Williams Holds the Upper Hand

Portland Power Coach Lin Dunn was shocked when she heard ABL star Natalie Williams wants to play for the Long Beach StingRays, as reported in Monday’s editions of The Times.

“I’m completely caught off guard by this,” she said Monday.

“Natalie hadn’t said a word to me about it, and I’m surprised it came up at this time.”

Entering the stretch run for the Western Conference title, Portland has a 1 1/2-game lead over Long Beach.

Williams, arguably the best rebounder in the women’s game, told league officials she wanted such a trade during All-Star weekend two weeks ago in Orlando, Fla. But she apparently didn’t inform her coach, whom she has publicly supported.

“Natalie likes Lin a lot, but she just wants to be closer to her home and family,” a league official said.

Here’s a rare case in which a professional athlete holds all the cards, just as many of the pro football stars of the early 1960s did, when the NFL was caught up in a dollar war with the upstart AFL.

The ABL is locked in a struggle with the WNBA, a league with far deeper pockets but far fewer superstars, like Williams.

So when she told ABL officials she wanted to be traded to Long Beach, she didn’t even have to threaten “or else.” The ABL, since it began more than a year ago, has lost only two of its 99 players to the WNBA.

Nikki McCray of Columbus and Cindy Brown of Long Beach jumped before this season began. It’s difficult to imagine ABL chief Gary Cavalli letting Williams slip away to the L.A. Sparks?

Translation: Whatever Natalie wants, Natalie gets.

Then there’s this wrinkle: What happens if Portland demands StingRay standout Yolanda Griffith in return, and she declines to go to Portland? She too would be free to play out her option and go to, say, Chicago (her hometown), where a WNBA expansion team could very well arrive in 1999.

Whatever, the ABL’s two leading rebounders meet Sunday afternoon in Long Beach.

Both Portland and Long Beach, by the way, have clinched playoff berths.

If the season ended today (Long Beach has eight remaining regular-season games), the StingRays would enter the playoffs seeded third and would play No. 6 Colorado in a best-of-three series beginning Feb. 21 in Long Beach.

Conference leaders Columbus and Portland would get a 10-day break before entering the semifinal round.

TOLER UPDATE

Spark guard Penny Toler is back home in Las Vegas from her Israeli pro season . . . prematurely, according to accounts from her team, Ramat-Hasharon.

Toler was averaging 36 points a game in her second season for Ramat-Hasharon when she injured her right knee Dec. 1. Rest was prescribed, and Toler sat for two weeks, she said.

“After a couple of weeks, they wanted me to practice when I couldn’t even run,” Toler said.

“Even now, two months later, I’ve been rehabbing and I’m only back to 80%. I can run now, but I can’t cut or jump. I sprained every major ligament in the knee, but I won’t need surgery.

“When they started giving me lectures about how athletes are supposed to play with pain, that was it. I mean, I’m 32. I’ve been doing this most of my life. I didn’t need that. So I came home.”

The timing of her departure--shortly before a European Cup game--upset at least one journalist, Dorit Keren Zvi, editor of the newspaper Zomet Hasharon.

He wrote: “She . . . sneaked out of her apartment provided to her by the club in the middle of the night to fly back to the USA. She never intended to fulfill her obligations in the contract she signed . . . and ran away like a thief in the night.”

BRUINS ON A ROLL

Thanks to its sweep of the Washington schools last week, UCLA’s women are off to their best Pacific 10 Conference start, 7-2.

Since their 0-3 start this season, the Bruins are 12-3 and looking very much like a tournament team. UCLA hosts Oregon, also 7-2, Friday night.