Hall of Fame Focus: Essence Carson

Brushstrokes of Brilliance

The Hall of Fame career of Essence Carson is artwork. The Paterson, New Jersey native stayed home to lead her state university to the 2007 NCAA Women’s Basketball National Championship game before embarking on a professional basketball journey through the WNBA, the United States National Team, and overseas – gathering myriad awards and accolades along the way.

The unique experience of being a Scarlet Knight student-athlete from 2004 to 2008 taught Carson to appreciate this big, beautiful piece of art with a magnifying glass.

“I constantly dedicated myself to becoming the best at everything I did by focusing on the brushstrokes,” Carson said from her Los Angeles home surrounded by stunning paintings of the Notorious B.I.G and Lauryn Hill. “You have an idea of what you want the picture to look like, but it doesn’t just appear. It’s a combination of the brushstrokes to make this amazing piece of artwork.”

Carson picked up the proverbial paintbrush as a young child. It was a slightly studded, seamed, air-filled orange ball, and whether she shot this ball into a crate nailed to a light post in Paterson or into an actual hoop, she found the game that would help define her life. The key, as she learned from her life’s early mentors, and eventually, the incomparable C. Vivian Stringer at Rutgers – basketball, music, art, and life were so often congruent and synonymous.

Her eventual Naismith Hall of Fame coach perpetually alluded to the Game of Life and the parallels that existed between basketball and everything else she will go on to accomplish, regardless of whether she was wearing basketball shoes or pursuing a career in music. That was the deciding factor in Carson, a blue chip high school recruit, choosing Rutgers.

“Basketball is joy. It always has been for me,” Carson said. “At some point, I became obsessed, and when it was time for college, it had to feel like home. Not just location, but a feeling of home within your heart. I committed to Coach Stringer and this family because it was an immediate realization that I was home, and I would be joining a teammates who all believed in that feeling.”

Family is about sticking together and standing up through the good times and the trying times. There were an abundance of both of those times during the 2006-07 season, which is remembered far beyond the results of basketball games.

It started with adversity. Rutgers, which rostered five freshmen and zero seniors, lost one of its best players for the first four games and started 2-4, including a 40-point loss to Duke on December 4 – at home, where such a lopsided setback was unheard of. But Carson appreciates that disaster of a day for the spark it lit.

“We keyed in on the smallest of brushstrokes and did a complete 180,” Carson recalled. “We became closer as a family, locked in, and saw everything clicking once we got to the Big East Tournament and the NCAA Tournament.”

Carson captained Rutgers to the 2007 Big East Championship title and the most successful NCAA Tournament run in the program’s storied history, reaching the National Championship game. She was named an AP All-American, First Team All-Big East, and a Wade Trophy candidate as one of the best players in the nation for her efforts that season. Success was addictive for Carson and her team. They chose to be great. But they did not choose what happened next.

Mere hours after celebrating an incredible homecoming pep rally with the Cagers Club, with the flashing lights and manufactured rainfall from Piscataway fire trucks, word spread of the infamous and despicable Don Imus incident on the radio. Carson and the Scarlet Knights did not choose to be national spokespeople, but were led by Coach Stringer and prepared thoroughly with media relations professional Stacey Brann in a short amount of time to stand up together.

“We learned it wasn’t just about us and how it affected us,” Carson said. “It was about what it meant to people who looked like us. We gave a voice to so many people who may not be able to be heard like we were at the time, and all this time later, we still stand tall that we handled it the right way. We’re still fighting in 2021 for justice and equality, and I hope what we stood for in 2007 paid it forward to help people fight today.”

“The Sisterhood” was true to its roots that day. That collective term has come to define every player from every generation to play basketball for C. Vivian Stringer. But for Carson, it is a difficult definition to put into words.

“It is one of those things that is tough to understand unless you have been in it,” she said. “It’s family. It’s about love and respect. It is a support system that allows us to reach the sky as a limit.”

Hundreds of Sisters all have one thing in common: the mother figure. C. Vivian Stringer has been there through it all, and Carson credits the Hall of Fame coach for engorging a preexisting passion to become great. Stringer, one of the greatest basketball minds of all time, still managed to care and teach her young women about themselves as people outside of the game.

Basketball was not the only pulse driving the blood through Carson’s veins. She had an equally prevalent love for music, and true to her brand of commitment to excellence, Carson took it as far as she could. Her Twitter handle, @Pr3pE, is a nod to her entrance into the music business in her early 20’s with two other like-minded up-and-comers. They were known as the Preps, paying homage to the polo and collar fashion style made famous by Kanye West, in addition to their status as academics and graduates. The three replaced the first “E” for the number in the group, and the spelling variance with the ‘E’ at the end was, of course, for Essence.

“Pr3pE could be my alternate personality,” said Carson, who plays piano, bass, drums, and the saxophone. “Music is part of my life, and there will always be a love for it just like there is for basketball. If you have a true love for something, you should respect it and honor the craft by taking it seriously. So that’s what I did with music.”

Carson works in the music industry with Motown Records, a full-circle moment for a kid who grew up with her grandparents listening to Motown vinyl. It is another reminder to take a step back and appreciate the brushstrokes, to realize how much this part of her career would mean to her grandparents. It is another piece of the artwork.

Carson’s easel included 1,262 points, 707 rebounds, and a .796 winning percentage for the Scarlet Knights with her on the court. She was named the Big East Defensive Player of the Year in three consecutive seasons, and earned the Senior CLASS Award for excellence in character, classroom, community, and competition. She went on to represent her country with Team USA, winning four gold medals with the red, white, and blue in international FIBA events.

When you focus on the full painting instead of the details, sometimes it is easy to let it slip away from you too fast. As one of the newest members of the Rutgers Athletics Hall of Fame, Carson offers some advice on what it means to embody the Essence of a Scarlet Knight.