'Older' Generation Leaving WNBA
Not only is Cooper the best player in WNBA history -- the undisputed leader of women's basketball -- she also scrabbled her way through years when there wasn't a women's professional league.
Cooper was the league's scoring champion in its first three seasons and the regular season MVP in 1997 and 1998. She was also the first player in the WNBA to reach 2,000 career points. But that doesn't tell you half of what Cooper's meant to the sport.
Cooper -- and a handful of other stars -- kept the lights burning for women's basketball when it meant traveling to Europe or Australia to play, when it meant working hard to make ends meet, when it was just a dream.
And now, the players who made women's basketball a pro sport are getting ready to step aside as a new kind of WNBA star grows up.
A Generation Gap
Cooper's retirement announcement came just a few days after former Olympian Andrea Lloyd-Curry, who turns 35 this year, tore her ACL during a game against Seattle. I wince to say it, but I doubt Lloyd-Curry will be back next year.
Other leading vets, like 36-year-old Jennifer Gillom of the Phoenix Mercury and 34-year-old Suzie McConnell Serio of the Cleveland Rockers, also have to think hard about whether they'll return to battle another crop of rookies.
For the players entering the draft in the '00s, women's basketball isn't just a passion; it's also a career.
There are "middle aged" players -- like 32-year-old Andrea Stinson, 30-year-olds Yolanda Griffith and Natalie Williams and 29-year-old Sheryl Swoopes -- who still have several years left to dominate the WNBA.
But the big sea change will be from the players who scrambled to make their passion pay to players who're training to make basketball their career.
A Talent Gap
There's another sort of passionate player who you'll see leave the WNBA in the '00s.
It's the spirited bench player -- who played for a few years in the Australian league, who was a bench player in the ABL -- and who loves the game, but who doesn't come onto the floor unless the team's up by 20 in the final minutes.
So, What I Really Want To Know Is...
Is the Houston dynasty over?
Unless coach Van Chancellor's just a puppet for his talented big three (which I doubt), it's not likely to crumble any time soon. But the L.A. Sparks certainly are hot on the Comets' heels. Look for an even fiercer battle for the top of the Western conference in 2001.
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