Sparks’ Draft Anticlimactic

There were no last-second deals, no pigeons to pluck. No one was going to help the Sparks this time the way Portland did last year, when the Fire exchanged its first-round selection Nikki Teasley for the Sparks’ Ukari Figgs.

So the two-time WNBA defending champions had a quiet 2003 draft Friday, with their two picks -- Virginia’s Schuye (pronounced Sky) LaRue and Purdue’s Mary Jo Noon -- coming at the end of the second and third rounds.

Spark Coach Michael Cooper was more excited about landing former Portland guard Jackie Stiles in the league’s dispersal draft Thursday, though she is recovering from wrist and heel injuries.

“I feel it’s one of the steals of the dispersal draft,” Cooper said. “She can really shoot the ball.”

He added that Shondra Johnson, a forward from Wisconsin Green Bay, would be one of several free agents the Sparks plan to invite to their training camp, which starts Thursday.

“I’d say this year we were more than satisfied with what we did,” Spark General Manager Penny Toler said. “This was a down year as far as potential in the [college] draft and a bad year for college seniors because of the dispersal draft.”

Bringing in new players is the least of the Sparks’ concerns.

As the league and the players’ union finally signed off on a new, four-year collective bargaining agreement early Friday morning, teams are assuming player salaries for the first time. And players can be free agents for the first time. Several Sparks, including Lisa Leslie, DeLisha Milton, Latasha Byears and Tamecka Dixon, are unrestricted free agents.

Toler said there was still “fine print” in the agreement she had to analyze. But, she said, “We’ve been great to our players, and we think they want to be in L.A.”

Toler said that she thinks teams will be able to sign four “core” players to maximum contracts of $85,000 a season. “Right now, though, that’s hearsay,” she said. “We have a conference call with the league tomorrow to get a complete understanding of how the agreement works.”

In the draft, hastily scheduled after the collective bargaining agreement was signed, forward LaToya Thomas from Mississippi State was the first pick, going to Cleveland. Sacramento used the second pick to grab Vanderbilt center Chantelle Anderson. Detroit had the third pick and chose Louisiana Tech center Cheryl Ford, the daughter of NBA star Karl Malone.

It was a disappointing day for UCLA’s Michelle Greco, who was not selected despite a strong senior season in which she led the Pacific 10 Conference in scoring for a second time.

According to a couple of WNBA executives, who asked not to be identified, teams were wary of Greco’s medical history. She sat out last year because of concussions and sustained a broken nose this season. She was also hit in the eye during the college all-star game played during the women’s Final Four weekend and sat out nearly all thegame.

“My health is fine,” she said Friday. “The eye was a freak accident; I was fine the next day. Yes I’ve had injuries but nothing to not prevent me from running and shooting. I can understand the concussion history, but I took a year off and this year I was fine.”

The only Pac-10 player taken was Oregon’s Shaquala Williams by Cleveland with the 30th overall pick. New York took Nicole Kaczmarski, a former UCLA player, with the 39th pick. Also chosen were Olympic sprint champion Marion Jones (Phoenix, 33th pick), who is expecting a child in July, and Teresa Edwards (Minnesota, 14th pick), a five-time U.S. Olympic basketball player who turns 39 in July.

Of the Sparks’ selections, LaRue, taken 27th overall, is a 6-foot-3 forward who played two years at Virginia before spending the past two years playing professionally in Europe. Noon, the 42nd pick, is a 6-5 center who averaged 8.9 points and 4.3 rebounds at Purdue.

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WNBA Draft

*--* 12. Houston Allison Curtin G Tulsa First Round No. Team Player Pos College/Country 1. Cleveland LaToya Thomas F Mississippi State 2. Sacramento Chantelle Anderson C Vanderbilt 3. Detroit Cheryl Ford C Louisiana Tech 4. Phoenix Plenette Pierson F Texas Tech 5. Detroit (from Kara Lawson G Tennessee Connecticut) 6. Indiana Gwen Jackson F Tennessee 7. Washington Aiysha Smith C Louisiana State 8. Seattle Sun-Min Jung C South Korea 9. Charlotte Jocelyn Penn F South Carolina 10. New York Molly Creamer G Bucknell 11. San Antonio Coretta Brown G North Carolina

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*--* Complete draft list...Day in Sports Sparks’ Selections 27. SCHUYE LARUE, Forward, Virginia 42. MARY JO NOON, Center, Purdue

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