Sparks Get a Lift in Hurry
Rhonda Windham, the Sparks’ general manager, said she wanted to see some fire in her players’ eyes, in explaining why she fired the team’s coach, Linda Sharp, Wednesday afternoon.
She had to wait only a few hours.
The Sparks (5-7), apparently energized by their new coach, Julie Rousseau, reversed their recent history of blowing leads and instead blew out the Houston Comets, 77-52, at the Forum before an announced 7,240.
And now Rousseau, 1-0 for her pro coaching career, would like an encore. And how about, she wondered, Saturday afternoon in New York’s Madison Square Garden, against the 8-2 New York Liberty?
“If they play like that the rest of the way, forget it,” Houston Coach Van Chancellor said, “They’re the team to beat in this league.”
He said his Comets, who shot 29.5% and fell to 7-5, were the victims of a team riding the emotional wave.
“As far as we’re concerned, they picked a lousy time to make a coaching change,” he said.
No second-half leads blown by this team.
The Sparks fell behind at the outset, 10-4, but after Tamecka Dixon put Los Angeles up, 13-12, with a three-point basket with 13:00 to go before halftime, the Sparks played their best basketball of the season. A 26-6 run gave them a 39-18 halftime lead.
Rousseau said she told her team at halftime that the second half was to be thought of as a new game.
“I told them the first half they’d just played did not exist, that it had been wiped away,” she said. “I told them to go out there and play another complete game.”
Happiest of all with the win was Zheng Haixia, who scored 15 points in 20 minutes, and then at the final horn ran into the stands to embrace members of China’s men’s national team, here to play in the Long Beach summer pro league.
WNBA Notes
Nancy Lieberman-Cline of the Phoenix Mercury was fined $500 by the league. Lieberman-Cline grabbed the Sparks’ Jamila Wideman by the throat seconds after the halftime horn in Sunday’s game at the Forum, touching off a small melee. Afterward, Lieberman-Cline admitted holding Wideman by the throat, saying: “She forearmed me in the throat, and I didn’t even have the ball. So yes, I grabbed her by the throat and told her never to do that again--not to this player, anyway.”
Also at the league’s New York office, President Val Ackerman crowed a bit over attendance, as the league closes in on the halfway point. She’d projected average paid crowds of 4,000 before the season began. “In light of fan response in our eight cities, we now believe we will . . . achieve an average of 6,500 per game by the end of the season.”
Charlotte 75, Utah 63--Andrea Stinson had 19 points and 10 rebounds and the Sting remained unbeaten at home with a victory in front of an announced crowd of 6,110.
Charlotte (5-5) forced 16 turnovers and had a 36-27 rebounding edge over Utah (3-9), which came in averaging a league-leading 36.9 rebounds.
Phoenix 84, Sacramento 67--Phoenix point guard Michele Timms had 17 points, five assists and four three-pointers as the Mercury defeated the Monarchs in front of an announced 12,636 at Phoenix.
Jennifer Gillom, the team’s leading scorer, had 17 of her 19 points in the second half as the Mercury led by as many as 22 points.