Former WNBA player Greeba Gamble has a new invention

Greeba Gamble is 5-foot-10 and strikingly beautiful. She has the looks of a model, the moves of a seasoned athlete and the brains of a salesperson who could easily go to medical school. She’s also a mother, a wife, an entrepreneur, a sales rep for a global company and an author.

She dominated basketball courts for more than half of her life. Now, she is in the next chapter of her career as she has transitioned out of basketball.

Gamble recently spent a day in Washington, D.C., during the 47th Annual Congressional Black Caucus, where she was the only woman and former WNBA player to participate in a sports panel. What she looked forward to most that day was hearing from other athletes on their transition out of sports and sharing her own story.

Many professional athletes have a hard time transitioning into life after their career is over, but Gamble is spending her days as a sales rep for Boston Scientific in one of the hardest metro areas in New York City.

“I have one of the biggest accounts, Mount Sinai, Presbyterian,” Gamble explained. “We currently have medical products, and we go into the cases and some of the new products that the doctors are not familiar with and we guide them through the case using the product. We’ve got to make sure that clinically we’re up to par.”

Gamble graduated from St. John’s University, where she was a point guard. Before transferring to St. John’s, she played two years at George Washington University. She was a guard with the Los Angeles Sparks and spent time playing professionally in Puerto Rico, Africa, Poland and Israel. Married to her friend and confidant Edward Gamble, she is a mother of 2-year-old son Edward Anthony Gamble Jr.

Basketball was life for Gamble, but now she is balancing work, entrepreneurship and motherhood. She’d been playing the game since she was a child, but she had a good foundation in her daily life growing up. Although her transition out of the game wasn’t easy, it has been manageable and positive.

“When I left basketball I wanted something different,” Gamble said. “Basketball controlled my life since I was 8 years old, and it made me happy, it made me sad. It brought the greatest joys. People always say, ‘Well, you shouldn’t be what you do,’ but you kind of are what you do, and that’s what I was. I was a basketball player.

“It was definitely a hard transition, but I realized that just sitting down and talking to mentors, people who are in my family, and they said, ‘Here’s your skill set. This is what you provide. This is what you offer,’ and I also did some internships during like college, so I wasn’t strictly just basketball. I was a criminal justice major, so I worked at a law firm thinking I wanted to become an attorney.”

Gamble’s mentors explained to her that corporations are eager to hire athletes, so she was able to evaluate her skill set and plan for her next move. The eye-opening experience led her to hone her strength and inner abilities past the basketball world.

“I’m sitting there, I’m talking, I’m like, ‘Oh, because we’re winners, we’re structured, we’re determined,’ ” she said. “As I’m going through all these verbs and describing what we are as athletes, I realize that I could offer a big corporation something valuable, but what I need to do is get trained. How do I get trained?”

Gamble turned to her uncle, who had a lucrative career in medical device sales for more than 20 years. She took his sage advice on how to get her start and began structuring her career toward sales.

“I started with a small catering company in the alcohol industry,” she said. “I’m basically starting from the bottom. I was the man at one time in basketball, and now I’m kind of starting a career entry-level, putting up boxes, making displays for alcohol companies, going store to store and just trying to sell beer and wine — and I didn’t even have a plan. I learned watching and I learned from asking questions, and then E & J Gallo Winery, which is one of the biggest wineries in the world, saw my resume and wanted to bring me into the management training program.”

Gamble sat through about seven different interviews to get that sales job.

“I talked to people all the way from the West Coast to New York City, and they screened me really well and they put me through the training program. I’m still putting up 100-case displays. Nothing glamorous. I’m not in the club partying with P. Diddy drinking. It was definitely not glamorous, but I worked hard. I always wanted to be No. 1. When that email came out — who was selling the most, who was making the most money — I wanted to be No. 1, and that’s how I challenged. From basketball to corporate, that’s how I challenged. I guess that leap from being the No. 1 in winning and that progressed and I became a sales manager within the division.”

In July 2010, she published the children’s book Indoor Family Fitness with Greeba, which offers advice on how children and parents can come together as a team to lose weight.

Gamble spoke to The Undefeated about life after basketball, managing her sales career, motherhood and her new invention: The B-Ball Machine.

How and why did you decide to invent B-Ball Machine?

When I was playing professional basketball, I needed something to help me handle the ball a little bit better, a little faster, pound the ball a little stronger, and I couldn’t really find anything out there. I decided to come up with this belt with like these resistance bands, and I went to Home Depot and ended up getting all these different parts together and basically making like a prototype just to help me out.

It wasn’t fine-tuned, so there were times where it used to just kind of break and snap during my dribbling drills, but then I was able to connect with a guy here in New York City and he said, ‘Hey, there’s manufacturers that can kind of basically do a prototype and make it a little bit more durable. What do you think? I can give you the contacts.’ I said, ‘Oh, that’d be great.’

I contacted the manufacturer and they sent me a prototype, and I loved it. I put it in process for patenting and I received the patent on it. I was creating it to not only help me, but when I saw that during the trial period with kids and other high school and professional athletes that it was a great tool, people loved it. It was helping people.

Are any basketball programs incorporating the B-Ball Machine into their workouts?

My first program is at St. John’s University women’s basketball team. They were the first actual, like, program to purchase the B-Ball Machine. We did like a little seminar with it, and I had a guy who’s probably one of the best dribbling coaches here in New York City come and do a demo.

Do you ever miss the game?

I miss it. Yeah, I definitely miss it. I love the game. I wish I could start over again and continue playing, but unfortunately being a woman and into basketball sometimes you don’t make any money.

Aside from your uncle, who else would you say inspired you?

My parents. My mother’s a black attorney in Baltimore city. My dad used to own a gas station, and now he runs a wine business. That’s who got me in the alcohol business. He runs Total Wine. My husband, he inspires me as well. He’s a great supporter. He’s always been there from day one: coming to my games, just being a cheerleader and a supporter and being able to talk to when you’re down because everybody likes you when you’re up, but nobody’s there for you when you’re down. So he’s supported me.

What was the hardest part of transitioning out of basketball for you?

The hardest part for me was feeling like I gave up on my dream. But not knowing there was something out there that was added to my dream. Knowing I could do something better and greater, which I’m doing now. When you’re young, you can be selfish. I guess it’s cliché, selfless instead of selfish and trying to help others and trying to figure out how I can make an impact in my everyday life and how I can make an impact around people. My job is definitely, No. 1, we save a lot of people. It’s hard. Sometimes you come home and someone has passed right in front of you, and that leaves an impact in your brain and in your mind, but you’ve got to also count how many people you’re helping.