Nothing Like Miller Time to Bring Out the Fans

As a rule, professional basketball coaches don’t attract more fans than their players. I mean, who goes out to see Richie Adubato or even Phil Jackson?

There have been exceptions in recent memory. Magic Johnson drew crowds when he returned to the floor to coach the Lakers in 1995. Larry Bird probably will when he coaches Indiana next season. Maybe Rick Pitino will too with the Celtics.

To that short, distinguished list, you can add Cheryl Miller. When she brought her WNBA team, the Phoenix Mercury, to the Forum on Sunday night to play the Sparks, the crowd was announced at 10,494.

That’s fewer than the 14,284 who attended the Sparks’ home opener, but it’s more than the 6,563 they averaged in their next four home games after the “We Got Next” hype died of exhaustion. When the 8,505 tickets team officials initially made available were sold out by the middle of last week, they opened other sections.

WNBA officials would like to believe the demand was to see the Mercury’s combative point guard, Michele Timms, or the legendary Nancy Lieberman-Cline. But they know it was because of Miller.

She tried not to act excited beforehand, reverting to the “it’s just another game” coachese she must have learned in two years on the USC bench.

She couldn’t hide her elation later, dancing with brother Reggie and others at center court after the Mercury won, 57-56, on a shot the Sparks will never believe beat the buzzer.

Basketball fans here have had a thing for Miller ever since she established herself as the best women’s college player ever and led the Trojans to NCAA championships in 1983 and ’84. She was so special, she never spent one day in Reggie’s shadow.

More than a decade later, Spark Coach Linda Sharp, who coached Miller at USC, said she’s glad Miller is on the sideline instead of the court.

Miller laughed when she heard that. Although she, at 33, is six years younger than Lieberman-Cline and about the same age as two of her other players, she said she has no desire to play except in an occasional practice.

“I’m a bigger legend in my own mind than on the floor,” she said.

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If the Dodgers win the National League West, they might look back to Sunday’s victory as pivotal. It couldn’t have been easy to bounce back from their ninth-inning collapse the night before. . . .

With the Dodgers losing ugly Saturday night--back-to-back home runs against Todd Worrell, botched plays by Tripp Cromer and Roger Cedeno--I flipped the channel to a taped figure skating exhibition, “Too Hot to Handle.”. . .

I was enchanted by the artistry of Oksana Baiul, just as I had been during her live performance earlier Saturday at the Long Beach Arena. . . .

Baiul, by most accounts, is too hot to handle, driving and living so fast that close friends, like Victor Petrenko, can’t keep up. . . .

I hope she doesn’t hurt herself. She’s an international treasure. . . .

So is Nancy Lopez, even if she’s never won the U.S. Women’s Open. . . .

England’s Alison Nicholas won it on Sunday by triumphing over Lopez and the jingoistic crowd behavior that drove Scotsman Colin Montgomerie to distraction at the men’s U.S. Open. . . .

Lopez sympathized, saying the crowd should have supported Nicholas even though she’s from “another part of the country.” . . .

Lopez is from New Mexico, where a resident last year had trouble procuring tickets to the Atlanta Olympics because, he was told, phone orders couldn’t be accepted from foreign countries. . . .

Old Mexico’s Dennis Reyes adds a kind of diversity to the Dodger starting rotation that makes Mike Piazza’s job easier. . . .

Even without an exceptional move to first, Reyes is better able to hold on runners because he’s left-handed. . . .

Hideki Irabu vs. Hideo Nomo?. . . .

It could happen this season, if the Dodgers and Yankees are in the World Series. . . .

Or next season, even if they aren’t. . . .

George Steinbrenner made a deal with the Devil Rays, allowing the Yankees to have Tampa Bay’s interleague games against the Dodgers next season. . . .

That still needs Major League Baseball’s approval. But the issue might be moot if the owners and players are wise enough to adopt that radical realignment proposal that groups teams by geography, like the Dodgers and Angels. . . .

I’d like to see Disney and Rupert Murdoch match wits somewhere other than a courtroom.

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While wondering how the Dodgers and Giants got through the weekend without a fight, I was thinking: Lennox Lewis must be wondering the same thing about himself, I wanted Mark McGwire to be on the plane with the Angels when they left Oakland, I bet he did too.