figure-four and a short thoracic rotation sequence. If you have a bike or Peloton, add ten easy minutes at conversational pace, or just go for a walk.

Make the contract the night before. Write the session down, lay out your shoes and decide now. Morning you does not get a vote.

The Parker Playbook

Give yourself a name to live up to. Can-Do does not have to be clever to work.

Beat your coach to the gym, and expect that sometimes the light will already be on.

Train for the life you have now, not the sport you used to play.

Let the people you love shape the timeline. Walking away well is its own kind of win.

Take your competitive engine into new rooms instead of leaving it in the locker room.

Leave every place, team and floor better than you found it.

In Her Words

“Believe in yourself, even when others doubt you.”

“Confidence comes from preparation. It comes from repetition. It comes from putting in the time and the hours.”

“My whole career has been trying to please people in basketball. Now it’s time to please myself.”

“I promised I’d never cheat the game & that I’d leave it in a better place than I came into it.”

Three championships with three franchises, two MVPs, a Finals MVP, Defensive Player of the Year, two Olympic golds and a Hall of Fame jacket. Strip all that away and you are left with a girl in Naperville whose mom kept telling her she could. Parker never stopped believing it, not after the knee surgeries, not after the foot and not when the floor turned into a boardroom. Whatever you are standing in front of right now, the question is the same one she has been answering her whole life. Can you do it? Be like Candace.