Half a Game, but With a Whole Heart : NCAA women’s tournament: USC’s Rashida Jeffery will play until she needs a cane--or a new right knee.

Basketball, a game Rashida Jeffery loves nearly as much as life itself, might in time break her heart.

It has already nearly broken her kneecap.

A USC sophomore, Jeffery is at times the most spectacular player in the Pacific 10 Conference. An aggressive 6-foot-2 inside player, Jeffery jumps as well as anyone in women’s basketball.

She’s a ferocious rebounder and an acrobatic shot-blocker.

For Coach Cheryl Miller, whose Trojans (18-9) meet Memphis (21-7) at Nashville, Tenn., on Friday in a first-round NCAA tournament game, that’s the upside.

The downside for Miller is that Jeffery is so hobbled by an arthritic right kneecap that she’s limited to playing half the game. Doctor’s orders.

The downside for Jeffery is much worse. She has been told she faces future major orthopedic problems if she continues to play.

At best: Maybe a cane. At worst: Knee replacement.

Team orthopedist Thomas Vangsness calls Jeffery “a 21-year-old athlete with a 71-year-old right knee.”

Doctors, coaches, trainers, friends . . . they’ve all advised her to quit playing, to take care of her knee, to be a fan and not a player.

“I’m going to continue to play basketball until I’m physically unable to play any more,” she said recently. “I know that doesn’t sound too smart, but no one understands what basketball means to me. No one has walked in my shoes. No one really knows how hard I worked just to get back to this point, where I can play a little bit.

“If you’d walked in my shoes, you’d see it like I see it.”

Jeffery, whose first name is pronounced Ra-SHAW-da , talked of three knee operations, of long, painful hours in weight rooms, rehabilitating her knee. And of long, tearful phone calls to Tucson, talking to her parents.

“I’ve had a lot of big phone bills the last couple of years, talking to my parents a lot,” she said.

“My Mom, she worries a lot about me. She doesn’t want me to play and she keeps telling me she doesn’t want me to have heartache in my life, later on.

“My Dad, he played basketball at Northern Arizona University, so he knows where I’m coming from. He feels like I do, that basketball is such a great game. He understands how much I love it, why I love to play so much.”

Gerald Jeffery attributes his daughter’s knee troubles to heredity.

“Rashida and I are built alike, we’re long-legged and we’re both kind of knock-kneed,” he said.

“I had sort of the same problems she has now. I’ve (had arthroscopic surgery) too, but nothing like what she goes through.”

Vangsness compared Jeffery’s knee to an old, bald tire. “It’s like having 38,000 miles on a tire that’s guaranteed for 40,000,” he said.

“It’s thin. There isn’t much rubber left. The ends of your leg bones are supposed to have hard cartilage, and that gives you protection against friction when you run or jump.

“But underneath Rashida’s kneecap she has degenerative arthritis. She’s running and jumping bone on bone. Every time she jumps, she puts stress on that kneecap equal to several times her body weight.

“I recommended she not play, when I saw how bad it was. We’ve had long talks. But she’s a tough, determined athlete.

“I’ve seen what she has in other athletes, including football players. I’ve seen it as bad, but her case . . . It doesn’t get any worse than that.

“She’s looking at problems down the road. A worst-case scenario would be a knee replacement.”

Even knowing the cold facts of her case, Jeffery can find a few grains of humor. When asked if she has contemplated life with a cane at 40, she laughed and said:

“Forty? How about 25?”

Jeffery, who sat out all of last season at USC recovering from knee troubles, said she is grateful to be playing at all.

This season, she averaged 8.2 points and 5.2 rebounds but only 19 minutes in 25 games. She had perhaps her best game at Berkeley on Jan. 26 when, in only 13 minutes, she scored 14 points and grabbed seven rebounds.

Late in the season of her junior year at Tucson High, Jeffery was undercut in a playoff game, went down in a heap and didn’t get up.

“I’d had sore knees before, but ice usually took care of it,” she said. “This time, the swelling didn’t go down. I had surgery soon after that and by my senior year I was OK.”

She played in 24 games as a freshman with relatively few knee problems . . . until a fateful practice session before the 1993 NCAA playoffs.

“I jumped up for a pass and came down on someone’s foot,” she said, then described a 12-month recovery period filled with “little goals.”

“The doctor (Vangsness) found a big chunk of cartilage had broken loose, a lot of minor tears and the arthritis,” she said.

The rehab went on and on and on, as she sat out the entire season.

Sue Lerner, the women’s basketball trainer, has been at USC 16 years. Lerner, who supervises Jeffery’s rehab work, thought she had seen it all.

“No USC athlete has gone through what she’s been through, not in the 16 years I’ve been here,” she said.

“Rashida’s done it all, everything from the weight room to stair machines to aqua aerobics. She’s a tough, courageous athlete.”