When the Game is No Longer Who You Are
How many times have we seen it?
An athlete scores a touchdown, drops to one knee, points toward heaven, and gives God the glory.
And how many times have we quietly wondered, Is that really what faith means?
Is God choosing sides? Does God care who wins the football game? And what about the player on the other team who prayed just as hard and lost?
I’m not questioning anyone’s sincerity. But I’ve always wondered whether there’s something more to faith than thanking God when things go our way.
Well, let me tell you about a young basketball player who has given me a different picture of what faith can look like.
Her name is Veronica Burton.
She’s the point guard for the Golden State Valkyries, a remarkable young WNBA team currently battling the Atlanta Dream for a championship.
I’ve been watching this series, and Burton has absolutely captivated me.
In Game 5, she was magnificent. She defended Allisha Gray, one of the finest players in the league, with extraordinary intensity. And as the game wore on, when other players seemed physically and mentally exhausted, Burton seemed to grow stronger.
She wasn’t simply surviving the pressure.
She seemed almost at peace in the middle of it.
And that got me wondering about her story.
Burton was a star at Northwestern University, where she became one of the finest defensive players in college basketball. Three times she was named the Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year. The Dallas Wings selected her seventh in the 2022 WNBA draft.
Her future seemed bright.
Two years later, Dallas cut her.
Just like that.
Imagine spending most of your life becoming exceptionally good at something, only to be told you’re no longer needed.
She went home to Massachusetts. She practiced basketball at a local YMCA. (She tals about how she had to wait for all the pickle ball players were done!)
And she wondered what would come next.
Her father remembers walking into her room during that difficult time and finding her reading her Bible.
She admitted she was struggling. She didn’t know where God wanted her. But, remarkably, she told him her faith was growing stronger.
Eventually, Connecticut gave her another opportunity. Then the newly formed Golden State Valkyries selected her in the expansion draft.
Under the extraordinary leadership of coach Natalie Nakase, something wonderful happened.
Burton blossomed.
She became the WNBA’s Most Improved Player in 2025. And now, just two years after being cut, she’s helping lead a team that stands one victory away from a championship.
But the most interesting part of her story isn’t the basketball comeback.
It’s what she learned about herself when basketball was taken away.
One of the foundational scriptures in Burton’s spiritual life is Philippians 4:6–7. During college, she kept the passage on her phone’s lock screen and read it every night.
Here are those words:
Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
— Philippians 4:6–7
Think about that.
A young woman whose livelihood depends on performance, whose future can change with one phone call, whose every mistake is visible to thousands of people, has chosen to build her spiritual life around a promise of peace.
Not victory.
Not success.
Peace.
In an interview earlier this year, Burton said something that stopped me:
“I think peace is one of the greatest gifts that I could ever ask for.”
She went on to explain that peace cannot depend on circumstances. There are simply too many things in life we cannot control.
She starts her mornings with coffee, Scripture, and quiet reflection. Throughout the day, she prays for that peace.
But here’s the detail about Burton’s faith that I love most.
Before every game, she calls her family and prays with her father.
And among the things they pray for is that nobody gets hurt.
Not just the players on her team.
The players on the other team, too.
I find that beautiful.
Think about the contrast.
We so often see athletes invoking God in moments of victory. And here is a young woman preparing for one of the most intensely competitive experiences of her life, praying for the well-being of the very people she’s about to compete against.
She’s going to defend them fiercely. She’s going to try to beat them. She’s going to do everything she can to win.
But before the ball is tipped, she remembers that the people wearing the other uniforms matter, too.
Now that’s a picture of faith I can embrace.
And there’s another part of her story that speaks to me.
Burton has learned to distinguish between what she does and who she is.
Basketball is something she loves. Something she’s worked extraordinarily hard to master. But it isn’t the sum total of her identity.
I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately.
For nearly four decades, I was a pastor. Every week there was another sermon to prepare, people to visit, meetings to attend, problems to solve.
It was meaningful work. Work I loved.
And then I retired.
Nobody cut me from the team. I chose to retire. But even when leaving is your choice, there’s a strange experience of discovering that the world continues quite nicely without you.
Who am I when nobody needs another sermon?
Who am I when nobody is listening?
Who am I when nobody is clapping?
Those aren’t always comfortable questions.
But perhaps they’re important ones.
I don’t know precisely how Veronica Burton understands every dimension of her Christian faith. And I’m certainly not suggesting that God rewarded her faith by giving her a second chance in the WNBA.
That would take us right back to the touchdown celebration and the suggestion that God favors the winners.
Sometimes good people get cut.
Sometimes they don’t get another chance.
Sometimes the comeback never comes.
Faith cannot depend on the happy ending.
That’s what I find so compelling about Burton’s story. The peace she describes isn’t simply the reward for becoming successful again. It’s something she was learning to discover when her future was uncertain.
And perhaps that’s part of what we’re watching on the basketball court today.
A woman who knows she can take a risk. She can miss a shot. She can make a mistake. She can even lose.
None of those things gets to decide who she is.
I’ve preached on that passage from Philippians more times than I can remember.
But watching Veronica Burton play basketball has given me another way to think about it.
Peace isn’t necessarily the absence of pressure.
Sometimes peace is what allows us to step into the pressure without being consumed by it.
Sometimes it looks like a young woman dribbling a basketball down the court, with a championship hanging in the balance, looking completely at home in her own skin.
I hope the Valkyries win the championship. And if they do, I’d love to see Veronica Burton named Finals MVP.
But I suspect she’s already discovered something more valuable than a trophy.
She was enough when Dallas cut her.
She was enough when she was practicing at the YMCA, wondering what would come next.
And she’s enough now, with the whole basketball world watching.
Maybe faith isn’t believing God will help you win.
Maybe faith is knowing you’re loved even when you lose.
Already enough.
⸻
P.S. Of course, Angel Reese and the Atlanta Dream might have something to say about all this on Thursday. They could very well come roaring back and force a seventh game. And I hope they do. This series is simply too good to end. Which, come to think of it, would be a pretty good test of everything I’ve just written about faith, peace, and winning.
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