It could be a morning flight to Houston or the red-eye to New York. Doesn't matter. The other passengers are bound to stare.
Maybe they are struck by the sight of this woman, all 6-foot-5 of her, curled into an airplane seat. The curve of her neck, those broad shoulders that narrow to sleek hips, the impossible length of her legs.
Or maybe they catch her attention and she smiles. She has a particular way of doing this, ducking her head ever so slightly and making her eyes a little bigger. "Puppy dog eyes," she says.
Her smile is a clue, like the earrings she wears and her carefully applied lipstick. This face has been everywhere the last few years, on the cover of Sports Illustrated and in Vogue, on sitcoms and game shows and 10 feet tall on a billboard along La Cienega Boulevard.
So the other passengers might recognize her, or at least suspect that she is someone famous. But that is not why they stare. They stare because the extraordinary woman in the first-class cabin is hunched over a child's coloring book. "With my 96-box of crayons," she says. Her favorite colors are orange, blue and gray.
"Gray is pretty," she says. "You'd be surprised."
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Lisa Leslie is full of surprises.
Watch her run the floor as the center for the Los Angeles Sparks, so graceful for her size. While critics have questioned her toughness, her willingness to bang under the boards, no one doubts the talent that has made her a superstar in the fledgling Women's National Basketball Assn. It shows in the way she catches the ball along the baseline, spins and sinks another jump shot.
"Pick any superlative you want," says Frank Layden, who now consults for the WNBA after eight years of coaching the Utah Jazz and watching the big men of the NBA. "Lisa is a streamliner," he says. "She was absolutely built to play this game."
But basketball is only part of the deal. A new era has dawned on women's sports, a move beyond the traditional confines of golf and figure skating, beyond tennis players in little skirts and gymnasts in leotards. Now Mia Hamm gets wall-to-wall television exposure at the women's World Cup and amateur hockey player Cammi Granato gets endorsement deals. Now the towering Leslie can use that body, those eyes, to grab her own piece of pop stardom.
The billboards and the guest shots on "Moesha" have done more than boost her income above $1 million a year. They have transformed her into an icon for all those little girls who come to the Great Western Forum wearing yellow Sparks jerseys with her name across their backs. Leslie is a symbol for a generation of females discovering they can sweat and grapple and throw elbows while still being glamorous. Says game-show host Whoopi Goldberg, who recently had her as a guest on "Hollywood Squares": "I wish she'd been around when I was a kid."
No wonder fans expect Leslie to behave like a star. They expect her to be cocky and ambitious and, as her longtime boyfriend says, "flashy." Instead, they get the coloring book. She likes big pictures because it's easier to stay inside the lines. Even the people closest to her--players, coaches, agents--are continually amazed by the childlike innocence of this 27-year-old woman.
The smile. The soft voice. The schoolgirl etiquette. "Very proper with everything," says Nikki McCray, a star for the Washington Mystics and a teammate on the U.S. national squad. "Saying thank you, opening doors for you, the way she eats."
Don't expect Leslie to explain. Cautious by nature, given to long pauses, she speaks of the rules her mother taught her and the Christian principles she learned in church. Finally, she says, "I'm not so good at talking off the top of my head."
The truth emerges in small, unspoken ways.
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Start with a seventh-grader who was 6 feet tall. The other kids called her Stick and Beanstalk and Olive Oyl, names that could drive a girl to tears.
Especially a girl like Leslie. She grew up in houses in Compton and Carson and Inglewood that at various times included two sisters, four half-brothers, one half-sister and a couple of cousins. This family both protected and bedeviled a child who was the admitted "scaredy cat" of the bunch, who hated to wrestle or get dirty, hated arguments, always went running to mother. Leslie says: "My mother provided the comfort."
Christine Leslie-Espinoza stands 6-foot-3 and can make people smile by the sheer force of her giggle, a mirth that cannot be contained by the hand she holds demurely over her mouth. Her words are kind and her eyes have a way of changing from brown to green with the shifting light, but this sunny facade masks a toughness, the grit required to raise a family on her own.
A postal worker for many years, Christine switched careers more than a decade ago after meeting a trucker. "He seemed to have a lot of money," she said. "I thought, 'I want some of that.' " Learning to drive an 18-wheeler, she made short and long hauls. She wanted her children to see that she could provide.
