Lack of Common Sense Creates a Giant Misstep

This wouldn’t have happened to the Lakers.

Kobe Bryant would not have missed the first game of the NBA Finals because he slipped and fell on a rain-dampened step because the team bus was not allowed, in the middle of a downpour, to pull into a tunnel.

The Lakers would not have been told that since the bomb-sniffing dogs weren’t at the arena, to please back up the bus and exit in the storm.

But that’s what happened Thursday night to the Sparks at Madison Square Garden.

Tamecka Dixon, the Sparks’ starting guard, missed Game 1 of the WNBA Finals because she hurt her back and right knee after slipping on wet bus steps and falling on the way to the morning shoot-around.

When the bus arrived at Madison Square Garden and was pointed toward the tunnel where most team buses load and unload, the driver was told to back up. According to Spark Coach Michael Cooper, MSG security told the driver there were no bomb-sniffing dogs available. No dogs, no bus under the Garden.

So the bus backed up onto a busy Manhattan street. The Sparks dashed down the steps and ran toward the door.

Dixon, one of the last ladies off, when the stairs were the wettest and most slippery, tumbled and fell. Her back slammed against the bus stairs. Her right knee hyperextended. Dixon lost her breath for a minute, then began to cry, in pain and in anguish.

She had grown up in nearby Linden, N.J., and forever Dixon had dreamed of this night, of the chance to participate in a playoff game at Madison Square Garden.

“I remember watching [Charles] Oakley, [Anthony] Mason, Patrick [Ewing], you know, the rough boys,” Dixon said. “I went to those games and I loved it, the atmosphere, the toughness in this building. When we found out we were going to be playing the Liberty in the finals, you can’t believe how excited I was.”

Dixon was sitting in a locker room, her voice hoarse from yelling for her teammates, her right knee wrapped in ice, her back stiff and sore. She was holding a box score that totaled up the statistics in the Sparks’ 71-63 victory over New York in Game 1 of the WNBA championship series.

Next to Dixon’s name it said: DNP--Coach’s Decision.

That wasn’t totally accurate. The coach did not make this decision. Some security guards, who were unwilling or unable to use common sense, made the decision.

Dixon spent the afternoon in a hospital emergency room. Her knee was swelling, her back was aching. X-rays and MRIs were taken. The results were inconclusive and she was given the opportunity to warm up.

She limped onto the court about two hours before the game, tried to shoot, tried to cut, tried to get some spring in her legs, and nothing happened.

“I didn’t want to play at 60 percent,” Dixon said, “and maybe hurt my team and hurt myself worse.”

So with about 40 family members yelling her name, Dixon sat on the bench next to Cooper and screamed. She clenched her fists, she clutched her head when the Liberty led by nine in the first half and she fiddled with her headband as the Sparks rolled into the lead in the second half.

It is admirable and understandable that in this city, so close to the anniversary of Sept. 11, security is a high priority. But common sense shouldn’t be tossed aside.

“If this were a men’s team,” Cooper said, “if this were the Lakers, these players would not have been getting off that bus in the rain.”

“If this were the Lakers,” forward DeLisha Milton said, “they’d be strewing rose petals on the ground.”

A Madison Square Garden spokesperson said proper policy was followed. Cooper wondered if this meant the Sparks were supposed to supply the bomb-sniffing dogs along with their uniforms. NBA spokesman Brian McIntyre said he understood that some men’s teams had been unloaded in the street. But probably not in the rain, and McIntyre also admitted that maybe common sense would have allowed for some other accommodation.

The WNBA has been aching for this glamour matchup in its championship series for the six years of its existence. But the series is devalued, the glamour tarnished, when one of the best players is injured because somebody wearing a uniform and enjoying authority couldn’t stop for a moment, think and act intelligently.

“You know,” Dixon said, “if they weren’t going to let us into the tunnel, maybe somebody could have brought out an umbrella or something. Or maybe a towel to wipe the steps.”

If it was bomb-sniffing dogs that were needed, somebody with the league should have made sure bomb-sniffing dogs were on the job.

The Sparks won, so no harm, no foul, right? But there was Dixon, an hour after the game, being hugged by her mom, Portia. Both cried a little. A dream was left unrealized and for no good reason.

Diane Pucin can be reached at diane.pucin@latimes.com