Sparks Make His Day
Even at 4-0, Michael Cooper wasn’t altogether sure about his Sparks.
They were smooth, athletic, aggressive and the bench was deep.
But Cooper, the guy who once went baseline to baseline with Dr. J, leaped--and blocked a dunk shot, was wondering. Was there a defensive attitude? When push came to shove, could these women shut a team down?
He got his answer Saturday night in Minneapolis.
The Sparks had been in a zone in the waning moments of a close game. During a timeout with 12 seconds left and the Sparks ahead, 62-60, Cooper was about to put them back into a man-to-man when Rhonda Mapp interrupted her coach in the huddle.
“She said: ‘Let’s get out of this damn zone and just get after ‘em,’ ” Cooper recalled with a big smile.
“I loved it. That’s what we did. We got after ‘em [and prevented the Lynx from scoring]. That showed me the kind of attitude you need to win a championship.”
Draft review: Portland’s Jackie Stiles (fourth, Southwest Missouri State) leads the WNBA’s top picks in minutes played, averaging 33.3 a game. Indiana’s Niele Ivey (19th, Notre Dame) is next at 32.8.
But Seattle’s Lauren Jackson (first, Australia) is the production leader, averaging 16.6 points and 5.4 rebounds in 32.6 minutes.
Portland hasn’t yet figured out how to shake loose the 5-foot-7 Stiles for her three-point shot. She has made only one of seven. In fact, Portland as a team is shooting only 14% from behind the arc.
The Utah Starzz have been one of the WNBA attendance laggards since the league’s inception in 1997. Last year they finished next to last, averaging 6,417 fans. A Chicago newspaper report had the club being relocated to Chicago in 2003 if crowd counts didn’t pick up.
So the Starzz looked at college basketball’s attendance leaders, noted that Tennessee had been No. 1 for a sixth consecutive season, averaging 15,510, hired Tennessee’s promotions director, Ron Goch, and made him vice president for business operations.
Goch is trying to do just what he did at Tennessee--sell the women’s game to “senior adults,” the term he prefers to “senior citizens.” At a typical Tennessee game, the area outside Thompson-Boling Arena is a sea of buses.
“Early on at Tennessee, senior adults were identified as a group without a lot of entertainment opportunities, and the university began busing them to the games,” he said.
“And when it caught on, it never really stopped growing. We’ll try to do the same here. I think we’ll finish in the middle of the pack, attendance-wise, this season. Of course, what really worked best at Tennessee was winning. Winning is the best marketing plan of all.”
It may not be known until mid-morning today if recent Houston storms will cost the Comets a second postponement. Already postponed was last Monday’s game against the Sparks. That game was rescheduled Tuesday for June 21, the night before the Sparks play at Cleveland.
With the Portland Fire scheduled to play at Compaq Center on Thursday, the arena operations staff has worked around the clock since Saturday, when the basketball floor floated atop four feet of water.
The floor was ruined but a backup floor is available, a Comet spokesman said. Power has been restored to the arena and all the water had been pumped out, but the air-conditioning system was still out Tuesday and numerous safety systems had yet to be checked.
Using another Houston facility for the game wasn’t an option, the spokesman said, because other venues had also been damaged by the heavy rain.
The Orlando team coming to Staples Center on Thursday brings a high-profile rookie, Katie Douglas of Purdue. Taken 10th in the draft by Miracle Coach Carolyn Peck, Douglas is getting 23 minutes and seven points a game. . . . If the Sparks get another five-digit crowd Thursday, for Orlando, they will have played before six consecutive 10,000-plus crowds this season.
Her salary is about $75,000, but Lisa Leslie’s growing off-season endorsement work will swell her 2001 income to about $1.5 million, according to her agent, Bruce Binko.