Sparks’ Cooper Hasn’t Been on Joy Ride Like This in Years

“I love the sounds of basketball,” Michael Cooper was saying.

“I even love being off the court, in a locker room, when a game is underway and hearing the crowd react--I can almost see what’s happening.”

He was referring to the events of July 21 in Phoenix, when a security officer escorted him off the court after he’d been ejected for a second technical foul. Confined alone in the Spark locker room--with no TV--he listened, and smiled.

“I didn’t need a TV, I could hear. When it got quiet, that meant something good had happened.”

He also was referring to a memorable Saturday in Houston, when he saw what he said were among the most joyful faces he’d seen in a decades-long basketball career.

In the visitors’ locker room at Compaq Center, he was looking at a near-riotous Spark team, celebrating the greatest victory in franchise history, its first win at Houston, 84-74.

The bedlam could be heard through the closed door. A Houston ball girl came out, saying: “Boy, are they having a party in there!”

“That was very meaningful to me as a coach,” Cooper said, “the expressions on their faces--knowing all their hard work had been rewarded, knowing now for sure that they’re as good as or better than Houston, top to bottom.”

The 3-0 sweep of Houston made the Sparks the team to beat for the WNBA championship--and along with Monday’s victory at Minnesota--took their rookie coach a step closer to the coach-of-the-year award.

“I don’t want that, I want what the players want--to be known as a WNBA champion,” he said.

Cooper was greatly annoyed at a Houston Chronicle columnist who wrote Sunday that the Sparks have “yet to see the real Comets play.”

“Well, when are we gonna see ‘em?” Cooper said.

“The fact is, we match up with their big three better than anyone else in the league. [DeLisha] Milton allowed [Tina] Thompson two good looks at the basket all day. [Tamecka] Dixon guarded [Cynthia] Cooper very well and Mwadi [Mabika] did a great job on [Sheryl] Swoopes, although [Swoopes] was bothered by that finger injury.

“But we’re not limited to those matchups. We can put Lisa [Leslie] on Thompson, Milton on Swoopes or Allison [Feaster] on Cooper.”

Conditioning, more than any other factor, Cooper said, has brought the Sparks to 25-3.

It has enabled them to win the close games and avoid injury.

This team has shown repeatedly it will respond to any closing challenge. Of eight games decided by six or fewer points, the Sparks have won seven.

They tend not to blow out teams, as the last two Comet championship clubs did, but to win with carefully measured, controlled finishes.

Only one Spark player has been sidelined because of illness or injury, an ankle sprain to Dixon a month ago. Seattle players have missed 46 total games.

“We are the best conditioned team in the league, we’ve shown that,” Cooper said, pointing out his starters went all the way in the second half at Houston.

“The hard conditioning work we did in training camp, we’ve kept that up in practices,” he said.

“No one runs like we do. In a timeout with five minutes left Saturday, I looked in their faces and they looked great. It was an air-conditioned building on a humid day, so I didn’t want to see shiny faces, that means they’re losing too many fluids.

“I saw mostly dry faces and very clear eyes. I knew then we were going to beat Houston.”

LAYUPS

Consensus around the league is that Utah Coach Fred Williams is on thin ice and may be fired if the Starzz don’t make the playoffs. Reason: Too much talent, too few wins. . . . Olympic sprinter Marion Jones, a fine player at North Carolina, was asked recently about a future in the WNBA. “I want to compete in the 2004 and 2008 Olympics, and if my body is still in one piece by then I’d love to try the WNBA--if they’ll have me,” she said. . . . The Houston Comets and Rockets raised almost $200,000 in a recent telethon to help build “Kim’s Place,” a facility for children with cancer and their families to be built at a Houston hospital within two years. Kim Perrot was the point guard who led the Comets to their first two championships before dying of cancer Aug. 19. Saturday morning, on the day of the Spark-Comet game, Houston Coach Van Chancellor invited several hundred season-ticket holders to a shoot-around at Compaq Center and turned it into a spur-of-the-moment auction of signed uniforms and basketballs. In 30 minutes, he raised an additional $10,900. . . . Chancellor had this quip for Cooper, when he spoke to him before Saturday’s game: “You’ve done a great job, Michael--you’re one of my two candidates for coach of the year.”