Williams Stymies Sparks

OK, so she gloated a little bit . . . but can anyone blame Natalie Williams?

Moments after she led her Utah Starzz to a regular season-ending 89-77 victory over the Sparks, Williams tried to be humble. But it was difficult.

This victory followed years at UCLA when she often had to take a back seat to Lisa Leslie at USC. Since then, in their pro years, Leslie has played on a bigger stage with the WNBA’s Los Angeles franchise while Williams toiled at Portland with a league, the ABL, that bled money.

Next came the pair’s WNBA rivalry, and Leslie’s team has made two playoffs while Williams still hasn’t been to one.

So Williams and the Starzz played for pride . . . and they won decisively, making L.A.’s franchise record 1-6 at the Delta Center.

Utah (18-14) completed its first winning season and first-place L.A. (28-4) lost its second 12-game winning streak on the final day of the regular season.

The Sparks go directly to Phoenix to prepare for Friday’s first-round game of the Western Conference playoffs against the Mercury.

Spark Coach Michael Cooper wouldn’t say it, but he tried to win this one with his starters logging as few minutes as possible.

He played everyone on his bench at least 12 minutes, while Utah’s Fred Williams (who might have saved his job with the victory) went basically all the way with seven players. And Natalie Williams, the league’s rebound champion, registered one of her best performances.

In 39 minutes, she had 26 points, 13 rebounds, two blocks, a steal and two assists.

Her rival, Leslie, had 18 points and 10 rebounds in 27 minutes.

Six Starzz played 22 or more minutes and one of the top guards, Korie Hlede, sat out because of illness.

“It was a huge win for us,” said Williams, who after the playoffs will join Leslie and DeLisha Milton of the Sparks on the Olympic team.

“We wanted to win the last game and we wanted to beat L.A. It’s nice to send them into the playoffs with a great big L.”

So Cooper has a team that needed an overtime Tuesday to beat Seattle (6-25), the league’s worst team, and 24 hours later was bombed by a non-playoff team. Anything to worry about, going into one of the WNBA’s toughest venues Friday, America West Arena?

Cooper did seem to concede the six-game trip to end the regular season had finally caught up to his team, which had its WNBA-record 12-game road win streak snapped.

“We’ve played a lot of games with targets on our backs, and we learned tonight you can’t take anyone in this league for granted,” he said.

“I don’t think we came out very aggressively. But this was not a preparation game for the playoffs. We wanted to win it. Natalie had a huge game for them, and I tip my hat to them . . . she was relentless on the boards.”

If Cooper wouldn’t concede his team was flat, his guard, Tamecka Dixon, did.

“We just weren’t focused . . . we were playing without purpose,” she said.

“It’s hard to get motivated for this kind of game. But tomorrow in Phoenix we’ll have a great practice and come out much more aggressively against Phoenix.”

For the first time in their four losses, the Sparks trailed most of the game. Their last lead Wednesday, before a raucous crowd of 7,841, was 21-20.

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WNBA Playoffs

The Sparks open best-of-three series against Phoenix on Friday:

* Game 1--Friday, at Phoenix, 6 p.m.

* Game 2--Sunday, at Sparks, 2:30 p.m.

* Game 3--Tuesday, at Sparks-x, TBA.

x--If necessary

COMPLETE PLAYOFF SCHEDULE, Page 9