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A Chauvinist Pig in a Poke
Posted: Tuesday April 18, 2000 05:58 PM
Someday somebody may whisper in your ear, "Hey, buddy, how'd you like to spend an entire day rubbing bodies with 107 fit, glistening young women?" Resist! If you don't, you'll end up like me, a semifunctioning blood clot, a man with more scratch marks than Ricky Martin, a boy toy used and discarded by ruthless females. That isn't what I expected when I agreed to be the only man to compete in last week's WNBA predraft camp in Chicago. What I expected was a) a good roomie; b) some partial nudity; and c) to have my way with these girls, basketball-wise. See, I had never attended, watched or given two bobby pins about a WNBA game. I figured it was women in comfortable heels shooting two-hand set shots and running to the bench to check their Maybelline. Right away there were signs that maybe I was wrong. For example, at the player physicals the day before the camp, Dr. John Heffrin shook my hand and said, "We're going to have the defibrillator at the gym, just in case." He wasn't smiling. Then, in my complimentary WNBA player's bag -- which included, yes, sports bras -- some wise gal had slipped in a listing of Chicago funeral homes. Then I got a look at the schedule for the next day: 9:15 a.m.-12:15 p.m., half-court games; 2-8 p.m., full-court games. And I thought, 8:03, defibrillator. Now, I may not be Billy Blanks, but I'm not Tyra Banks, either. I'm 6'1", 180 pounds, sturdy in a 42 year-old kind of way. But when I went to my power-forward spot and a woman named Frankie Boyd, 6'4" and 180 pounds, senior, Ole Miss, got the ball in the post, yo-yoed it, slammed her butt into my intestines and her elbow into my teeth (sending me skidding back on my shorts), and laid in the uncontested bunny, I wished very much that I had stayed home and rotated the tires. Why must women be so violent? They grabbed me. They shoved me. They pinched me. They held their ground. They were huge. At one point I was guarding 6'4", 250-pound UCLA center Janae Hubbard, a woman who on the court didn't seem to care in the least about Maybelline. I came out, and my coach, Greg Williams, an assistant with the Detroit Shock, said, "Son, you couldn't play dead in a cowboy movie." I tightened my sports bra. I bruised, pinched and elbowed the women back. For me, chivalry was dead. In one skirmish with Boyd, I held her, she slapped my hands away, she hooked her arm around my back, I grunted, we leaned hard into each other, both bathed in sweat, thus re-creating most of my high school dates. I started making shots. A baby hook. A three-pointer. A thumping putback. I returned to the bench. "I bet you scored 10 points out there," Williams said, "and gave up 20." But you don't understand! I had to guard 6'8" Rhonda Smith, who had fingernails like RuPaul! I had to stay with Michelle (Spinderella) Marciniak, the 1996 Final Four MVP! I had to stop women who would humiliate the tall white geeks at the end of every NBA bench. "Did you play basketball when you were young?" a well-meaning teammate asked me on the sideline. Uh, ouch. Oh, yes, I wanted to say. I was in charge of getting the ball out of the peach basket. Then came the full-court games. Refs. Stat crews. At one point, gassed, I
looked over to Williams and pulled on my shirt, the universal sign that a player
needs to come out. Williams just looked blankly at me. I did it the next time
down. Nothing. A third. Zilch. I grew woozy. There was a timeout. "Didn't
you [pant] see me [gulp] tug on my [spit] shirt?"
"Oh," Williams said. "I thought your jersey was sticky." God, it was fun. My teammates took me in, slapping me on the rear and never laughing at my air balls. I love the WNBA now. There's more teamwork than in the NBA, better fundamentals and far fewer paternity suits. I have a new definition of femininity. What I look for now in a beautiful woman is big hands, scabby knees and a nice box-out butt. As I was leaving, I saw Nancy Lieberman-Cline, one of the greatest woman basketball players ever, who's now G.M. and coach of the Shock. I asked her what she thought of my game. "I honestly think," she said, "you'd be a very good fifth-round pick." That soothed my aching pride until that night, in the tub, I read something that sort of took the glow off: Tuesday's draft has only four rounds.
Issue date: April 24, 2000
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