Thompson Switches Gears to WNBA

Within the span of an hour Sunday, the bidding war between pro basketball’s two women’s leagues escalated. The focal point was USC’s 6-foot-3 Tina Thompson, who, in a late-hour reversal, signed with the Women’s National Basketball Assn.

The American Basketball League countered Sunday with an announcement it had signed Connecticut’s 6-7 Kara Wolters and Georgia’s 6-3 LaKeshia Frett.

Thompson said she hopes to be drafted today by the Lakers’ WNBA team, the Sparks, who have the draft’s third pick. She sat with Spark Coach Linda Sharp and General Manager Rhonda Windham at Sunday’s Laker game.

Thompson’s signing by the WNBA was a sudden and unexpected development. She was tendered a last-hour offer that beat a deal offered by the ABL.

Her agent said Saturday afternoon that Thompson would sign with the ABL today, then said 90 minutes later the signing was no longer definite.

The WNBA, beaten badly by the second-year ABL’s string of recent signings of premier college seniors, apparently made an 11th-hour decision to draw a line over Thompson, one of college basketball’s most dominating forwards the past two seasons.

With the Sparks, she would join former USC teammate Lisa Leslie and China’s 6-9 Zheng Haixia to form the biggest front line in the women’s game.

The ABL and Wolters, called by her UConn coach, Geno Auriemma, “the most dominating post player in the history of women’s college basketball,” will hold a news conference at Hartford today.

She will be drafted by the New England Blizzard, the ABL’s runaway attendance leader last season at 5,003 paid per game.

No one was talking money Sunday, but the WNBA might have gone beyond a $150,000 package to land Thompson. That’s said to be what the ABL will pay Stanford Naismith Award winner Kate Starbird next season.

The ABL wanted Thompson to play for its Long Beach expansion team, which has the first pick in its May 4 draft. The focus now shifts to Old Dominion’s 6-5 Clarise Machanguana for Long Beach.

Thompson led the Pacific 10 in scoring last season at 22.5 points per game.