They Can’t Light Spark in Blase Town
Inside, it’s screeching noisy, recess noisy.
Outside, it’s so quiet you can hear a multicolored ball drop.
Inside, the Sparks are streaking toward their WNBA-record 16th consecutive victory, a blurry portrait of skill and unselfishness.
Outside, people have no idea.
“The other day I told someone I play for the WNBA Sparks and they looked at me like, what’s that?” said DeLisha Milton.
Inside the Staples Center on Monday night, during the Sparks’ 81-66 victory over the Indiana Fever, there emerged two truths.
First, the Sparks have clearly assembled the best team in the five-year history of the WNBA.
Second, it has done little to change how our town looks at women’s basketball.
Rarely. Barely. If at all.
Having answered every critic during a season in which they’ve amazingly lost only three times in 28 games, the Sparks nonetheless step into the playoffs next week shouldering a question.
If a WNBA championship falls in a city that doesn’t care, will it make a sound?
“I don’t understand it,” said Penny Toler, the team’s general manager. “We’ve done everything right on the court. We’ve gone everywhere off the court. And yet ...”
And yet before Monday, the Sparks’ attendance ranked fourth in the league.
A lousy team in Washington is averaging 15,333 fans. A second-place team in New York is drawing 15,244.
The Sparks, despite playing at a beautiful arena for good prices ($9 for seats behind the basket, for instance), were averaging 9,114.
On Monday, a record-setting night, they drew only 8,166.
The only thing magical about that figure was that if you throw a hyphen in there, it matched the final score.
The fans were loud. But Spark crowds, filled with children, are always loud.
The problem was, even with the top level closed, there were seemingly as many purple seats as fans.
The better the Sparks get, the more blatantly they are ignored.
They led the league with a 17-3 record at the all-star break, yet, incredibly, fans did not vote any of their players to the Western Conference’s starting lineup.
Tamecka Dixon buzzes. Yet there is no buzz.
Lisa Leslie muscles. Yet she is not even strong enough to get her team’s highlights on the local nightly news.
Milton may be the most delightful pro athlete in town, one of my favorite interviews, honest and funny and smart.
But when I stopped by her locker Monday, it was my first game this year.
“Newspaper coverage is one of the problems,” she said. “We’re not on the front page enough. Not many people are going to keep turning the pages to find us on page 10.”
Certainly, the media struggles with the time or space for the sort of extra stories that build interest in a new team.
And, indeed, part of the problem involves the Sparks’ marketing, always a low priority in Jerry Buss-operated organizations.
But mostly, the problem is not a problem, but a personality. This town’s sports personality.
Our entertainment-driven fans apparently don’t find the women’s game entertaining.
It’s not about sexism or homophobia or any of the other labels conveniently placed on those who would dare defy the women’s sports movement.
It’s about people used to seeing the game played above the rim, and being bored when it is not.
It’s about a town that chants “dee-fense,” but breathes dunks.
It’s about the same thing that affects every other sports organization here.
There is a reason the Kings once signed Gretzky, and the Dodgers once signed Kevin Brown, and the Lakers signed Shaquille O’Neal.
Sports teams here understand it is not just about winning, but wowing.
It seems Los Angeles fans aren’t wowed by fundamentally sound women’s basketball no matter how many games the Sparks win.
And it’s not the first time.
We’ve had at least four of the greatest players in women’s history grow up and play collegiately here--Ann Meyers-Drysdale, Cheryl Miller, Lisa Leslie and Cynthia Cooper.
Yet crowds at USC and UCLA women’s games are measured by the handful.
“I remember playing here against USC our senior year,” recalled Dixon, who played at Kansas. “And we had more people in the stands than they did.”
In the last two years, this area has produced two of the nation’s best high school girls’ players.
Yet Diana Taurasi of Chino Don Lugo High went to Connecticut, and Narbonne’s Loree Moore is going to Tennessee.
“This town just doesn’t support women’s sports,” said Meyers-Drysdale, now a WNBA broadcaster who is widely respected in all athletic circles. “We have our little one-shot moments with women’s sports, but, in general, the support is not there.”
For example, while the women’s World Cup final sold out the Rose Bowl in 1999, the new women’s soccer league did not even put a team here.
“Los Angeles is a different animal,” said Meyers-Drysdale.
And it seems the Sparks just can’t growl enough.
“We’re giving them wins, we’re giving them marquee players, we’re doing all sorts of appearances,” said Milton. “At some point we wonder, what do we need to do?”
First, later this month, they need to win the WNBA championship.
This would provide them with a vehicle that all men’s sports teams have in their garage from birth, that being a bandwagon.
Then maybe they need to buy some flags. Lots of flags.
“Hey, I saw a Sparks flag on somebody’s car the other day,” said Milton.
One flag?
“Two, actually,” she said, smiling. “But that’s a start.”
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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com.
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LONGEST WNBA WIN STREAKS *
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Team No. Year Sparks 16 2001 Houston 15 1998 Sparks 12 2000 Sparks 12 2000
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