Their Dreams Lasted Only One Season

The second professional women’s basketball game in Orange County had everything you could ask from a pro sports event.

When the Long Beach StingRays of the ABL hosted the New England Blizzard in front of 6,000 at the Arrowhead Pond of Anaheim on Jan. 10, the atmosphere was one of enthusiasm and support.

A lot can change in 18 years. Ask anyone who remembers the California Dreams.

“I call them the Nightmares,” said Mel Sims, laughing, and he should know. He coached the Women’s Pro Basketball League team through its one abbreviated season in 1979-80.

The Dreams were one of seven expansion teams that doubled the size of a league that had existed one season and had yet to establish itself. Their owners hoped to tap the Orange County market, but ended up playing only one game in the county. They were talented players whose names few recognized, and even fewer learned.

“We used to joke that we had counted the number of people [in the arena] by the end of the national anthem,” said Muffett McGraw, the team’s point guard. “But I think our attitude was, ‘I don’t care.’ We were just happy to be playing.”

In the late ‘70s, opportunity was all that women basketball players sought. The WBL provided it in 1978. Franchises were awarded with an eye toward keeping travel costs down, and salaries also were low.

But the league sought a national profile the next year, and an ownership group of three Chicago attorneys was given the rights to the Southern California market. When the Anaheim Convention Center was booked for all but a handful of dates, the bulk of the Dreams’ games were scheduled for the Long Beach Arena.

The search for a coach led to Sims, for seven seasons an assistant to Cal State Fullerton men’s Coach Bobby Dye. “I though it was the right time for me,” Sims said, “and I thought the league was ready to go.”

The Dreams weren’t ready, however. The roster didn’t include anyone to handle the ball.

“They hadn’t signed any guards,” Sims said, “and by that time all the good guards had been signed by other teams.”

Enter McGraw, who had signed with the WBL’s new Philadelphia franchise but left when her husband took a job in Birmingham, Ala. A few months later, they decided to give her pro career another chance. “I made some calls and found out that California needed a point guard,” she said.

Sims had one other suggestion on personnel. He insisted the team sign Nancy Dunkle, a three-time All-American at Cal State Fullerton and an Olympian in 1976.

“I was convinced that it was critical for the league to sign players with local recognition,” Sims said.

With the exception of UCLA’s Ann Meyers, no player was more recognizable in Southern California than Dunkle. When Billie Moore left the Titan women’s team to coach UCLA, Dunkle replaced her as perhaps the youngest head coach in the nation. Two years later, she was ready to play again.

The Dreams traded the rights to another Olympian, Cindy Brogdon, to New Orleans for the rights to Dunkle, and signed her to a two-year contract at $50,000 a year, about $40,000 more than the average WBL salary.

Dunkle had some talented players in support. Stacy Rhoades, a 5-9 forward, led the team in scoring and rebounding. In Mary Scharff, a guard from Immaculata, and Jane Ellen Cook, a forward from Louisiana Tech, the Dreams had standouts from two of the nation’s top college programs.

The league did the Dreams no favor with the schedule, however, which included only one home game among the first eight. By the time they returned for a December homestand, they were 1-7.

When they finally made their first appearance in Anaheim, on Dec. 15, only 258 turned out for a 96-85 loss to the New Orleans Pride. It was their only game in the Convention Center.

The Dreams’ season began to turn around after the WBL pulled the plug in December on insolvent franchises in Philadelphia and Washington. The Dreams picked up Linda Matthews, Philadelphia’s leading scorer, in a dispersal draft, and she added scoring from the backcourt, including a club-record 37 points in an overtime victory over Iowa.

With 10 of their next 12 games at Long Beach, the Dreams won seven, but attendance was not improving. Only 601 showed up to see Meyers and the New Jersey Gems. A game against the defending league champion Houston Angels attracted a crowd estimated at 90.

No crowd meant no revenue. Players’ paychecks sometimes bounced, and by mid-January they stopped being issued altogether.

“My husband would wait outside practice on pay day with the car running,” McGraw said, “so we’d be the first ones at the bank. Sometimes, just the first couple of checks would clear.”

The Dreams capped a trip in late February with an 88-80 victory at San Francisco to improve their record to 11-17. On Feb. 27, General Manager Bob Joseph canceled a game against the Minnesota Fillies, and was promptly fired by Laurence Kozlicki, who headed the ownership group.

Joseph claimed he had no choice, that he was attempting to head off a player boycott that had been threatened for three weeks. “The franchise owes $100,000 in debts, of which $15,000 is salaries,” he told The Times. “Nobody, including me, has been paid in six weeks.”

After a second cancellation, the WBL revoked franchise rights on March 2.

“The owner said, ‘We can’t pay you,’ and that was it,” said Sims, who had the foresight to have received half his salary up front. “They gave me a couple of checks, and I still have them. They were no good. I went back [to the team offices in Anaheim] the next time, and everything was gone.”

Within days, Dunkle had been dispatched to San Francisco, Matthews to Houston, and Rhoades and backup center Patty Bucklew to New York, where they won a league championship. The Dreams were no more.

The rest of the league didn’t last much longer than the Dreams. Houston folded at the conclusion of the season. New York, Iowa and Milwaukee agreed to sit out one year in search of new financing. Only three ex-Dreams--Dunkle, Cook and Matthews--played during the 1980-81 season.

Another member of the organization given a second chance was Kozlicki, who was awarded a franchise in Omaha, Neb. His Wranglers won the league title in 1981 before the WBL finally expired in a sea of red ink.

“It was too early [for a pro league],” said Sims. “Players now, like Lisa Leslie, have a high profile and good PR from television and the Olympics. People know who they are, but they didn’t have that status [when the WBL was in operation.]”

Sims, 56, went on to establish himself as a high school coach. His Chino Hills Ayala girls’ team is ranked among the top 10 in Division I-AA of the Southern Section.

Cook, who finished her pro career with the St. Louis Streak, became a high school coach in Missouri. Dunkle works for the university police force at California.

The Dreams’ greatest legacy may be the coaching career of McGraw, who returned to her alma mater, St. Joseph, as an assistant and in 1986 became head coach at Notre Dame. There she built one of the nation’s top programs and coached the Irish to the NCAA Final Four last spring. She has come full circle, sending two players from that team, Katryna Gaither and Beth Morgan, to a pro career in the ABL.

They likely won’t have the same experience their coach faced.

“It is totally different now,” McGraw said. “Money is so much a big part of it, and players tie respect to the money, the shoe deals and endorsements. They’re not playing as much for the sake of playing . . . to keep on playing without the money, I’m not sure how many of them would do that now.”

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Dream’s Season

The game-by-game record and roster of the principal players of the California Dreams:

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Nov. 16 at Chicago L 118-113 Nov. 18 at Iowa L 124-86 Nov. 20 SAN FRANCISCO L 98-91 Nov. 24 at Houston L 108-84 Nov. 27 at Dallas L 116-100 Nov. 29 at St. Louis W 90-87 Dec. 1 at New York L 119-109 Dec. 3 at Milwaukee L 97-91 Dec. 14 PHILADELPHIA W 84-70 Dec. 15 NEW ORLEANS L 96-85 Dec. 20 NEW YORK L 110-91 Dec. 27 at San Francisco L 99-93 Jan. 8 CHICAGO W 89-84 Jan. 9 at San Francisco L 88-72 Jan. 15 NEW JERSEY W 99-94 Jan. 17 ST. LOUIS L 100-97 Jan. 23 DALLAS W 105-84 Jan. 25 SAN FRANCISCO W 103-101 Jan. 27 at New Orleans L 100-98 Feb. 4 HOUSTON L 105-99 Feb. 7 SAN FRANCISCO W 93-82 Feb. 9 IOWA W 115-112 Feb. 11 NEW ORLEANS L 113-100 Feb. 13 DALLAS W 110-94 Feb. 17 at New Jersey L 95-79 Feb. 19 at Minnesota L 114-74 Feb. 21 at St. Louis W 102-92 Feb. 23 at San Francisco W 88-80

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Player Pos Hgt College GP PPG RPG APG Stacey Rhoades F 5-9 Cheyney State 28 17.1 10.6 1.8 Nancy Dunkle C 6-2 Cal State Fullerton 28 15.5 9.0 2.3 Linda Matthews G 5-8 North Carolina State 16 15.1 3.3 5.8 Mary Scharff G 5-8 Immaculata 28 12.0 3.8 4.0 Jane Ellen Cook F 5-9 Louisiana Tech 28 10.6 2.3 2.2 Patti Bucklew F/C 6-2 Slippery Rock 28 7.8 4.9 0.7 Michelle McKenzie F 6-0 Federal City 24 6.4 3.0 0.3 Joan Uhl F 5-11 Cal Poly Pomona 24 6.0 4.5 0.6 Angela Scott F 6-0 Maryland 22 5.9 3.2 0.4 Pam Shirley G 5-7 Utah State 25 3.5 1.7 1.5 Muffett McGraw G 5-6 St. Joseph’s 28 3.3 1.1 3.4

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