A WNBA first: Dunks aren't just a guy thing
Her face could pass for that of the Somalian supermodel, Iman. Her high-beam smile could match basketball icon Magic Johnson's, tooth for tooth.
The svelte look and the girlish bow in her hair belie the muscle power of her slightly bowed legs, which she uses to sproing past opponents and into the hoop dreams of thousands of aspiring girl (and women) athletes coast to coast.
Tuesday night, Lisa Leslie already three-time MVP of the five-year-old Women's National Basketball Association sprang past opponents and into history.
The 6 ft., 5 in. Los Angeles Sparks center grabbed a pass at half-court, dribbled toward her basket, leapt off her left foot, and, with her right hand, jammed down the first dunk by a woman in professional basketball history.
Was it a big deal?
If the Normandy invasion had been going on outside Staples Arena when it happened, no one inside would have been able to hear it. If someone had held the Super Bowl and World Series inside a political convention, these fans would have drowned it out. If Godzilla lifted the dome of the Capitol to feed on a bipartisan meeting of Congress ... well, two out of three.
There was some noise. (Lisa is a hometown girl.)
"Exciting, but is it important?" yelled one intelligent-looking man to another above the din.
"Get him the phone number of 'Duh Magazine,' " came the reply.
Fans (young/old, male/female), league officials, and sports historians all say the Leslie dunk is a significant milestone for several reasons. Besides showing a generation of aspiring female basketballers that the sport's highest-voltage, most athletic move is within reach, it sends a message to male audiences as well: Women can be just as buff and strut the stuff ...
"A lot of men have pooh-poohed women's basketball as just 'chick ball' and complain that it's boring because the players are slower, can't jump as high, and can't dunk," says Susan Leitao, assistant director of programs for the Center for the Study of Sport in Society, at Northeastern University in Boston.
"So for women, this is something that gives them validity and recognition that they can potentially do it all, too. More guys will start watching because they love the thundering dunk," she says.
Others liken it to breaking the four-minute mile in track, or a jet's breach of the sound barrier the breakthrough after which subsequent aspirants are freed of a merely psychological, or self-imposed limitation.
In the realm of basketball, Bob Schwartz of the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame, likens Ms. Leslie's dunk to the first one-handed shot of Stanford All-American Hank Lussitti in 1938.
"Before that shot, everyone used two hands," says Mr. Schwartz. "Now, one handed is how everyone shoots."
Not that dunking will become common in women's basketball anytime soon, though. For the most part women's bodies are still far shorter and less muscular and have fewer years of basketball training behind them. Because of that, conditions have to be just right for even the tallest to succeed, says Ms. Leitao.
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