by Lisa Leslie
Dawn had ten points and three rebounds in the game, but she also had an uncharacteristically low two assists and an unusually high six turnovers. During the postgame media interviews, I reminded everyone what a tremendous competitor Dawn Staley was and how tough the Sting could be. Charlotte had gone on the road to New York and had won back-to-back games against the Liberty just to get to the finals, so we knew we would have our work cut out for us in Game Two. The Sparks needed just one more win in the best-of-three series to capture our first WNBA championship. When the finals shifted back to Los Angeles, our job was to put away the Charlotte Sting as quickly as possible.
On Saturday, September 1, Staples Center was packed for Game Two, and the stars had come out for the event. Lakers general manager Jerry West was there. Penny Marshall was courtside, along with Michael Clarke Duncan, Vivica A. Fox, and Tyrese, but it was the Sparks who were putting on a show. We were hitting on all cylinders, and although Charlotte out-shot us in the first half, the Sparks led 38–30 at the halftime break.
The second half turned into a blowout. We outscored the Sting by twenty points and won the game 82–54. It was the largest margin of victory in any WNBA finals series, and the win made the L.A. Sparks the first team, other than Houston, to capture a WNBA championship. The Comets had won the first four crowns, but now Los Angeles had one, as well. In a nice note of symmetry, the Lakers had won the NBA championship just a few months before, so things were twice as nice for L.A. hoop fans that year.
Finally winning the WNBA championship was a tremendous accomplishment for us, but when the game ended, I knew we had to go hit hands with our opponents. I was okay with that until I saw Dawn. When I saw her, I just broke down. It was so difficult because I was used to winning with her. We had been through a lot together.
When I got to Dawn after the game, I told her that I was sorry. I know that sounds kind of weird, and I know that everybody cannot win, but for the two of us, the feelings ran so much deeper than just winning and losing. I knew how bad Dawn’s knees were, but she had never stopped fighting. She had pushed herself the way that true leaders do. She had brought so much to the game. I felt bad at a time when I should have felt wonderful. It was a “chokey” moment for me. My heart was in my throat. Dawn was very strong and usually hid her emotions well, but she started crying, too. She told me, “I haven’t cried in ten years, and now you’ve got me going.” Dawn gave me a big hug and then walked off.
I was not sure what to feel. There were so many negatives for Dawn and her team, yet so many positives for the Sparks and me. I was standing there as a WNBA champion, and individually, I had had a terrific postseason run—so good in fact that I won the Most Valuable Player Award for the WNBA playoffs. League President Val Ackerman handed the trophy to me, and I raised it high for every Sparks fan in the building to see. I did not know it at the time, but winning that award made me the first woman to capture the WNBA’s All-Star MVP, regular-season MVP, and playoff MVP trophies in the same season. It also put me in some very elite basketball company, with Willis Reed, Michael Jordan, and Shaq. They were the only players who had accomplished the MVP trifecta in a single NBA season.
I was really excited and happy for my team. I was also somewhat relieved, thinking, “Wow! We made it. It was so much fun!” The stands were jam-packed with Sparks fans, who were cheering, applauding, and celebrating. I spotted my family, which always sits in the exact same section each game. They were cheering and waving and egging me on. What a great feeling! I started working my way around the arena, smiling and giving the thumbs-up to our crowd. I was ecstatic. My heart was pounding, and I could not have wiped the smile off my face if I had wanted to. I really love our Sparks fans and their continued support. Those great people stuck with us when we were losing, cheered us to victory, and earned their right to celebrate.
I stepped up on the scorer’s table and started throwing T-shirts to the fans. Wouldn’t you know it? On one of the most incredible days of my life, I could barely throw a shirt more than a few feet. I guess they needed to be balled up tighter to be more aerodynamic so I could launch them to our enthusiastic fans that were way up in the stands, but these shirts did not travel well. They were loose and floppy, so even when I tossed one with all my might, the T-shirt would flutter to the floor about three feet away from me. How weak! I was so disappointed, and I am sure that the people in the upper levels of Staples Center were saying, “She may be the MVP, but she sucks at throwing shirts!”
Except for the throwing thing, I was having a terrific time, and the fans were having fun celebrating in the arena. I had security and PR people yelling at me. “Lisa, Lisa, come on. You gotta go. You gotta get out of here!”
I yelled back, “Give me more shirts for the fans!” I wanted every fan to get one, because I could not stop thinking about how much they had done to help and support us on our way to the title. I did not want to leave. The energy, electricity, and excitement in that building were absolutely amazing!
When they finally pulled me down from the table, I kept laughing and waving to the crowd as I jogged to the Sparks’ locker room. I was the last player to get there, and when I walked inside, I saw black plastic covering our lockers. Then it hit me. Oh God, champagne! In my mind, I knew what a victorious locker room should look like. I had seen teams celebrating their championships, but it never registered in my mind that it was going to happen for the L.A. Sparks. I had never won a WNBA title before, and I did not know if the celebration would be the same for the women champions as it was for the men.
Before I knew it, a wall of teammates came at me. They were shaking bottles and squirting champagne in my face, my hair, everywhere. My eyes were burning. They messed me up so badly. I was rubbing my eyes, straining to see, and saying, “Give me a towel.” Then I thought, Hiding your face in a towel to avoid the spray of champagne? That’s a wimpy thing to do in a champion’s locker room. The champagne was everywhere, though. It was dripping from my hair and down my face, and my uniform was completely soaked. I was so excited.
When I could finally see again, I grabbed a bottle of champagne, shook it, and started spraying my teammates. We were playing like little kids, and then this swarm of people stormed into the locker room. All we could see were lights. The masses of media were coming in to record our celebration. There were so many cameras, lights, microphones, and reporters. We just kept dancing around, jumping, laughing, and singing. Why shouldn’t we? The Sparks had accomplished what we had set out to do way back in May, in training camp. Our 34–5 record was the best in the league. We went undefeated in the playoffs, and in our first season at Staples Center, we went 19–1 at home and brought our fans their first WNBA championship. It was an amazing season.
The Sparks had enjoyed good team chemistry throughout the 2001 season, but in that championship locker room, it was great team chemistry. We had so many different personalities and lifestyles on our squad, but we always respected each other. You could hug anybody. It did not matter. We had all worked together to achieve our goal, and that was a wonderful feeling. Our team started singing that song that goes, “It’s over. It’s over now. Sorry, we can’t be stopped!” It was the perfect song for the Sparks because there had been so many doubters who did not believe that we could be champions.
The truth is, our 2001 team would not have been successful without the solid foundation that had been laid the year before. Our squad had great talent, which had finally blossomed in Coach Cooper’s second season. We had learned how to win, and that had made our confidence grow. The team had found its personality, too, whether it was me counting three fingers every time I made a three-point shot, or Tamecka Dixon looking in the stands, putting her hand behind her ear, and letting the crowd know that she wanted more noise. We had really come into our own.
Toto always worked like a warrior for the Sparks, too. She brought us an attitude that we did not have before. Mwadi Mabika was our silent assassin from three-point range. DeLisha would slap me a hard high f
ive before each game, which sent the message “Man, it is on!” to our opponents. I think all of that inspired us, brought us closer, and made us a better team. We stood there in that championship locker room, laughing, dancing, hugging, spraying champagne, and singing, “It’s over. It’s over now. Sorry, we can’t be stopped!” For that moment, for that day, we were on top of the world. The L.A. Sparks were WNBA champions.
It would have been easy for me to kick back, enjoy the off-season, and savor success, but I knew it was going to be difficult for the Sparks to defend our title. So I spent a lot of the winter trying to make my game even better. I worked hard on my hook shot, my passing, and my ball-handling skills so I would have a more complete arsenal for the WNBA wars that I knew would be coming in the 2002 season.
It also would have been just as easy for the Sparks’ front office to rest on its laurels and stand back during the off-season, but that was not the way that our general manager operated. Penny Toler had a keen eye for talent, and she was always looking for ways to improve the team. When draft day rolled around on April 19, 2002, Penny shocked a lot of people. She traded Ukari Figgs, who had been the starting point guard on our championship team, to the Portland Fire to get Nikki Teasley, a six-foot guard out of the University of North Carolina, who had been Portland’s choice with the number five pick in the WNBA draft.
It was a gutsy move to trade a proven commodity for a rookie with potential, but the deal paid off immediately. Nikki T. moved right into our starting lineup, and the Sparks ran off to a 12–1 record to start the 2002 WNBA season. Coach Cooper called Nikki Lady Magic, because she reminded him of his former Lakers teammate Earvin “Magic” Johnson. That was high praise, but we could see early on that Nikki had great court awareness. She knew how to read each and every player on the floor. She also knew where they wanted the ball and when they should have it. On top of that, Nikki was a clutch three-point shooter.
I think there was a lot of pressure on Nikki, coming in as a rookie and being handed the reins of a veteran, championship squad. There was pressure on Coop and his assistant coaches, Karleen Thompson and Ryan Weisenberg, too. Once you win a championship, people expect you to keep winning. If you do not, the coach usually takes the heat. But Coop did a great job of keeping our team focused and loose. One of the things that I loved about him was the way that he gave us options as to how we would guard our opponents and handle different things on the court. We liked that because he made us feel like we were part of the process and not just pawns in it.
There was pressure on us as players for the upcoming season, too. Once a team tasted success, it either got hungrier or lazier. In 2002 the Sparks developed a serious appetite. We really wanted to defend our championship, and we had top-notch talent, playoff experience, and a will to win. All the ingredients were there, and when the league broke for the All-Star Weekend in mid-July, the Sparks owned a 15–3 record. Things were looking good.
That year’s All-Star Game was played on a Monday night in Washington, D.C., and this time, the fans voted me onto the West’s starting lineup. Houston’s Sheryl Swoopes and Tina Thompson were alongside me, and our starting guards were Ticha Penicheiro from Sacramento and Sue Bird, the Seattle Storm rookie who had been the number one overall pick in the 2002 draft. I was happy to have my Sparks teammates Mwadi Mabika and Tamecka Dixon on the stellar squad as well.
The Eastern Conference All-Stars featured a front line of New York’s Tari Phillips, Charlotte’s Andrea Stinson, and Indiana’s Tamika Catchings. The Liberty’s Teresa Weatherspoon was in the backcourt for the East, along with my friend Dawn Staley, the point guard for Charlotte.
A lot of the media talk leading up to that All-Star Game had centered on a perceived “changing of the guard” in the WNBA. The thinking was that young players, like Sue Bird, Lauren Jackson, and Tamika Catchings, were ready to take the torch of league leadership from the “old-school” veterans, such as Sheryl, Tina, and myself, who had been there when the WNBA began back in 1997. I was already motivated to play, but when I heard that, I was really ready.
The game turned out to be the tightest one in the league’s brief All-Star history. The West squeezed by the East by a score of 81–76, and I was fortunate enough to win my third All-Star MVP trophy. There had only been four WNBA All-Star Games, and this was probably the most physical of them all.
Once again, the fans and the media had been hoping to see a dunk in the All-Star Game, but it did not happen. The East played us really tough and did not give up many fast breaks. I was disappointed, too, but I made it clear at the postgame press conference that dunking was one of my goals and that I would be working hard to make it happen before the end of the 2002 season.
I had dunked in practice and in warm-ups when I was at Morningside High School and at USC. I had dunked in a summer league regulation game called the Say No Classic, and I had dunked in Sparks practices, but I had never dunked a basketball in a WNBA game. Nobody had. My trainer, Adam Friedman, told me that I should start thinking seriously about including dunking in a game as one of my goals. I wrote down, “Dunk in a WNBA game this season,” as a goal that I really wanted to achieve.
Seven nights after the All-Star Game, I became the first WNBA player to reach three thousand career points, and eight nights after that, on July 30, I got a chance to achieve my goal. The Sparks were hosting the Miami Sol, and we were trailing 36–25 with 4:44 remaining in the first half. I was angry because we were playing terrible defense and losing to an expansion team. Miami had moved the ball around effectively, and they seemed to be making just about every shot that they put up, so when Betty Lennox launched a three-point shot, we were all a bit surprised to see the ball clang off of the iron and into the hands of my teammate Toto.
I just reacted and started sprinting down court, and Toto turned and tossed the ball. I was just barely across midcourt when I caught the pass. Lennox was chasing me, but there was nobody between me and the basket. I knew that I needed only two or three dribbles to get there. I was going for it. I was going to dunk! My steps were right, just as they were that rainy day at Morningside when high jump practice was moved into the gym and I dunked that tennis ball. On this night, I went up and I dunked it HARD! I was so happy that it was not some wimpy “I just barely pushed it in” kind of dunk. It was not like my fingernail just barely made it over the rim. There was no question about this one. It was a quality dunk. People were not sitting there, wondering, Did she try to dunk? They knew and I knew that I had clearly dunked the ball. The rim had snapped down and popped back. Everybody had seen it!
My reaction was pure amazement. I threw my hands up in the air and started running back down the court. I was thinking, I did it! Usually during a game, I was so focused that I did not hear much crowd reaction, but after I dunked, the noise was incredible. There was a collective “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” Everybody in the arena was up. They had seen a little piece of history, and I could hear them cheering. The fans were in shock. The Sparks were in shock, and so was the Miami Sol.
Betty Lennox was the closest one to me when I dunked it. She had the best view and was in all the photos. She later told me that she saw the dunk coming and knew she could not stop it, so she was going to grab my foot. The only thing that kept her from doing it was not wanting to get thrown out of the game.
Coach Cooper was jumping up and down when he saw the dunk. Coop had seen his share of great dunks during his days with the Lakers, but he was really excited to see me slam one down and make history.
Later, people walked up to me and told me they had watched my dunk on the highlights on ESPN. It was replayed over and over, and the next morning it was listed as one of the top ten moments in sports. It even made international front-page news. The accolades were wonderful but the terrible thing was that we lost the game 82–73, and to an expansion team at that.
The dunk brought with it a burning question: When are you going to do it again? The ball had barely dropped through the net, but I could not escap
e this question. People also speculated about what the dunk might mean for the future of women’s basketball. Would there be more interest? Would there be more respect? Those questions were not easily answered. Even after the dunk, it seemed like women still had to do so much to feel validated on the court. And the dunk did little to quiet the talk about differences between men’s and women’s style of play. It is an ongoing battle.
Sometimes I hear people say great things about me, or about past legends, like Cheryl Miller and Ann Meyers. But in the general scheme of things, we still get overlooked. Maybe it just takes time. Maybe when the WNBA reaches its fiftieth year, our players will be treated like Bill Russell, Kareem, and the many elite players of the NBA.
I think as the WNBA matures as a league, more women will dunk, and that may bring more attention. We realize how appealing that is to fans of the sport. Maybe sometime soon we will be able to name ten players in the WNBA who can dunk and create that kind of excitement. We are not there yet, but that time is coming. Younger players, like Candace Parker, Sylvia Fowles, Mya Moore, Deanna Nolan, Margo Dydek, and Michelle Snow, are doing it. And hopefully, I can put down a few more before I retire. But I am happy to have been the first. Fans, in fact, voted my dunk as the “Greatest Milestone” in the WNBA’s first decade. It is nice to go down in the history books.
It was difficult to pull away from all the hoopla that surrounded my dunk, but the Sparks still had games to play and a WNBA title to defend. The remainder of the season was just as tough as the previous one.