Black May Be Short in Stature but She Stacks Up on Defense

All her young life, they told her.

You’re too short. Find another sport. Have you tried golf?

She listened. And it all became her fuel.

Today, at 31 and still 5 feet 3, Debbie Black comes up to the armpits of most of her Colorado Xplosion teammates. When she has an on-court conversation with 6-5 Sylvia Crawley, Black comes up to Crawley’s uniform number.

Crawley dunks.

Black has never touched a basketball net.

Yet guess who has the longest contract among the American Basketball League’s 99 players?

Right, its shortest player. And the only one from Tasmania.

She’s in the first year of a three-year deal with the ABL, with two option years after that, and she makes about $100,000 per year.

So take that, all you Philadelphia-area coaches who told her to find another sport.

Every parent of a young basketball-playing daughter who figures to be “vertically challenged” should be required to have her see Black play.

She is not a gifted athlete. She has exceptional quickness, and that’s about it.

What she does have is an 18-pound heart. When she finishes a game, she has played herself to the brink of exhaustion . . . and the players she has guarded are left in a fury, often cursing in frustration.

Black plays pit-bull defense. We’re talking jaw-to-jaw, navel-to-navel, step-for-step. They should let her wear a helmet.

After a game at Long Beach last week, she left the court with a gouge on her throat and a black eye caused by an elbow.

Said exasperated Long Beach point guard Andrea Nagy: “Eventually, someone is going to punch her.”

It has already happened, Andrea.

“One time in college [at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia] I was guarding Clemette Haskins of Western Kentucky,” Black said.

“I’d gotten a lot of steals off her and late in the game, she just put the ball on her left hip and punched me in the face with her right hand. It knocked me down, but I got right up. She walked off the court because she knew the officials would eject her.”

Said Vicky Link, onetime college opponent of Black’s: “I used to hate playing her. . . . She’s always in your face and gets a lot of steals off you. . . . She makes you look so foolish.”

How did she go from “too short” to arguably the best defensive player in the women’s game?

“I could score a lot in high school, but when I got to St. Joe’s I couldn’t,” she said.

“My St. Joe’s coach, Jim Foster [now at Vanderbilt], told me: ‘You do one thing really well. Defense. Get better at it,’ ” she said.

“So I did. I developed the attitude that when I got a steal, that’s as good as a basket.”

Last season, she not only led the ABL in steals with 177, she had 66 more than anyone else.

She credits her legs.

“I spent the off-season with my parents, in Lancaster, Pa.,” she said.

“Four days a week I ran eight to 10 miles on those Amish country roads, and lifted weights three times a week. I got stronger. I’m lucky--I’ve never missed a game because of an injury.”

She is the ABL’s Tasmanian Devil. The league found her marooned in the Australian women’s pro league, playing for Hobart, when it invited about 500 players to its first tryout in Atlanta in the spring of 1996.

She has played there seven seasons since leaving St. Josephe’s, and led the league in steals six times.

“I loved playing in Australia, the people were great to me,” she said.

“But I’m an American and I couldn’t understand why there wasn’t a pro league in the States. The way it’s all worked out, I couldn’t be happier.”