ABL, Lasers Are Giddy Over Folkl

Quick quiz:

With excitement high at the San Jose Lasers’ offices after their two-game sweep of New England in the ABL playoffs, why would numerous Laser staffers be expected at the Stanford-Arizona game Saturday?

It’s about who gets flowers, in an annual pregame rite at Stanford’s last home game of the season.

It’s about 6-foot-2 Kristin Folkl, one of the top talents in the college game, called by some the equal of Tennessee’s Chamique Holdsclaw.

Folkl is thought to be an outstanding pro prospect, athletic and strong enough to be an immediate impact player.

She’s a basketball junior but is in her senior academic year. It’s assumed by many she’ll make herself available for pro basketball, and she gave Volleyball Magazine writer Rick Hazeltine an indication that her first choice would be the ABL.

A standout member of Stanford’s national champion volleyball team, Folkl told the magazine that she wants to compete in one of the U.S. pro basketball leagues . . . “and with USA Volleyball in the summer.”

That rules out the WNBA, which plays in the summer.

So, if Stanford Coach Tara VanDerveer presents her with flowers Saturday, it could mean she’s coming out.

Enter the Lasers, widely expected to make Folkl a territorial pick with their first-round pick. But no one’s talking . . . yet.

It remains to be seen if the league will permit San Jose to claim Folkl. Stanford’s Kate Starbird went last year to Seattle--at her request--as a territorial. Her hometown is Tacoma.

Folkl is from St. Louis. No team there. Can San Jose claim her because she went to Stanford? Stay tuned.

If San Jose gets Folkl, the Lasers could challenge Columbus and its aging stars for league supremacy. The young Lasers, who face the Quest in a best-of-three semifinal series beginning Saturday, had the ABL’s best draft last spring, starting with 6-5 Clarisse Machanguana from Old Dominion, 5-6 Kedra Holland-Corn from Georgia and 6-3 Katryna Gaither from Notre Dame.

They already had 5-8 Jennifer Azzi, 6-0 Charlotte Smith and 6-1 Sheri Sam.

Machanguana is the most improved player in the league. In the series-clinching victory over the Blizzard on Sunday, she had 27 points and 14 rebounds.

*

When the WNBA announced plans for its first season last summer, Gary Cavalli and the other founders of the ABL made much of the fact they were playing their games in the traditional basketball season, and sneered at the WNBA’s summer plans.

“They’re throwing them [U.S. women players] a bone, a summer league,” Cavalli said.

Now, two seasons later, the WNBA’s decision to play in the summer begins to look more like a masterstroke. And it’s starting to look as if the ABL commitment to a fall-through-spring season may have been a mistake.

Consider:

* WNBA attendance last summer (9,669 per game) was twice what was forecast.

* ABL regular-season and playoff scheduling has been a nightmare. The Long Beach StingRays, to cite one example, opened their postseason with a 4 p.m. game at the Arrowhead Pond of Anaheim because of a conflict at their regular arena, the Pyramid.

Then Long Beach had to play 24 hours later in Denver . . . because of a scheduling problem at McNichols Arena.

The WNBA chose to play in the summer for two reasons: Better TV date scheduling, and no arena conflicts with their NBA big brothers.

If the ABL, which was first out of the blocks, had played in the summer, would that have compelled the WNBA to play fall-spring, the same as NBA teams?

Notes

San Jose will have two marquee women’s basketball events in 1999. It already had the NCAA Final Four, now it also has the ’99 ABL All-Star game, Jan. 24 at the San Jose Arena. . . . Two members of the Houston Comets, former Trojans Cynthia Cooper and Tina Thompson, will be honored Friday night at USC’s home game against Washington.