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What: “She Got Game--My Personal Odyssey”

Author: Cynthia Cooper

Publisher: Warner Books

Price: $20

Here’s an item for followers of the Sparks to ponder: When the WNBA was taking shape in 1996, Cynthia Cooper, the Houston Comets’ star guard and two-time league MVP, wanted to play for the Sparks.

That’s one of many nuggets in her book, wherein she describes her journey from the mean streets of Los Angeles, near the Jordan Downs projects at 105th and Lou Dillon in South-Central L.A.

How tough was it?

* As a child, she never had a bicycle.

* Her clothes were either hand-me-downs or bought at the Salvation Army thrift store.

* She was molested by a man, an “acquaintance of the family.”

* She begged for nickels outside a liquor store, to buy candy.

* Raised by a single mother who worked two jobs, Mary Cobbs--who died of cancer last February--the dinner-table staples were rice and potatoes, bought in 100-pound bags. The beverage: Kool-Aid.

Cooper credits a Locke High assistant coach, Lucias Franklin, as her first basketball mentor.

She writes of inferiority feelings on the day she checked into a USC dorm. She saw a parade of luxury cars, discharging other incoming freshmen.

“I thought about looking for a rear entrance . . . ,” she writes.

She takes you through her USC years with Cheryl Miller, Rhonda Windham and the McGee twins, Pam and Paula; her 1988 and 1992 Olympic experiences and her 11 pro seasons in Europe.

Of 1996, she writes: “I stayed busy trying to lobby Rhonda Windham to get the WNBA to make me the second player [behind Lisa Leslie] named to the L.A. team.”

Instead, the league assigned her to Houston, leaving Spark partisans to wonder what might have been.