Finally, the Sparks Rise to the Occasion
NEW YORK — Hard to figure, these Sparks?
Hard to figure an 8-12 team that loses two in a row at home, then rolls sleepily into Madison Square Garden and before 16,144 knocks the WNBA’s best team on its ear?
Not for Orlando Woolridge, a Spark assistant coach and 13-year NBA player, who called his shot before the game.
“We’re tired, loose and relaxed,” he said, an hour before tipoff. ‘I think we’re going to do very well today.”
The Sparks (9-12), behind an inspired defensive game by Lisa Leslie and more brilliant guard play by rookie Tamecka Dixon, won, 67-50, Tuesday night, methodically taking apart a New York team (15-5) that’s been all but handed the WNBA championship.
In registering easily its most significant victory, the Sparks--who were 0-2 against New York--passed the season’s three-quarter mark in a sprint . . . and no one was sprinting faster than Dixon, who was playing before more than 100 family members and friends from New Jersey.
The most impressive offensive plays of the game: Two Dixon fastbreak, change-of-pace drives, exploiting certain WNBA all-star Teresa Weatherspoon both times.
The first came with 13:22 to go and gave Los Angeles a 48-35 lead.
She did it again at 5:37, giving the Sparks a 60-43 lead.
Dixon and her backcourt mate, Penny Toler, had a game-high 16 points apiece.
Leslie, in 26 minutes, helped hold New York’s Rebecca Lobo--her Olympic team teammate--to her worst shooting night of the season. Lobo was two for 14 and finished with four points, after entering the game with a 13-point average.
Moreover, Leslie--who had 10 points and a game-high 14 rebounds--created numerous New York misses in the low post with an aggressive effort.
She had an edge, she said.
“We were watching the tape of their Phoenix game and I heard the announcer say: ‘They’re running the USA offense.’ I looked at it and he was right. And they ran it today, so I knew where Rebecca was going all the time.”
Nancy Darsch, New York’s coach, was an assistant on the 1996 Olympic team’s staff.
Around the WNBA
Cynthia Cooper, the league’s leading scorer, had 30 points at Cleveland as the Houston Comets end the Rockers’ eight-game winning streak with a 76-66 win before 6,678. . . . Chicago and Orlando, rumor has it, will be WNBA expansion cities next season. . . . Another rumor, possibly WNBA-generated, has three premier ABL players planning to jump--Philadelphia’s Dawn Staley, and Columbus’ Nikki McCray and Andrea Lloyd. The ABL flatly denies Staley plans to switch, but the Sparks’ Lisa Leslie, her best friend on the 1996 Olympic team, said: “We’re talking.” ABL co-founder Steve Hams says negotiations for a new Lloyd contract are “done,” and that the league expects to resign McCray soon. Most ABL contracts expire Aug. 31, the day after the WNBA championship game.
