ABL Speculation Is Nonstop

As the WNBA winds down its second season and the ABL strives mightily to crank up its third, we checked in at Rumor Central over the weekend.

Anyone working the phones with women’s pro basketball people lately could have been talked into any of the following:

1. The ABL has a major investor ready to come in with a seven-digit check, but first wants to see “down-to-the-bone” cost-cutting. Hence, so the rumor supposedly confirms, league pay cuts, layoffs and possible closure of the Long Beach franchise.

2. A second group of interested investors is out there, and it believes the value of the ABL’s player contracts is very attractive, no matter how much money the league is losing.

3. If the StingRay franchise is shut down and its players distributed to other teams, is Natalie Williams--the league’s leading scorer and rebounder--a free agent? Her contract states she’s to play for Long Beach.

4. The WNBA is so reluctant to open its books to its almost-formed players’ union that it would even consider merger talks with the ABL to delay the union’s formation for more than a year. Another source says ABL chief Gary Cavalli and WNBA President Val Ackerman already had preliminary conversations about such a merger.

“Not true,” Ackerman said of that one. “There have been no such conversations.”

Rumors aside, if the StingRays survive the ABL hatchet, they might have to play next season without one of their best players, Beverly Williams. The shooting guard injured a knee in a pickup game in Austin, Texas, over the weekend, then saw a University of Texas team physician whose preliminary diagnosis was a torn anterior cruciate ligament. Long Beach General Manager Bill McGillis said Williams was to be examined by the StingRays’ doctor today.

COMET CONTROVERSY

As amazing as this might sound, the Houston Comets, going for a second consecutive WNBA title after going 27-3 this year, are not happy campers.

Trouble developed during training camp in May between superstars Cynthia Cooper and Sheryl Swoopes, and between both of them and Coach Van Chancellor. Swoopes bolted training camp at one point and stayed out two days, returning only after a long talk with Chancellor.

No one is talking about the rift, but whatever problems exist between Cooper and Swoopes couldn’t have been helped by Cooper winning her second most valuable player award . . . and the accompanying $25,000 check.

CROWDS COUNT

The WNBA released final attendance figures, showing the league had 73 crowds in excess of 10,000, up from 41 last year. Average attendance was 10,869, up 12% from last summer.

The leaders were Washington (15,910) and New York (14,935). The Sparks finished ninth (7,653).

Here’s the downside:

When Houston won at Charlotte in the the Comet-Sting series opener Saturday, the Sting announced a crowd of 6,087. Not one section in the 24,000-seat Charlotte Coliseum was close to being full. Most guessed the crowd count at about 5,000. Ackerman wasn’t happy.

“Every time I think about how far we’ve come, about how great our response has been in Washington, New York and Phoenix, I look at Charlotte and see how far we have to go,” she said.

She identified Charlotte, Sacramento, Utah and Los Angeles as having disappointing attendance.

BUZZER-BEATERS

The USC ticket office is selling $30 reserved seats for the 1999 NCAA women’s West regional at the Sports Arena, March 20-22. Call (213) 740-4672. . . . Orlando Woolridge looks as if he’s in as the Sparks’ permanent head coach. So was Julie Rousseau a year ago, right? Whatever, team President Johnny Buss said recently he was “very confident with Orlando.” . . . Mirthful moment from Game 1 of the Houston-Charlotte series: Houston got a technical foul for calling a first-half timeout it didn’t have. Chancellor jumped all over his assistant coach, Alisa Scott, who is assigned to keep track. With seconds remaining in the game and Houston well ahead, Scott broke up the entire Comet bench during a Charlotte timeout by saying loudly: “Coach--you got one full and one thirty!”