Mabika Looks Like Next Spark to Soar
Every game night, the thought crosses Orlando Woolridge’s mind:
“Is this the night? Does she go over the top tonight?”
Woolridge is thinking of Mwadi Mabika. The Sparks’ gifted 22-year-old from Congo (formerly Zaire), recently promoted to the team’s starting lineup, appears to be at the edge of something big.
Waiting, waiting, waiting . . . for her to become special.
“She can be the Michael Jordan of her sport, that’s what kind of talent she has,” Woolridge said.
At a game in Madison Square Garden last week, the 6-foot Mabika blew by a defender on a baseline drive, then soared over everyone for a midair, change-of-direction, finger-roll layup.
The shot didn’t fall, but the athleticism she showed was a sign of what may be around the corner.
“Mwadi’s skills are off the chart,” said Marynell Meadors, the Charlotte Sting coach, the other day.
“She just hasn’t figured out the American style of basketball yet. But she’s only 22. When she does, look out. In our game in L.A. last summer, she killed us with three-point shots. We guarded her tight, she just soared above us.”
Woolridge has had to urge Mabika to shoot when she’s open.
“ ‘O’ told me in training camp if I pass up shots this summer like I did the first two seasons, he’ll get awful mad at me,” she said.
As a defender, she has already figured out the American style. When an opponent is about to score uncontested and you’re out of position, stop it--by any means necessary.
In New York, the Liberty’s Tamika Whitmore had lost her defender and was coming down the paint for an easy layup. Suddenly, from a step away, Mabika was there. She brought the play to a crashing halt . . . with a karate chop to Whitmore’s forearms.
The price: A foul, one free throw and one howling mad Whitmore.
It has been that way since the 1996 Olympics, when Mabika first caught the eye of WNBA people gearing up for their inaugural 1997 season.
With help from countryman and NBA standout Dikembe Mutombo, she obtained an exit visa at a time her country was in civil war. Next stop: A 1997 Spark tryout camp.
Last fall and spring, she played a pro season in Israel and brought a more aggressive, up-tempo game to the Sparks’ preseason camp.
Also in the off-season, she reports, she conquered her biggest hurdle yet.
She passed her California driver’s test. This was important, since during the season, the Sparks get loaner cars.
“I passed the written part on the first try, but I failed the driving part twice,” she said. “The first time, I thought the yellow light meant you step on the gas and go fast through the intersection. The next time, I failed for going too slow.”
EXPANSION FEARS
The WNBA’s planned expansion by four teams for 2000 is great news for fans of the women’s game in Seattle, Portland, Indianapolis and Miami, but coaches and general managers hate it.
Woolridge is already losing sleep over how an expansion draft for four teams will be structured. When the league expanded by two, adding Minnesota and Orlando for this season, teams could protect six players and lose only one of five unprotected players.
Does a four-team draft mean protecting only five? And losing two?
“They haven’t told us yet, and I’m worried about it,” he said.
“I like my roster, all 11 players. I don’t want to lose anybody.”
TRANSLATION, PLEASE?
When Spark forward Nina Bjedov picked up a fifth foul in Charlotte on Saturday, Woolridge took her out. But the Yugoslav forward paused long enough to give the official a piece of her mind--in Serbo-Croatian. Afterward, when asked what she’d told the official, she said, in English, “I called him every name I could think of. You can’t imagine what I called him.”
In their zeal to get the July 14 All-Star game up and running, WNBA people have spilled over into silly time. They’ve put nearly everyone in sight on the ballots, many of whom--like the Sparks’ Penny Toler--aren’t even starting. Sparks on the ballot: Toler, Lisa Leslie, Tamecka Dixon, Clarisse Machanguana and DeLisha Milton.
Among the prominent players not taken in the WNBA draft on May 4 was Michelle Marciniak, who led Tennessee to the 1996 NCAA title and was named outstanding player of the Final Four. Later she played in the ABL. Falling through the draft was a major disappointment, she said, but life goes on. “I have great confidence in myself and this will not shake that,” she said. “The WNBA people looked at stats, but my game isn’t stats. It’s about leadership, chemistry . . . making an offense work.” She lives in Chapel Hill, N.C., where she’s running girls’ basketball camps. She will play in Europe in the fall, will be available in the WNBA expansion draft.