Sunshine Changes Forecast for Sparks
This town’s newest power forward jumps up, steps in front of you, turns her back.
“Now we’re gonna play a game called ‘Make Me Laugh,”’ says DeLisha Milton.
Now we’re gonna what?
“When I count to three, you cannot laugh. You cannot make a sound. You cannot even show your teeth,” she says. “Ready? One . . . two . . . three.”
She spins and faces you with eyelids rolled back, fingers stuck awkwardly in teeth, mouth fixed in a crooked grin.
You laugh. You aren’t sure why, but you laugh for a full 30 seconds. You laugh so hard, others hanging around the Great Western Forum floor after Monday afternoon’s Sparks practice are staring.
“You lose! You lose!” DeLisha Milton shouts in delight, plopping back down in her courtside seat. “Now, it’s your turn to try to make me laugh.”
After a winter of dealing with a guy nicknamed “the Worm,” how are we ever going to adjust to one known as “Sunshine?”
*
The Sparks, three years old and all grown up, play host to the Sacramento Monarchs on Thursday night to begin what could be called “the year of finally.”
Finally, with the inclusion of players from the defunct American Basketball League, the WNBA will feature the best women’s basketball in the world.
Finally, the league will have a real all-star game and a schedule that, while still only 32 games, stretches through three summer months.
And finally, the Sparks have somebody to cover the celebrated back of Lisa Leslie.
That would be Milton, a former standout at the University of Florida who is considered the best defender in the game, 6 feet 1 with the reputed wingspan of a 7-footer.
Formerly with Portland of the ABL, she was the Sparks’ first pick in the recent draft, selected to give the Sparks exactly what the Lakers were once looking for in Dennis Rodman.
“When I was in Portland, my coach tried to get us to think like the Chicago Bulls, and she compared what I did to what Dennis Rodman did,” says Milton, 24.
But she says it with a giggle.
This could be a problem.
This small-town Georgia woman (Riceboro, population 745) comes across about as fierce as a foam rubber tomahawk.
“I’m a person who tries to spread as much sunshine on people as possible,” she says, giggling again in a voice that could be poured over waffles. “I want to be known for loving life, for being kind.”
We’d love to write about how she will probably be one of the league leaders in blocked shots and steals.
But it’s far better to write about how, when she returns to her childhood home, she still sleeps with her mother and older sister.
Not just in the same old house.
But in the same giant bed.
“We have separate rooms, but it’s just like, every night, we all end up in the same place,” Milton says. “We’re just a close family, I guess.”
We’d love to describe her ability to grab the big rebounds and push around the bigger players, but it’s much more fun to write about Milton’s recent trip to a chic Los Angeles eatery.
“I asked for a virgin strawberry daiquiri, but when I took a big swallow, there was alcohol in it! Can you believe that?” she says.
So what did Beverly Milton’s little girl do? She spit it out into the nearest napkin, of course.
“That’s just not me,” she says.
What she is, apparently, is more than even the Sparks figured she would be.
“We needed a power player so Lisa wouldn’t get her butt kicked every night,” says General Manager Rhonda Windham.
But who could have guessed that Leslie would be so enamored of Milton’s inspirational cheer, she would move out of her house and into a team apartment with her.
Says Leslie, “She is my silent assassin.”
Says Milton, “I was flabbergasted that she would want to live with me. But it’s fun. She, like, helps me on the style thing.”
Oh yeah, that. Milton wears jeans and T-shirts, drives a truck, and still hones her game on a dirt court in her Georgia backyard. Anything from the grass is worth three points.
Her biggest expense since coming to Los Angeles is the phone bill. She not only calls her mother every day, she calls her at midnight. Even if that is 3 a.m. Eastern time.
“It started as a joke, but now I do it all the time,” she says. “I’ll say ‘Momma, you know it’s me, wake your butt up.’ Then we’ll talk for an hour, two hours, whatever.”
Her mother then gets up and drives down to the local paper mill, where she has toiled since DeLisha was a child. That work ethic stuck to DeLisha like red clay. It drove her to whip the neighborhood boys on that dirt court, then become two-time national high school player of the year, despite having to endure two daily hour-long bus rides.
What the work ethic didn’t shape, the near drowning did.
This anecdote would have been higher in this story--usually it is the first anecdote in stories about Milton--but she seems too full of life to be categorized by a near-death experience.
She was 11, at a vacation bible camp, hit her head on the side of a pool, slipped into the deep end, blacked out.
“I should have felt real scared, but I felt real peaceful,” she recalls. “Then I see this light . . . then the next thing I know, I am out of the pool and they are trying to cut my little suit off and I’m worried that all the boys will be looking.”
A lifeguard saved her that day, but only after she is certain she saw a greater power.
“I know I was young, but I felt from that moment that I was put on this earth to do something special for people,” she says. “
A few wins here would be nice. But we certainly won’t turn down the smiles.
Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com.
