Sparks don’t need dunks to please their true fans

Staples Center was buzzing Thursday, thousands of high-pitched screams and ponytails gathered on a night when the Sparks’ amazing Candace Parker could dunk for a third consecutive game.

She couldn’t.

Good.

The sports landscape was actually murmuring about the WNBA on Thursday, sports anchors everywhere waiting for the video of Candace Parker’s dunk in a third consecutive game.

She didn’t.

Good.

During a season in which the Sparks could grab the average Southland basketball fan like never before -- celebrity players, blue-jean wearing owners, two moms in the starting lineup -- the last thing they need is to brag about their dunks.

In women’s basketball, to brag about a dunk is to deny your identity.

To brag about a dunk is to feed into every male stereotype about the WNBA as wannabes, celebrating not what the league is, but what it is not.

For women, to brag about a dunk is to shout, “Hey, we’re one of the guys!”

They’re not.

That’s why they can be so much fun.

That’s why John Wooden likes the WNBA better than the NBA.

That’s why the Sparks have developed a solid fan base of about 9,000 fans that will only grow as the duo of Parker and Lisa Leslie grows.

On Thursday against the Washington Mystics, I’m guessing these fans didn’t show up to see Candace Parker dunk.

They showed up to see Parker thread a pass between three defenders to tiny Temeka Johnson for a layup.

They showed up to see Parker set a perfect low pick for Leslie that resulted in another layup.

Then there was the six-pass possession that ended in Parker’s turnaround jumper.

That wasn’t Laker flashy, but it was Spark fun.

That’s the sort of basketball we’ll be seeing Parker and Leslie playing in Beijing later this summer when they will probably lead the U.S. team to an Olympic gold medal.

That same game will return to Staples Center next fall when the Sparks finish their season in a probable September playoff run that could capture a town.

Perfect passes and precise mid-range jumpers and teamwork that knows no scowls or public scoldings, that’s the Sparks.

Not the dunks.

And thank goodness, the Sparks know it.

“Dunks are not what make our game exciting,” said co-owner Carla Christofferson. “We’re about so much more.”

The Sparks ownership has no plans to celebrate Parker’s two end-of-game, breakaway dunks, just as they have not overemphasized Leslie’s previous dunk.

“The important thing about Candace’s dunks are that they came off steals at the end of victories,” said Kathy Goodman, the other co-owner. “They are great for celebrations, but they are not our game.”

Christofferson and Goodman, in their second season as this town’s most distinctive sports owners, have turned the Staples Center into something resembling a well-swept playground.

There are the usual SparKids dancing around in faded blue jeans.

There is this town’s only professional team mascot, a droopy dog who, on Thursday, wonderfully scared the bejabbers out of a courtside patron who wasn’t watching the game.

There is this woman who dances around the court on roller skates and . . . well, OK, that’s really weird.

But it’s a fun environment again, and now that the Sparks have an identity, they need to continue to be themselves.

If the fans wanted dunking, face it, they could have watched Pau Gasol miss about a dozen of them in the NBA Finals.

“I think dunking is fun, but I don’t think the game needs it,” said Parker early Thursday evening.

Oddly, talking to the Sparks’ star was the only dreary part of my first Sparks experience this season.

In a brief interview, she gave curt answers, then quickly looked away.

There were more sighs than insight. She acted as if she were sitting on a hot plate. She clearly was in no mood to sell her sport.

Maybe she didn’t want to talk about the dunks.

“It’s part of a game,” she said. “It’s not my game.”

Or maybe she just didn’t want to talk, period.

“The hard part is, in college, it was the game first, and everything else was secondary,” she said. “Here, it’s different.”

Yes, it is. Here, she is paid handsomely by the team and her sponsors not only to play, but to willingly promote.

If Leslie can do it so graciously for so many years, so can the rookie.

Parker signed autographs after the game, so maybe, earlier, she was just having a bad, prima-donna kind of day.

The dangers of dunking.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.