THE HOME TEAM

From Near and Mostly Far, the Best U.S. Players Came to Vie for Spots on the Olympic Team

by ALEXANDER WOLFF

from Sports Illustrated May 29, 1995

The huge countdown clock on the grounds of the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs stood at 424 on Monday, a reminder of how many days remain until the 1996 Summer Games begin. But the lettering on the clock might as well have read 424 DAY S LEFT TO COME UP WITH A NICKNAME FOR THE FIRST STANDING, PROFESSIONAL AMERICAN WOMEN'S NATIONAL BASKETBALL TEAM, WHICH HAS BEEN ASSEMBLED TO KICK INTERNATIONAL DERRIERE IN DREAM-TEAM STYLE, OR AT THE VERY LEAST RECLAIM THE GOLD MEDAL. USA Basketball officials have been auditioning nickname candidates almost as feverishly as they've been considering prospects for the team itself. The Fab Femmes didn't pass muster. Dream Team Too and the Dreamettes were judged too derivative of the men's team. Also gon ged: the Liberty Belles, the Hoop Troupe, the '96ers, the Golden Girls and Chicks Who Set Picks.

But one name under consideration gets just right what this entire experiment is about, even though the moniker probably won't be adopted because it lacks pizzazz. The U.S. women's national basketball team, whose members are to be announced Thursday after a seven-day tryout and whose players will form the nucleus of the '96 Olympic squad, is the Home Team. The name fits, and not just because the Games will be in Atlanta. It's felicitous because, for the first time, the American women's hoops diaspora is co ming home to play for pay in and for its own country.

Until now, elite American female basketball players who wanted to play and get paid for it after college had only one option: to sign with a club team overseas. The money available to such players in countries like France, Italy, Japan and Spain can be en ticing -- as much as $200,000 to $300,000 annually. But U.S. players have found that little else abroad is ideal. In Japan, male coaches routinely punch and kick their female players, sometimes during timeouts; American stars such as Katrina McClain, a tw o-time Olympian, and former Iowa forward Shanda Berry had ``no-abuse'' clauses written into their contracts. In Italy, where former Stanford guard Jennifer Azzi has played, a married club official who had professed his love for her stood vigil outside her apartment after she spurned his advances. ``I remember sitting home crying and wondering, Why am I doing this?'' says Azzi, whose Italian teammates would report details of her private life back to the coach. ``These people thought they owned me. My life felt so invaded.''

Perhaps that's why all but three of the players invited to the trials showed up; why the 18 candidates, all former college stars ranging in age from 21 to 30, who were still in the running as of Monday for the 12 available spots on the team, agreed, if se lected, to conditions that include a schedule that will keep the team together for 14 months of steady travel, flogging women's hoops throughout the U.S. with an eye to generating enough interest to make a post-Olympics pro league viable Stateside. That's also why last week even the locks to make the team strained for every rebound and dived for every loose ball.

With the national team contract calling for a nonnegotiable salary of $50,000, most of the players selected will take a pay cut. In the case of McClain, who stood to make five to six times as much in Hungary this season, the disparity caused her to announ ce on the eve of the trials that she would pass up the invitation. But she was besieged with phone calls from friends and fans urging her to reconsider, and, after talking the matter over with her family, she reversed herself a day later. ``I just want to win a gold medal and at the same time give women's basketball in the U.S. a chance,'' she says now.

Sacrifices will be made all around. VanDerveer has left Stanford to direct the team full time. (USA Basketball is matching her salary of approximately $146,000.) Edna Campbell, a former Texas guard, may have to spend another year away from her 11-year-old son. Bolton-Holifield may have to take a sabbatical from her husband, while Swoopes, former USC All-America Lisa Leslie and former Stanford forward Katy Steding have already planned their weddings around the national team's schedule. Berry will have to t ake a leave from the Montgomery County, Md., police force if she makes the team, and Val Whiting, a former Stanford All-America, has already deferred plans to go to medical school at UC San Francisco. ``Some sacrifices are more financial, others more pers onal or emotional,'' says Carol Callan, the team director. ``But the prize here is such that you're willing to make that sacrifice.''

The team will be chosen by a selection committee comprising 13 high school and college women's basketball coaches. If the committee does its job well, every player selected will become an Olympian. But injuries or attitude problems may crop up. And at lea st one current college player -- someone like rapidly improving Kara Wolters, the 6'7" center who'll be a junior at Connecticut next season, or rugged Katie Smith, a guard who will be a senior at Ohio State -- will probably be added to the mix next spring .

Whoever makes the team won't be entitled to take the floor with a swagger. The U.S. has three bronze medals to show for its last three major international appearances: the 1991 Pan Am Games, '92 Olympics and '94 World Championships. Meanwhile, the U.S. pl aced seventh in the past two Junior Worlds. ``If we had won the Worlds, we might not have created a national team,'' says Lynn Barry, USA Basketball assistant executive director. ``But after we lost in the Worlds [to Brazil in the semifinals] and in Barce lona [to the Unified Team, also in the semis], we thought we'd better give ourselves the best chance possible.''

VanDerveer sees her task as breaking down each overseas star and rebuilding her into a part of the U.S. team. Thusshe will preach fundamentals and team play to players who couldn't pass the ball or play defense for their overseas club teams without infuri ating their coaches, who needed them to shoot and stay out of foul trouble. During last Saturday's morning practice session, the candidates formed two lines facing each other and began exchanging . . . chest passes. Imagine the men on Dream Team III being asked to do the same thing, and two words come to mind. One is player. The other is mutiny.

To reinforce the need for togetherness among members of a group that will travel and play together for more than a year, the selection committee conducted interviews on Monday and Tuesday. (Sample question: ``Are you prepared to sit on the bench here when you could be starring overseas for $300,000 a year?'') But those who showed up for the trials had already weighed the alternative -- the full-contact pep talks and stoop-sitting Romeos they would be leaving behind -- and got with the program. ``A lot of my money went toward phone bills and bringing people over to keep me company, so it's not that much of a pay cut,'' says Staley. ``Hey, the only reason I played overseas was to get the international experience to help me make this team. Overseas was my sa crifice. This is my reward.''

The public may do just that, for it's so rare to find a pro team whose coach makes almost three times as much as the best player, whose athletes sing the national anthem (as former Central Florida forward Tari Phillips did, in Whitney Houston style, befor e Sunday afternoon's public scrimmage), and whose players will sign autographs with eye contact and a smile and without forcing parents to take out a low-interest loan. At a time when everyone in pro sports is clamoring for more, here's an elite group gra tefully settling for less. ``You're playing for yourself and your also for your fans,'' says Rebecca Lobo, the 1995 college player of the year, whose exploits at Connecticut this past season have given her a bigger following than any other American women' s player ever. ``It's not about playing and running back to the bus.''

The national team will ride a cresting wave of interest in women's college basketball. Lobo and her teammates so galvanized a basketball-crazy part of the country that their NCAA final against Tennessee generated something previously unheard of in the wom en's sport: street action. During UConn's victory parade in downtown Hartford, a sharpie among the crowd of 100,000 fans got the attention of Husky coach Geno Auriemma. ``Hey, Geno!'' he called out. ``You covered!''

The national team's $3 million budget wouldn't be possible without the support of corporate decision makers, many of whom live in and around UConn country. The NBA, that pin-striped marketing leviathan, is acting as agent for sponsorship deals involving t he women's team. A total of 10 games leading up to the Olympics will be televised by ABC, ESPN and ESPN2. ``It's like a domino effect,'' says Carla McGhee, who helped lead Tennessee to the '91 NCAA championship. ``We got the NBA's attention. Then came Nik e and Reebok. Maybe Victoria's Secret will start giving us stuff.''

And maybe someone will give them a name. Suggestions are welcome. ``We don't want something that conveys supremacy,'' says Barry. ``Just something that suggests a hardworking attitude -- that we want to recapture the gold medal, and we'll outwork everyone to do it.''

After considering and rejecting the Hoopskirts, Super Hoopers and the USAces (proposed slogan: Deal With Us),USA Basketball may yet conclude that its new creation is nothing more, nothing less, than the homecoming, homesteading, home-standing Home Team. W hen you want something badly enough -- and when it has been so long in the making -- it hardly needs a catchy name for latching on to.