Room for Two at Center of the Basketball Universe

By Bill Plaschke

Sept. 1, 2002 12 AM PT

Close your eyes and it could have been Horry.

Look up into the swirling confetti and it could have been June.

Joke all you want about Spark players who consistently suffer from comparison to their high-flying Laker flatmates--and we’ve heard them all--but give them this:

While they may not have the hops, they certainly have the guts.

With the clock dying and the score tied and a WNBA championship at risk Saturday at Staples Center, rookie Nikki Teasley nervously gripped the ball beyond the three-point line.

Eight, seven, six ...

She wanted to pass to Lisa Leslie, but the star was covered. She wanted to penetrate, but the lanes were filled.

Five, four, three ...

Out of options, but somehow not out of belief, she calmly stepped back and did what many men who have come through here in recent years would not.

She took the shot.

She took it even though she had missed her other four three-point shots in this game, missed 17 of 21 in this series, and could not even make one in her dreams.

“After practice, I’ll dribble around and act like I’m taking that last-second shot,” she said. “Problem is, I never make it.”

She took it even though veteran Teresa Weatherspoon of the New York Liberty was so convinced she wouldn’t, Weatherspoon backed away to help guard Leslie.

“It was a long shot,” Weatherspoon said.

She took it because that’s what great athletes do, no matter what gender, no matter how many are watching.

And she swished it. Of course she swished it. Doesn’t such nutty boldness always swish it?

With 2.4 seconds remaining, Teasley’s shot gave the Sparks their second consecutive WNBA championship with a 69-66 victory and two-game sweep of the Liberty.

And then, yeah, it sounded like Horry.

“Like the roof came down,” said DeLisha Milton.

The 13,493 fans erupted in a press table-rattling roar. Teasley ran across the floor screaming, yet no one could hear her.

Several Sparks collapsed at midcourt in tears. They later bounced and hugged and danced back to the locker room, where waiting for them were ring pops and plastic bags.

The ring pops, which many of them slurped during postgame interviews, were representative of their second championship ring.

The plastic bags were for their hair.

You know, so the champagne wouldn’t ruin it.

It was a different sort of celebration.

Born of a universal sort of shot.

“You see it all the time in that situation, people have that big shot, but they hesitate, look around, don’t do anything,” said Milton.

Yeah, haven’t folks around here seen it happen to everyone on the Portland Trail Blazers, and everyone on the Sacramento Kings but that Bibby guy?

“You wouldn’t think a rookie would be capable of that,” Milton said. “But she’s not like a rookie. She’s, like, old and wise.”

Teasley, 23, who came here from Portland in a controversial draft-day trade that sent away local favorite Ukari Figgs, has faced many shots like that.

While in college at North Carolina, she suffered from depression that reached such depths, she left school for a year to live at home, and work in a department store, and answer to a different first name.

It was during this time that she had her tongue pierced and a diamond-studded purple die inserted.

“I was telling myself not to crap out,” she said.

She didn’t. While trying to lose herself, she found herself, and returned to North Carolina to become one of the top players in the country.

And now, she’s the author of the most dramatic shot in the Sparks’ short history.

“For sure, I’m going to watch it again,” she said. “I’m going to run home and put it in the VCR tonight.”

She might want to fast forward through the rest of the game. It wasn’t classic basketball.

At times, the aging Liberty kicked it around like a group of soccer moms. The Sparks led by nine points with 2:46 remaining, but fumbled it away.

It wasn’t always exciting. It wasn’t very attractive. The women’s game may never be big in a place that understandably appreciates basketball only on its most dazzling levels.

But by the end of the afternoon Saturday, one could brush off the confetti and admit it was fun.

There is still room in this city’s sports landscape for fun, isn’t there? There is room for the families and women’s sports fans who filled the lower bowl of the arena, isn’t there?

And surely, there is room for what could be the best women’s basketball team in history.

Yes, the Houston Comets won four consecutive WNBA championships before these Sparks went back to back. But the league was not as deep or talented or experienced in those first seasons.

In the last four years, the Sparks have gone 117-32, including 6-0 in this year’s playoffs and 12-1 in the last two postseasons.

“R-E-S-P-E-C-T!” they sang as they slid across the plastic-covered, champagne-soaked floor of their locker room late Saturday afternoon.

They should no longer feel a need to spell it out.

Bill Plaschke can be reached at [email protected]