Woolridge Makes Sure the Sparks Fly
Lisa Leslie blocked a shot in the second half of her first WNBA playoff game and the ball ricocheted off the head of a photographer. Leslie giggled and wagged one finger toward the crowd. “No statement,” Leslie said afterward, “just making the point to get that stuff out of here.”
When the WNBA was started after the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, Leslie was one of the reasons, one of the players who received more money and more publicity and who therefore knew she would be expected to accomplish more than other players.
“I had always been a winner,” Leslie said Tuesday night in the locker room of the Sparks, who had just won their first WNBA playoff game, 71-58, over the Sacramento Monarchs at the Great Western Forum. “I had won Olympic gold medals and world championships and I was used to winning. When we didn’t go to the playoffs the last two years, that was the hardest part of my basketball career. I had to look at myself in the mirror. What was wrong? What was I doing wrong?”
Leslie had a game-high 22 points and 12 rebounds as well as four assists and three blocked shots against Sacramento. Leslie is so smooth and can play so quietly, moving without breathing hard that sometimes her own teammates don’t notice her.
On the first play of the game, Spark point guard Gordana Grubin made a spectacular behind-the-back pass which Leslie caught, shot and scored with in one exhilarating motion. After the game, Grubin insisted the pass had gone to forward La’Keshia Frett. “I’m sure,” Grubin said. But, no, it was Leslie, unnoticed again.
As the WNBA has taken little steps into our consciousness the last three years, it has mostly been the Houston Comets who have done the eye-opening.
It has been Cynthia Cooper and Sheryl Swoopes who have established themselves as star pros and when the Sparks had their biggest crowd of the year last week, 13,116, it was the Comets who were here and suffering publicly after the death of beloved teammate Kim Perrot.
Leslie has watched and wondered. What was wrong with her? What could she do to bring her hometown team to the playoffs? What could she do to have people pay money to come into the Forum to see her play, to cheer for her? What could she do to make the Sparks hot?
“I thought about it a lot,” Leslie said. “You can’t help it. You’re used to winning and then it doesn’t happen.”
Only 8,569 came to the Forum Tuesday night. Before the game DeLisha Milton had spoken hopefully of another 13,000-plus crowd.
But with a start time of 6 p.m., rush hour in Los Angeles, half of those 8,000 didn’t get in until nearly halftime. What they had missed was the miserable Sparks, the Sparks missing one-foot layups by two feet, the Sparks having the ball taken right out of their hands, the Sparks bewildered and befuddled. Even Leslie. “I knew,” Leslie said, “that I had to come up with some different moves in the second half. I had to do some different things.
With a quarter of the game left, the Monarchs were missing three starters--center Yolanda Griffith, averaging 18.8 points and 11.3 rebounds, had undergone knee surgery eight days ago; point guard Ticha Penicheiro, who had been running circles around the Sparks while the Monarchs built as much as a 13-point lead, tried but couldn’t play anymore after she took an inadvertent Leslie knee to the thigh; and guard Kedra Holland-Corn had turned an ankle and was sitting on the bench covered in ice and tears.
So, to be brutally honest, the Sparks might not be practicing today for a game Thursday night against two-time defending champion Houston if not for some luck.
Still, the Sparks responded to a halftime verbal lashing from Coach Orlando Woolridge by outscoring Sacramento by 24 points in the second half. And through it all, Leslie was the star.
“I once told Lisa,” Woolridge said, “that if I was ever head coach here, we would win. I promised her that. Absolutely, Lisa could be a breakout star of these playoffs.”
“Lisa’s the best center in the world,” Grubin said. Grubin, from Yugoslavia, says she understands Leslie’s suffering. “She was used to winning but you cannot win alone. No one can. Now she doesn’t have to. Now we can help her win.”
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WESTERN CONFERENCE
SPARKS: 71
SACRAMENTO: 58
Finals (Best of three)
SPARKS vs. HOUSTON
5:30 p.m. Thursday (Forum), 1 p.m. Sunday (Houston), 7 p.m. Monday (Houston), TBA
EASTERN CONFERENCE
CHARLOTTE: 60
DETROIT: 54
Finals (Best of three)
NEW YORK vs. CHARLOTTE
Friday (Charlotte), Sunday (New York), Monday (New York), all 5 p.m.
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Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com