FLASHBACK 1997: Professional women's basketball streaks into Utah: Here come the Starzz.
Female Fastbreak
By Libby Potter
In commemoration of City Weekly's 40th anniversary, we are digging into our archives to celebrate. Each week, we FLASHBACK to a story or column from our past in honor of four decades of local alt-journalism. Whether the names and issues are familiar or new, we are grateful to have this unique newspaper to contain them all.
Title: Female Fastbreak
Author: Libby Potter
Date: June 12, 1997
Just to set the record straight, Lady Hardmon is no sissy. On the basketball court she hustles, she gets fastbreaks and she nails her shots. She’s played the last four seasons in European leagues, where players often don’t get paid, playing facilities are substandard and there’s more to fear from violent fans than from the opposing team. And—oh, yeah—she’s only 5-foot 10-inches and she can slam-dunk.
But she still thinks she’s going to cry on June 21 when she jogs onto the Delta Center floor and hears herself introduced as a point guard for the Utah Starzz. For Hardmon and her 13 teammates, it’s a big ol’ hoop dream come true: They’re playing in the NBA.
When the league created the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) last fall, it came in on the heels of the biggest year ever for women’s basketball. Lisa Leslie and Rebecca Lobo led the U.S. Olympic team on a gold rush in Atlanta last July. Reebok recently announced the first-ever athletic shoes linked to female stars—including a basketball show endorsed by Sheryl Swoopes. And several Olympians and college stars signed with the fledgling American Basketball League (ABL), which finished its first season a few months ago.
Hardmon credits the Olympic basketball team for bringing the sport into the spotlight. “It gave us this opportunity,” she says. “If the Olympic women hadn’t done what they did, there wouldn’t be an ABL, there wouldn’t be a WNBA. They opened a door.”
And the NBA walked right in. In addition to the Starzz, there are seven more teams in the new league: the Los Angeles Sparks, Phoenix Mercury and Sacramento Monarchs in the Western Conference; and the Charlotte Sting, Cleveland Rockers, Houston Comets and New York Liberty in the Eastern. Though operated by NBA teams, the women’s franchises are owned by the league, which pays the players’ and coaches’ salaries in exchange for a cut of the admission take. There’s a vision: If the first eight teams are successful, there could eventually be women’s teams associated with all 29 NBA franchises.
With just days to go before the opening games, more than 100 players are waiting in the wings for their turn on the professional playground.
Hoop Dreams
Denise Taylor knows about hoop dreams. “It was like, hey, I want to coach in the NBA, and I want to coach the Olympic team, and I want to win a national championship and I want to be inducted into the Hall of Fame.”
The Starzz’ head coach may be smiling as she lists what were impossible dreams just a few years ago, but her voice is absolutely serious. “Those have been my goals. Not just now. Those have been my goals, period.”
Taylor was so serious about her coaching that she sent a proposal to the NBA long before it announced the women’s league. “It may sound crazy,” she says of her dream-come-true job, “but I’ve seen this. I could see it happening. I felt it was going to happen, because I worked hard.” But she hasn’t stopped thinking big. “I’ve gone to the last five or six Hall of Fame inductions,” she says, laughing. “I’ve already reserved a spot there.”
There were already four players assigned to the Salt Lake City team when Taylor signed on in mid-April, and she’s added 10 more between the April 28 draft and two hectic days of open tryouts in May that drew 140 WNBA hopefuls—way more than she expected.
She had just enough time to pack up and move to Utah before beginning training camp at the end of May. But the real challenge for Taylor and her assistant coach, Greg Williams, is turning 14 individuals into a reliable team in a matter of three weeks. Her problems are compounded by the fact that she’s still missing a key player, Elena Baranova, who, with Hardmon, was one of the two original players assigned to the team.
Contract agreements stated that the WNBA wouldn’t interfere with the 6-foot 5-inch center’s participation on the Russian national team. “We’re not very big,” Taylor says. “Maybe that’ll look different when Baranova gets here. We’re still practicing short, which gives us a distorted view of the complete team.”
But nothing pulls down Taylor’s confidence. In her three years as head coach at Northeastern Illinois University, she took a team with a dismal 5-23 record and ended the 1996-’97 season at 19-9. Her goal for the Starzz? “Being the hardest-working team in the WNBA,” she says. “We’re going to be competitive and we’re going to play hard. In my experience that equates to some wins.”
Gender Discrimination
The opportunity was a long time coming. This year marks the 25th anniversary of Title IX, the Congressional mandate that banned gender discrimination in public and private schools receiving federal funds. Ambiguous wording and reluctant coaches made it hard to enforce, and the legislation was largely ignored through the Reagan years.
The last decade has brought some change: In 1992 the Supreme Court ruled that students can sue colleges over Title IX infringements, and the government began watchdogging NCAA schools to see that girls were receiving proportionate athletic opportunities and scholarships. In spite of the attention, though, the Equity Disclosure Act of 1996 listed more than 90 percent of schools and colleges still not in compliance.
Though arguably the weakest civil rights law on the books, the mandate has produced results beyond improved facilities and access to scholarships. Taylor notes the change: “Women’s basketball has evolved,” she says. “The talent level, the fan support, the programs. I look at myself—I didn’t get the chance to go to camps. My niece just turned 13, and she went to four or five camps last summer. Now, because there are more programs and girls are playing a lot earlier, their skills are a lot better. The opportunity for the league to be successful is tremendous. I think this is the time.”
The implications for younger players are staggering. As a teenager in Cleveland, Miss., Taylor says, basketball was more than something she enjoyed doing. “I was a pretty decent player,” she says. “As I looked at it, that was my ticket to a free education if I could get a scholarship.”
Looking back 20 years later, she sees other benefits. “I want to get out to the high schools, junior high schools, community centers and speak with the girls there,” she says. “Get them excited about it. Help educate them. Tell them what being involved in athletics brings to girls. The self-esteem that it builds: Girls are less likely to get pregnant. Those are some of the target areas that I’d like to tap into.”
Her enthusiasm and positive attitude are infectious, but Taylor touches on an interesting point: All equal rights issues aside, women’s careers in sports are less stable than men’s. Sheryl Swoopes, one of the top players in the country and one of the first signed by the WNBA, resigned when she found out she was pregnant.
No Equal Pay
The ABL and WNBA may mean increased opportunities, but women won’t be getting equal pay for equal work for a long time. Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley can command multi-million dollar contracts, but the WNBA pay cap for the first season is set at $50,000. It’s possible to earn significantly more in the ABL, where the average player pulls in $70,000 and top stars are earning as much as $125,000—even though the league has notably less capital and management experience.
Still, a lot of players have turned down ABL opportunities for a chance to play in the WNBA. “I got drafted for the ABL last year,” Hardmon explains. But reservations kept her from signing. “I wasn’t sure. It was a new league. I have experience playing overseas, and they don’t pay you, so I didn’t know if the ABL … I didn’t want to take the chance.” But the WNBA? She grins. “This’ll be history. And I figured the NBA would do it first-class anyway. That’s why I picked it.”
But Hardmon, like many of the players, expects the two leagues to eventually merge. “You need all of them together,” she explains. “You need Dawn Staley playing. Theresa Edwards.” She grins at the thought. “You’re talking about competition.”
There are plenty of possibilities for the bottom line to float upward, too. League management expects that many players will find lucrative endorsement contracts, and if the first few seasons are particularly successful, they expect to raise salaries. Having the NBA public-relations machine behind the league doesn’t hurt. The WNBA starts its first season with the largest, first-year television contract in history: a game-a-week broadcast commitment from NBC, as well as extensive coverage on ESPN and Lifetime.
Getting the deal meant some compromises, notably moving the eight-week women’s season to the summer months when networks have the hardest time finding material to broadcast, but the league doesn’t seem to mind. Summer play keeps the WNBA from getting lost in the regular NBA season, and sponsors are banking on mass disillusionment with major-league baseball and its strike problems.
Can It Last?
The real question is whether the women’s league will last in the United States. It’s been a hot ticket in Europe, where it’s run as a club sport, but it may be a different situation if NBA commissioner David Stern pulls a Jerry Maguire. Historically, the only women’s sports that have been profitable are gymnastics and ice skating. To show Stern the money, the league will have to average crowds of 8,000. At the Delta Center, that means virtually filling the lower bowl. The upper deck won’t be open for Starzz games. Tim Howells, general manager of the Jazz/Starzz organization, has a lower estimate: the team will be viable if it pulls paid attendance of 6,000. Season ticket sales will most likely top out around 2,000, and Howells, albeit hopeful, admits that he has no idea what walk-up sales will be like.
In Utah, that’s touchy ground. The list of deceased sports teams here is epic: The original Utah Stars, the Golden Eagles, the Trappers, a soccer team and two professional women’s volleyball teams have been somewhat less than successful. Women’s basketball on the college level doesn’t draw significant crowds, either: The University of Utah team recently finished their best-ever season with a fan base composed largely of roommates, parents and friends. Home game attendance averaged 657. The ABL pulled in larger crowds than anticipated, but even their average of 3,536 fans doesn’t come close to what the WNBA will need to stay afloat. And the bottom line was dismal. League founders expected to lose $2 to $3 million in the first year of operation; they ended the season nearly $5 million in the red.
Somehow, though, a WNBA team in Utah is poetically appropriate. Long before the New Orleans Jazz were purchased and transplanted to the Great Basin, the original Utah Stars team took the 1971 American Basketball Association championship. Six years later, the New Orleans Jazz actually drafted Lusia Harris-Stewart, Denise Taylor’s god-sister and the first woman ever to be picked for an NBA team. She never played—as it did in Swoopes’ case, pregnancy intervened. It seems like karma that the WNBA found its way to Salt Lake City.
Despite the dismal attendance at women’s games, Howells thinks the Starzz have terrific potential in Utah. “Utah is a real hotbed of basketball,” he notes. Along with Indiana and Kentucky, the state has the highest per capita fan base in the country. The Starzz’ opening game is nearly half sold out. He continues: “I think that the NBA wanted to go with what I will call ‘safe franchises’—franchises that they feel operate their businesses in a successful manner. Beyond that, I don’t know. Geographically maybe we fit in somehow.”
Not that the Jazz management was all that thrilled to hear they were selected to operate a WNBA team. “When we first heard that we were going to be getting a franchise, at best there were mixed emotions in the front office here,” Howells admits. “We’ve got an awful lot on our plate. But I will say that as we’ve gotten into this, there’s a growing enthusiasm for what’s going on here.”
Taylor doesn’t mind—she expects to generate her own enthusiasm. “I’ve always been a part of something new,” she says, “rebuilding programs that had loser records, no fans, no interest. And every play I’ve been in people get excited. The fan support has increased the awareness.”
She has a formula for success, too. “Women have to support women,” she says. “We’ll go to football games, we’ll go to baseball games, but we don’t know a player on the team. Women have to bring those men along like they take us along. Hey, we’ll go to a hockey game, so you’ve got to bring your boyfriend to watch a women’s game.” She continues, “Winning helps, too. You go in and have a class program and have some success—people like to be a part of success.”
Women’s basketball is a different game from men’s—but in Taylor’s opinion that may just be another selling point. “I think that basically the men are stronger, and women are more skilled,” Taylor says. “Most women don’t have the strength to get up and dunk the ball.” True, she has a secret weapon—Lady Hardmon—but she relies more on preparing a careful defense and a well-thought-out offense.
Women, she says, are better at the fundamentals of the game: “Passing, screening, executing, patience. They don’t get in and want to go one-on-one. And the women shoot the ball a little better. That’s one of the big things you hear in the NBA now, is that shooting the basketball is a lost art.”
She throws in what must be a favorite piece of trivia: “One thing about the women is, fundamentally, they can knock down a three-point shot. The last statistics from colleges were that the women were shooting three-pointers at a higher percentage than the men.”
First Round Pick
It’s believable, especially watching Tammi Reiss. In practice she nails one after another after another. She spent three years coaching at Virginia after her own graduation; it’s easy to see why the women’s statistics are up. At just 5-feet 6-inches, she was the Starzz’ first-round pick in the April draft.
She may be one of the two shortest players on the team, but she dreamed tall. College scholarship and national championship, sure. And she reached even higher. She is sitting on the floor in the hall outside the gym, her wildly curly brown hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. For later practices she’ll weave it into tiny braids. “I grew up in the Magic Johnson/Larry Bird era,” she says. “Great team basketball. They had the great Lakers, the great ‘Sixers, the great Celtics. Naturally I said, I’m going to be able to dunk, I’m going to play in the NBA. No one could tell me no.”
She recalls her senior year at Virginia, when the team fell short of her national championship dream. “We lost in the Final Four,” she says. “I thought, there’s my career. It’s been great, but now I’ve got to move on. I really thought that it was over. I hung up my shoes.”
She spent some time acting in New York, came back to Virginia to coach and left for Los Angeles a year ago to do television and commercial work. Until she heard about the WNBA and ended up with the Starzz.
It’s another hoop dream come true. So can she dunk? “No,” she says, “but I can shoot a mean three-pointer. If someone drops to their knees, I can go off their back and I can dunk. That’s the way I do it on the streets, anyway. But no dunks here.” She laughs and pays her new teammate a big compliment. “You’ve got to get that from Lady.”
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