Motivation Quote by Sue Wicks

"It's not to hurt anyone, but basketball can be rough" is the kind of line athletes use to thread a needle: defend physical play without sounding like a bully. Sue Wicks leads with a moral disclaimer - not to hurt anyone - because women’s basketball, especially in the era she came up through, was routinely policed for its tone. Play too physical and you risk being labeled unfeminine, “dirty,” or overly aggressive; play too politely and you’re dismissed as soft or unserious. The sentence is a preemptive rebuttal to that double bind.

The pivot word is "but". It quietly shifts the burden of understanding onto the listener: if you’re shocked by contact, you may not understand the sport. Wicks isn’t romanticizing toughness; she’s normalizing it. "Rough" does a lot of work here, too. It’s softer than "violent" or "brutal", but still honest about elbows, screens, and bodies colliding at speed. That word choice protects intent while validating reality.

Context matters: Wicks played in a time when women’s professional basketball was fighting for legitimacy, TV time, and respect. Emphasizing that physicality is part of the game is also a claim to parity - not just with men’s basketball, but with the broader idea that elite competition is allowed to be messy. The subtext is a demand: take the sport seriously enough to accept its contact, without turning that contact into a character indictment.