For Some, the League Needs More Stars Than Just Comets
It’s time for somebody to beat Houston.
New Los Angeles Spark Coach Michael Cooper has a prediction on this.
After his Sparks opened their fourth season with a 69-62 victory over the Utah Starzz Wednesday night at the Great Western Forum, Cooper said, quite emphatically, “If this team plays up to its capabilities, I think you’re looking at the next WNBA champions.” Cooper was not talking about the Starzz.
Three WNBA seasons have been played now and three times the Houston Comets have won the championship. This is getting boring. Boring is bad for a new league, especially when the new league is trying to make it cool for fans to pay to see women’s professional basketball.
In this country we like the new, the different. Houston dominating the WNBA is not new and not different and, quite frankly, if the Comets win again nobody outside Galveston is going to care.
“It would bring a lot of excitement to the league if somebody else could win,” Mwadi Mabika says. Mabika is a dramatically intense forward for the Sparks. Mabika had 21 points and brought a certain amount of excitement to the Forum herself.
“Yes, the league has become kind of predictable,” DeLisha Milton says. “I think we need to keep some variety in it to draw some more faithful fans to our game.” Milton is the Sparks’ other forward, a second-year WNBA player who is quietly gaining confidence. Milton had 11 points and five rebounds against Utah.
“Definitely,” Lisa Leslie says, “it would be good for somebody else to win.”
Leslie is the classy, graceful, stoic veteran center for the Sparks. The 27-year-old Olympian who is a Morningside High and USC grad, and who is one of the faces the WNBA likes to see on TV and in newspapers, scored her 1,500th career point and grabbed her 800th career rebound as a Spark in front of a crowd of 6,112. Not one of them wants a title more than Leslie.
“Of course I want us to win,” Leslie says. “But I think it would be good for the league if somebody else besides Houston would win for a change. It’s been long enough, you know?”
A dynasty can be good. But not now. Not for this league.
Cooper does think there is something good about what Houston has done.
“The Comets have set a certain standard of excellence,” Cooper says. “When somebody sets a standard of excellence, establishes dominance, they set a precedent for the others to follow. If you look at what Houston has done, you’ll see that they’ve done it with defense. Everybody talks about [Sheryl] Swoopes and [Cynthia] Cooper and their scoring but I think if you pay attention, you’ll see that Houston is a very, very good defensive team.”
Well, that didn’t take long.
Cooper loved defense when he was a player for the Showtime Lakers and so Cooper talks, chatters, screams defense every day in practice for the Sparks. He shows the Sparks film of his own Laker teams and tells the Sparks that it was not showy offense but solid defense that won titles. He shows them film of the Comets and tells the Sparks the same thing.
Even before the game started Mabika had a black eye. “Elbow in practice,” Mabika says. “While coach was shouting about defense. That’s when I got it.”
While Cooper says it is defense that has made the Comets so dominant, Leslie says it’s something much simpler.
“Houston has been lucky enough to have three [former] Olympians [Swoopes, Cooper and Tina Thompson] on its team,” she said. “And then they keep it simple on offense and defense. They have stuck with what wins for them.”
Milton says she sees in Houston a team that plays together. “They have players who have played a lot of basketball at a high level and they have players who aren’t out looking out for their own stats. It seems like their players always keep the team in mind, maybe more then players on other teams do.”
The Sparks did that Wednesday night. No one dominated the scoring. Leslie, the team’s big star, had 11 rebounds. That means the star is willing to do the nasty, hard work. Leslie and Mabika each had four assists. That means the top scorers are happy to give the ball to teammates.
This was a good start for the Sparks. Cooper expects much more, though. He expects the Sparks to beat Houston. He expects them to beat Houston here at the Forum and in Houston, too. He expects them to do it in the regular season and then in the playoffs. It’s a dirty job. But someone had better do it. Soon.
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Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com.