Crowd Debut-tiful as Sparks Play Ugly

A one-word description of what happened to the Los Angeles Sparks on Saturday at the Forum, in the first game of the Women’s NBA:

Torched.

But then, what would you expect when they faced a team whose jerseys feature the Statue of Liberty?

The Sparks began flaming out midway through the first half against the New York Liberty and wound up losing, 67-57.

However, the team won a big one at the box office.

The game drew 14,284. Only a few weeks ago, the Sparks were praying they could fill the seats below the Forum concourse and get an 8,505-seat sellout.

It was the largest crowd to see a women’s basketball game in Los Angeles since the 1984 Olympics and the largest ever for a women’s pro game in the United States.

The Sparks’ vaunted big players, 6-foot-8 Zheng Haixia and 6-5 Lisa Leslie, were never the factors Coach Linda Sharp hoped they’d be. Leslie had a cold-shooting game and Haixia had eight points in 17 minutes off the bench.

Meanwhile, Rebecca Lobo and Teresa Weatherspoon came up big for the Liberty.

Lobo, the 6-4 1995 college player of the year from Connecticut and a 1996 Olympic teammate of Leslie’s, had 16 points, six rebounds, three assists and three blocks in 35 minutes.

Weatherspoon, a 31-year-old guard from Louisiana Tech, had only three points, but she had 10 assists and gave her team an offensive tempo the Sparks never matched.

Leslie, who made six of 17 shots on her way to 16 points, tried to provide some spark with 8:16 left in the first half. All alone after a steal, she tried a dunk, but she hung it up on the rim.

The Liberty pulled out to a 27-16 lead, and except when the Sparks pulled within 40-36, the visitors had a comfortable margin.

Sharp said she saw opening-game nerves--and some poor guard play.

“I think it was first-game nerves, but the players would never admit that to you,” she said.

“I’m really disappointed. We’re a much better team than we showed. We were never in sync today, never in a rhythm where we could come back. Our guards were one pass short on every possession, it seemed to me.

“We have five perimeter players and I think we should be able to count on all five. Mwadi [Mabika] came in and gave us a lift in the first half, but then she disappeared.”

Leslie admitted the team didn’t play well.

“We were a little overwhelmed, I think,” she said.

“I can only compare this experience to the U.S. national team experience, but we’ve just been together here for not even a month. And Zheng Haixia got to camp late and she doesn’t know a lot of English. So it’ll take us some time to come together.

“We need a lot of work on our fastbreak transition. We needed some runs and it just never happened.

“It’ll be kind of nice to get on the road, and maybe not see so many familiar faces.”

The Sparks play at Salt Lake City on Monday night against the Utah Starzz.

New York Coach Nancy Darsch gave her team a low score.

“On a 10-scale, I’d give us a 6 1/2,” she said.

“We had the first-game jitters, just like they did. We didn’t score much, we just kept trying to get our hands on the ball and work to get deflections and throw them off. I think it worked.”

Jamilla Wideman, the rookie Spark guard from Stanford, said her first pro game seemed like football.

“The game here is so much more physical [than college] at every position, but especially the perimeter. It’s much faster and you are playing against people who have been playing pro for years.”

L.A. guard Penny Toler, who had 15 points and four assists, said she hoped her team wouldn’t be judged by Saturday’s performance.

“I think we’ve got a really, really good team. I think, depending on our situation, people need to step up. It seemed like every time we cut the lead a bit, we’d let up.”

Toler provided what might be a $5 trivia question in 10 years or so. She scored the first WNBA basket, a 12-foot jumper one minute into the game.

New York’s Kym Hampton, a 34-year-old from Arizona State who had played abroad professionally for 12 years, was a major factor, with 13 points and seven rebounds. And she too talked of opening-game nerves.

“When the game started, I could feel the nerves and at times I lost focus and lost some opportunities with all the excitement,” she said.

“In the first half, plays that we executed right in practice we weren’t finishing. So at halftime we talked a lot about that. We calmed down in the second half.”

Sharp started Daedra Charles up front, deciding not to start the 6-8 Haixia just before tipoff.

The Sparks shot 31% and committed 25 turnovers.

To Charles, the 28-year-old European leagues veteran from Tennessee, the Sparks were focused on the wrong end of the court.

“We had no focus, no rhythm,” she said.

“We should have focused first on our defense and we were focused on the offense. They set the tempo, we followed. We never established anything. But we’ll get better. We haven’t been together long.

“We’ll be a better team.”

* BILL PLASCHKE

At the Forum, basketball is only part of it. A1

* ROUNDUP: C11