Sparks’ Leslie Makes a Strong Statement
Lisa Leslie hired a personal trainer last winter.
This is not earthshaking news, but it tells us something about Leslie.
She is 29, and has had a sparkling basketball career. She is particularly proud of her two Olympic gold medals, the prominent part she played in the launching of the WNBA, and her two WNBA All-Star game awards as most valuable player.
Because she is articulate and attractive, Leslie has done well financially with off-court endorsements.
Leslie, then, did not need to hire a personal trainer. She did not have the fear of failure to push her into becoming stronger in her upper body so that she could be a more assured jump shooter and--if you can believe it--dribbler. Leslie is 6 feet 5. Why should she concern herself about making three-pointers or bringing the ball up the floor?
“Don’t you see,” says Spark guard Tamecka Dixon. “There is not a more beautiful sight than to see a 6-5 woman nailing a three-pointer.”
With her speed, ballhandling and shot, besides her ability to go to the offensive boards, Leslie has become her team’s first--and last--option.
The Sparks are aiming for their first WNBA title because Leslie has become the best player in the league. Not the best big player or the best inside player. This year, she is the best player. In the regular season, she was second in the league in scoring at 19.5 points a game, third in rebounding at 9.6, second in blocked shots at 2.29, and third in double-doubles at 16.
After the first round of the playoffs, Leslie was averaging 23.5 points and 14.5 rebounds. In the first game of the Western Conference finals Friday night, a 74-73 Spark victory over Sacramento, she had 13 points, 10 rebounds and a key block in the game’s waning moments.
Leslie is the perfect player for Los Angeles. She is tall and lean and physically striking. She doesn’t like to do TV interviews, even brief sound bites after practice, without having her makeup on and her hair perfect. When she walks onto a basketball court, almost always the tallest woman, Leslie stares straight ahead, above it all, regal, almost haughty.
That can make it seem as if Leslie doesn’t care, that she isn’t trying very hard, that her heart doesn’t beat faster when a game is on the line. Other players have said they counted on her to come up small in big games. Not anymore.
Despite predictions Leslie’s presence meant the Sparks would win handfuls of championships, all the rings have belonged to Houston players. This will change.
When the Sparks, despite having the best record in the WNBA last season, were eliminated by the Comets last year, Leslie’s mother, Christine Leslie-Espinoza, says her daughter was devastated.
“She came home, went to her room and cried her heart out,” Leslie-Espinoza said. “We were going to have lots of friends and family over for dinner because we all wanted to tell Lisa how well she had done and how proud we were of her. But Lisa said, ‘Mom, I need to be alone right now. It hurts too much.’ ”
Leslie’s mother reared Lisa alone. Leslie-Espinoza was a long-distance truck driver, a determined woman who finds in her daughter a steely determination, which everybody can see, and a warm, soft heart, which outsiders seldom see.
Leslie-Espinoza married Tom Espinoza five years ago and found her soulmate. Lisa bought her mother and Espinoza a house. Christine and Tom traveled the world to celebrate Lisa’s basketball successes. Last December Tom was found to have liver cancer. Forty days later, he died.
“Lisa’s basketball has been my savior this season,” Leslie-Espinoza said. “Miss Christine,” as she is called, attends many practices and was the first person Leslie hugged Monday night when the Sparks eliminated Houston in the first round of the playoffs.
Leslie-Espinoza said that Leslie has worked harder than ever to become a better player this year. “It’s not that her career wouldn’t be complete, but Lisa very much wants a WNBA title and to win an MVP award. She feels like that is something she should accomplish.”
Coach Michael Cooper said that Leslie was demonstrably stronger when she returned this year.
“It has helped her be a better shooter and a better ballhandler,” he said.
At the beginning of this season, Cooper described Leslie as “one of the best inside players in the league.” Now he describes his center as “the best player in the league and very deserving of the MVP award.”
Spark point guard Ukari Figgs says Leslie has “set herself apart from a lot of people in the league this year and that makes her the MVP in my opinion. She’s working all the time in practice on things like shooting and now she shoots better than ever. She has definitely been the strongest influence on the way our season has gone.”
Dixon thinks Leslie has been “more aggressive” this year. “I think that comes with her confidence and from all the drills and all the work she’s done.”
Because she is tall and beautiful, because she seemed blessed with talent, poise and presence, it has been easy to snipe at Leslie, to think she hadn’t worked hard enough or cared enough.
Yet if she swings an elbow or fights for a rebound, she is called a dirty player. In the Olympics, Australia’s young star, Laurens Jackson, was so unhappy at getting banged around in the gold-medal game that she swiped Leslie’s hair extension right off her head. It wasn’t an accident.
This Leslie is no pushover. On his ESPN radio show, Dan Patrick had Leslie on as a guest during the hubbub about Phoenix player Lisa Harrison’s offer to pose nude in Playboy. When Patrick kept asking Leslie about Playboy, Leslie was indignant. There was anger in her voice as she dared Patrick to talk about basketball and not naked women. Patrick stammered and exited the interview quickly.
Leslie is a young woman with strong opinions and a strong game, and she will only let her mother see her cry.
“I told Lisa she had a day to feel bad last year,” Leslie-Espinoza said. “Then it was time to move on and look ahead. Next thing I knew, she was introducing me to her trainer and working out every day, twice a day.”
Pull her hair if you dare. Stick your face out when Leslie grabs a rebound at your own risk. Leave her open at the three-point circle and listen to the swish. Leslie is the best. She has earned that honor.
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Diane Pucin can be reached at diane.pucin@latimes.com.