Parental guidance
It’s curious that a pregnancy would be the catalyst in bringing Taj McWilliams-Franklin to the Sparks.
The 36-year-old forward-center, acquired in a February trade with the Connecticut Sun after mother-to-be Lisa Leslie announced that she would sit out the 2007 season, is a parent to daughters Michele, 18, and Maia, 4.
But her first pregnancy, when she was a 17-year-old high school senior in Augusta, Ga., nearly grounded her basketball aspirations before they took flight. If not for an inquisitive and sweet-toothed coach taking an interest in her at a turning point in her life, McWilliams-Franklin might never have embarked on a career that has taken her around the world and made her a five-time WNBA All-Star.
She almost certainly never would have met her husband, U.S. Army Sgt. Reggie Franklin, who was stationed for most of the last eight years in Italy, where the couple met, but was encamped in northern Iraq for most of the last 12 months.
Not that this gives her pause.
“I never think about, what if?” McWilliams-Franklin said.
Despite her pregnancy, McWilliams-Franklin noted, Georgia State honored its scholarship commitment to her -- she enrolled three months after her daughter was born -- but a coaching change a year later effectively set her adrift.
Said McWilliams-Franklin, who was a single parent: “The coach there did not have a favorable attitude toward me having my daughter there at school.”
So she left, taking a job at a yogurt shop in Austin, Texas.
With no plans to return to school or to continue playing, she might still be dishing up cones, shakes and sundaes if an assistant basketball coach at Concordia University in Austin hadn’t stopped in for dessert one day and asked if the 6-foot-2 woman behind the counter was interested in working out with his team.
The workouts and a tip from a fellow churchgoer led to a scholarship offer from St. Edward’s University in Austin, where administrators gladly accommodated young Michele, and Mom was the NAIA player of the year in 1993.
“It worked out great,” McWilliams-Franklin said. “They went above and beyond anything I would have expected. I was allowed to take her to school, the coach allowed her to be at practice, running around and screaming at games. And everybody looked after her when I had places to go.”
Her professors even allowed McWilliams-Franklin to take exams in classroom thresholds, where Mom could keep an eye on her daughter while the toddler was running around outside so as not to disrupt other students.
With a degree in English writing and rhetoric in hand and her athletic career resurrected, McWilliams-Franklin was ready to script a new chapter. She launched her professional basketball career in 1996, playing in the American Basketball League until it folded and in 1999 joining the WNBA’s Orlando Miracle, which in 2003 relocated and became the Connecticut Sun.
Along the way, nanny in tow, she also played professionally in Israel, Greece, Germany, Luxembourg, Italy, Spain, South Korea and Russia. She and Franklin were married in 2000, but with Franklin stationed overseas and his wife playing in leagues all over the world, the couple has rarely spent long stretches of time together. An exception was an eight-month stretch surrounding the birth of their daughter, Maia, in January 2003.
“I do what I have to do because it’s my job,” said McWilliams-Franklin, whose older daughter is finishing up her freshman year at Arizona Western College in Yuma. “We make sacrifices to make our lives a little better.”
But that’s about to change.
Franklin, 28, was discharged from the military April 30 and is looking forward to spending the summer in Los Angeles, his wife says, because he hopes to start a career as an actor and model.
“They tell him he’s good-looking,” she said, laughing.
McWilliams-Franklin, meanwhile, looked good to the Sparks when she became available last winter. Because of “recurring issues” that she declined to specify, McWilliams-Franklin told the Sun after last season that she wanted out. And after Leslie’s bombshell announcement in December that she was pregnant and unavailable to play this year, the Sparks were in the market for a replacement.
“When I heard through the grapevine that she was movable,” Sparks General Manager Penny Toler said, “I’m saying to myself, ‘Here’s a post player and a good one -- one that knows her way around the league.’
“How can you pass on a player like that because the reality is, when Lisa comes back next year, my God, look at the years’ experience on the front line.
“Nothing replaces experience.”
Nor can anyone really fill Leslie’s shoes, said McWilliams-Franklin, who in eight WNBA seasons has averaged 12.4 points and 7.5 rebounds and twice in the last three years helped the Sun reach the WNBA finals. The Sparks, who play their last exhibition today, begin their Leslie-less season May 22 at Chicago.
“Who can replace Lisa Leslie?” McWilliams-Franklin said of the three-time Olympic gold medalist and three-time WNBA most valuable player. “That’s why I have a two-year deal. When she comes back, I’ll be playing with her.”
Leslie, who will turn 35 on July 7, hadn’t indicated publicly whether she planned to return to the Sparks before signing a three-year contract extension last month, but McWilliams-Franklin wasn’t surprised to hear the news.
“I absolutely adored being pregnant, adored nursing,” she said. “But even when you’re a mother, you still have that competitive fire in you.”
*