Jump-Start?

Michael Cooper heard the knock on the WNBA, just like you.

“A lot of fans I talk to, some would say, ‘Well, we don’t want to come because there’s nobody dunking,’ ” Cooper said.

“She shut that up.”

Whether Lisa Leslie’s one-handed slam Tuesday night at Staples Center--the first dunk in a women’s professional game, though not the first by a woman in competition--was a watershed moment or a historical footnote remains to be seen.

One thing is certain. It earned style points.

“It was like, surreal, because they say women can’t get over the rim like that, but she put that one in,” said Cooper, the Sparks’ coach and former Laker player. “I mean, it didn’t go in by a hair or a fingernail, it didn’t go in clanking off the rim. She dunked the basketball like a true pro is supposed to do.”

It has been a long time coming.

“I’m not surprised by her dunk because of her athleticism and her desire to excel,” TNT commentator and former NBA coach Hubie Brown said. “I am surprised it took so long.”

The first dunk by a woman in competition was 18 years ago, when Georgeann Wells of West Virginia broke the barrier in 1984. Only two other college players have followed, Charlotte Smith of North Carolina and Michelle Snow of Tennessee--both now in the WNBA, where no one had managed a dunk in the league’s six seasons until Tuesday.

Leslie, now 6-foot-5, first dunked as a 6-4 high school freshman--starting with a tennis ball, then a volleyball, then a basketball--in a lark that began during a rainy-day track practice inside the gym at Inglewood Morningside High.

After she arrived at USC, there was such anticipation Leslie would dunk in a game the school produced a poster of her dunking, but the moment never came despite an occasional attempt.

She tried in the inaugural WNBA game in 1997, and hung the ball up on the rim, leaving her gun-shy.

There was even a growing impatience evident at the WNBA All-Star game last month when Leslie dunked in warm-ups, but not in the game.

In her mind--and on the piece of paper where she and her trainer wrote down her personal goals--Leslie had made her plan concrete: Dunk in a WNBA game this season.

What had been associated in her mind with track--after all, she first learned to dunk practicing her approach to the high jump in the gym--Leslie made into part of her basketball repertoire.

“When I practiced with Magic [Johnson], I had to try to dunk two or three times a day, to make it part of my game--while I’m playing basketball, to actually think about it,” Leslie said.

“I just think it’s not really a part of our game. Boys have that desire to want to dunk. They did have the desire way more than girls do because it just never seemed like something we could truly fathom.

“I mean, I think of Sheryl Swoopes’ son. He has a little basketball court, and all he does, he says, ‘Lisa, let me dunk, let me show you.’ He’s doing windmills. It’s already engraved in their head that to dunk is just the highlight of basketball. Whereas for girls, it’s our shooting technique or to be able to make baskets and free throws.

“It’s such a sexist approach to the sport sometimes, but men aren’t encouraging little girls to work on their ‘hops’. They’re encouraging them to work on their jump shots and the fundamentals of the game, and I think that’s the biggest difference.”

People used to talk about the limitation of the size of a woman’s hands, but the WNBA ball is only 28 1/2 inches in circumference, an inch smaller than the NBA ball.

The larger issue seems to be that the dunk has not been a focal point of game action, more a trick to try in practice like a half-court shot.

Even for the few women who can dunk, the situation has to be right, which explains why it took so long for one to happen in a game.

“It’s not like warm-ups, where you can kind of plan it and no one’s underneath the basket, in your way,” Cooper said.

“In a game, you’re tired, and you have to be on a breakaway. The women don’t have the luxury of the physical strength that men have, where with a quick pick and roll a guy can catch it underneath the basket and go up and spring up and dunk.”

With one out of the way, Leslie wants more.

“Now I’m all fired up about it,” she said. “I’ll definitely look to try more. To me, I think the biggest fear was just missing. Now that I made it, even if I go for it and miss, at least it’s validated that I can dunk now.”

Others will try to follow.

Perhaps Margo Dydek of the Utah Starzz, at 7-2. (She’s the closest to the rim,” Leslie said.) Or Sylvia Crawley of the Portland Fire, who won a dunk contest in the defunct ABL. Or the players who did it in college--Snow, of the Houston Comets, or Smith, who plays for the Charlotte Sting.

Whether women’s dunks will ever become a routine sports highlight, who can say?

Steve Tello, a senior vice president for Fox Sports Net, pointed out that unusualness is what makes news.

“On any given night during the NBA season, there are many dunks. Most of them do not make the air,” Tello said. “The incredible athletic feat which Lisa Leslie accomplished [Tuesday] tells us that the women’s game is progressing.”

Progress is sometimes dubious, said consultant David Carter of The Sports Business Group, based in Redondo Beach.

“Well, I mean, let’s be honest, this isn’t breaking the four-minute mile, but it may have some symbolism,” Carter said.

“I really believe it’s a mixed blessing for the sport. It shows tremendous athletic prowess and the great strides that have been made athletically, but it also shows the gap between the men’s and women’s game.

“Get back to me when they stop calling traveling. That would be equality.”

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Times staff writer Larry Stewart contributed to this story.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Throwing It Down

Though Lisa Leslie’s dunk Tuesday at Staples Center was the first in WNBA history, there have been precedents at both the college and professional level:

Georgeann Wells, a 6-foot-7 sophomore at West Virginia, became the first women’s college player to dunk, on Dec. 21, 1984, in a game against Charleston, then dunked again three games later.

Charlotte Smith of North Carolina, a 6-foot forward now with the Charlotte Sting, dunked against North Carolina A&T; in 1994, only three days after the 10th anniversary of Wells’ first dunk.

Sylvia Crawley, a 6-5 center with the Colorado Xplosion’s and now with Portland of the WNBA, won the slam dunk competition at the American Basketball League all-star game in 1998 while blindfolded.

Tennessee’s Michelle Snow, a 6-5 center now with the Houston Comets, dunked twice as a junior, then became the first player to dunk three times as a senior on Jan. 17, 2002, against South Carolina.