"Girls of Summer" need, deserve help

By Justin Albers
basketballss132002@yahoo.com
INDIANAPOLIS- Let's face it- all sports fans consider the summer to be a down time and find it difficult to make it through. I mean NFL training camps are getting as much publicity as anything else and ESPN weeknights are filled with repeat episodes of The World Series of Poker. All that fans have to hang their hats on is a bunch of meaningless games in the middle of a long MLB season. Oh yeah, and the WNBA.
Fast forward to Saturday morning. I came out of the shower and was all dressed up and ready for the Fever game later on in the day. This prompted my little brother Patrick to ask the question "Why do you want to go see girls play basketball?"
I considered his question for a minute and could immediately come up with several legitimate answers. The WNBA players may be much shorter, (with the exception of Margo Dydek who is 7'2) they may be much less athletic, and they may play for a much shorter period of time, but boy do they make up for it. These players make in a year what Roger Clemens makes in a day and yet they go out and leave it on the floor each and every time they step on it. They have something that very few NBA players have nowadays- an intense passion for the game.
In Saturday afternoon's game I paid close attention to how the Fever played the game. I focused in on individual players, observed some actions on the bench, and listened to the talk back and forth on the court. From each aspect I was thoroughly impressed. Tamika Catchings is a professional and plays about as hard as any player I have ever seen. She is 6-1 and yet she seems to come up with almost every rebound. If you watched the triple overtime classic on Thursday night you saw Catchings put on a clinic by collecting a Fever record 20 rebounds- and that was on a sore foot. If you've never had a chance to see her play, I highly recommend it. Pay close attention to what she does when a shot goes up. She immediately finds somebody to put a body on and drives them out- a picture perfect example of a box out. Coaches stress it all the time, but how often do you actually see an NBA player push somebody out of the paint? I bet you could count them on one hand.
As the game went on and the Fever continued to roll, I really wished that more people in the state of Indiana could have seen basketball the way it is supposed to be played. Seven-thousand, two-hundred and ninety-eight have figured it out, but many more chose to see the Colts play in a preseason game in the RCA Dome.
Get the family together, grab a bite to eat, and give the Girls of Summer all of your support. They play as hard as any other athletes and rarely get the crowds they deserve. Give it some thought, and we'll see you on Monday night.