Her Turn to Drive : With Mother as Inspiration, Leslie Puts Behind USC Woes, Becomes Big Wheel on U.S. Team

Poof, stardom!

One moment she was the woman who couldn’t quite succeed Cheryl Miller as a player at USC, the next she was playing in some Italian village and now here’s Lisa Leslie with a nation lining up to interview her, photograph her, pay her money to endorse products, the whole number.

This being a blinding new day for women’s basketball, she’s happy to find the nation is her own, rather than one on the Mediterranean or the Sea of Japan.

How about a two-page layout in Vogue?

She had one of those. She and two teammates are on the cover of Sports Illustrated’s pre-Olympic issue. Her photos have been sent to SI as an application for its swimsuit issue.

How about a pro contract?

She has one of those, with the soon-to-be born American Basketball League. For years, women players going abroad for money formed an American Foreign Legion, flying off to Western Europe or Japan but suddenly there are two new U.S. leagues coming and the powerful NBA marketing arm is promoting the national team and corporations are fighting each other to climb on board.

How about a sneaker contract? She’s got one of those too. In the day of the woman basketball player, she’s the woman basketball player of the day.

It’s part her, mostly luck. Miller was a decade early. Teresa Edwards, soon to be a four-time Olympian, was taciturn. Sheryl Swoopes, anointed by Nike, which put out an Air Swoopes shoe three years ago, is a fine player with personality but that isn’t the same thing as being an outgoing 6-5 star with that special glow and appetite for attention that leads one to cheerfully make time for fans, reporters, anchors, photographers, TV crews. . . .

A week before the opening ceremonies, they’re in Indianapolis, practicing for their last exhibition. Eleven women finish practice, do 30 minutes of media stuff.

Leslie is still on the floor, shooting layups and short jumpers.

Her teammates are winding it up and heading for the bus when she finishes and sits down on the bench. A reporter comes up.

“Give her a moment to cool down,” says the team publicist.

Actually, Leslie is taking the moment to dress up. Still in her practice stuff, she puts on a ring with a green stone on a finger on her left hand, a gold one on a finger on her right, gold hoop earrings, a gold chain with a cross on it, a watch with a silver band, then applies her lipstick.

She proceeds to do standups for three different TV crews, then a 30-minute interview with newspaper people, denying all the while she’s anyone special--who, moi?

“Me personally?” she says, laughing an embarrassed little laugh. “I wouldn’t think so. You think so? Maybe because you’re from L.A.

“I think there’s probably four marquee players on the team, Rebecca [Lobo, the Connecticut star, now a lowly sub], Sheryl, myself, I mean Dawn [Staley, a reserve guard], you can name a few. We all have things going on for ourselves. I just think when you talk about one, you need to talk about all of us.”

A few minutes later, Leslie is asked what she can aspire to as a model, now that she’s appeared in Vogue.

“Well,” she says, laughing her embarrassed laugh again, “you can get on the front of Vogue.”

When she’s finished, the arena is empty except for her and the reporters. The bus left a while ago. The publicist stays behind to drive her back to the hotel.

Right. She’s the one.

*

In the beginning, she was a tall little girl--6 feet as a seventh grader at age 12--who carried herself proudly, as well prepared by her mother, who was 6-3, to withstand all the things schoolmates said.

“I think my mom just did a great job in telling me when I was little that kids are going to tease me,” Lisa says, “ ‘cause all the name-calling--oh my goodness!

“It was kind of like I was prepared for it so I would laugh. People called me Olive Oyl, Beanstalk, all type of things. I would just think, ‘Oh gosh, you have such a small mind.’

“I’m like 10, 11, saying stuff like that. That’s something for a child to be saying but my momma taught me that some people grow on the inside and some grow on the outside and you just have to understand it. Everybody doesn’t understand.”

Christine Leslie was a powerhouse. Lisa’s father died when she was 12 and Christine, fearful of being laid off by the Postal Service, bought an 18-wheeler, after seeing a commercial for driving school. She graduated from the school, got her license, moved her kids in with a sister and headed for Ft. Wayne, Ind., to work for North American Van Lines. She missed her kids, and vice versa, but that was what had to to be done.

When Lisa was in college, Christine was still on the road, hauling coconut oil from Long Beach to the City of Industry, two round trips a day.

“It was exciting for us as kids,” says Lisa. “We’d go in the truck in the summer, go all across the country until the day school started. You know, pick up school clothes on the road, go back to school.

“The weirdest part about it was like Career Day when you tell what your parent does--’My mom’s a truck driver.’ One day she brought her truck to the school so I was like, I became known.”

Of course, as a child gets older and realizes every mom isn’t pushing 18 wheels up and down the interstates, one begins to appreciate how dynamite she is, even if it’s the occasion for another 100,000 jokes in the meantime.

“I think the reason why I really liked it,” Lisa says, “was because my mom’s beautiful. She’s very feminine and she does a job that is quote, unquote, a man’s job and she did it with pride, she took care of it, she did what she had to do.

“I think in sports I kind of take the same thing. Playing basketball, when I’m out there I do what I have to do but off the court I’m myself, which is pretty feminine, you know, compared to the rest, I guess. I wear my lipstick and do whatever.”

It took a while to get to the basketball part. Lisa initially didn’t like sports. When she was dragooned into playing for her seventh grade team, she told the coach if she fell--she was appalled at the sight of girls tumbling on the outdoor courts--she was quitting.

“I didn’t fall,” she says, “and we went 7-0.”

A star was born, slowly. Her cousin, Craig Simpson, talked her into playing on a boys team in the summer Slam’n’Jam program. Leslie says she had to steal the ball from teammates but began getting the occasional pass after proving she could shoot.

“I think it was my destiny,” she says, “because all my cousins always say, ‘Lisa, how did you get this way, we don’t understand how you get out there and be so physical now.’ As a kid, I would always cry, the first one back in the house.

“I’ve been known for the elbows, sharp elbows. They’re skinny. I’m 6-5 and when I turn my elbows are at everyone’s head so I’m like elbowing all these kids. I’m saying I’m sorry and my coach is like, ‘Lisa, you can’t apologize! You gotta keep going, just play, she’ll get up!’ ”

As a senior at Morningside High, she put herself on the map, scoring 101 points in the first half against South Torrance, which quit at that point. Inevitably, she was compared to Miller and, going with it, went to USC.

She had one basic problem there: She wasn’t Cheryl.

“It made me keep trying,” she says, “that’s all I can say.

“It was great to be compared to Cheryl, of course. I thought it was a lot of pressure in the sense that people were expecting me to win a championship because Cheryl had done it before. We didn’t have the same players.

“And I tried. I think scoring 101 points made it hard. People who didn’t understand the game of basketball expected me to score 50 to 100 every game. So when I averaged 20 or 22, it was like, uh, uh.”

Her elbows started a rumble or two. There was resentment of Miller, who returned as coach. In Leslie’s senior year, she was a unanimous choice as national player of the year--but wasn’t Pac-10 player of the year.

For women players, all one could do after graduation was emigrate. Leslie played a season in Alcamo, Italy. American players abroad are treated like royalty, given six-figure salaries, room, board, free cars and tax breaks--try no taxes--but the price is the pressure to put up points with defenses collapsing all over them. It was hard but good for Leslie who got stronger and more aggressive.

Just in time for her, the new deal for women kicked in: a national team, marketed by the NBA, two new American leagues. If the right time had finally arrived, someone had to be in the right place.

“Yeah,” Leslie says, timidly, as if afraid to dare her luck to turn, “this is probably the best year of my life. That’s hard to say, huh?

“I mean, I’m happy I’m 24. I’m young. I’m still one of the youngest on the team. Happy playing basketball, getting better, playing well. And the public is really responding to us well. It feels good to be a woman’s basketball player at this time, 1996. I know there was a time that it probably wasn’t that big of a deal.”

It is today. It could be tomorrow. Lisa Leslie’s destiny is looking better by the moment.