PHOENIX -- If for Candace Parker the rest of the WNBA season goes anything like it did during the Sparks' opening game here Saturday, folks like me are going to be in deep trouble. By season's end, the descriptions will be exhausted. How many times can you write the words fantastic, superb and perfect?
Laden with expectations and playing in her first WNBA game after coming to the Sparks as the league's top draft pick, Parker was as good as advertised in the Sparks' 99-94 win over the defending-champion Mercury. In fact, she was even better.
She ended up two passes shy of a triple-double stat line. Going into its 12th season, no rookie in the women's pro league has ever debuted with a triple-double. Only one NBA player had -- a pretty fair guard named Oscar Robertson.
Parker not only led the game in scoring with 34 points, she snatched a game-high-tying 12 rebounds and added eight assists and a block.
More, when the game was on the line, Parker's veteran teammates leaned hard on the svelte, 6-foot-4 rookie to bring them safely down the homestretch.
Fantastic? True.
Superb? You got it.
Transcendent? As in, is she the kind of player women's professional basketball must have as it seeks to embed itself in the public consciousness? Might seem a stretch this early in a career, but Parker, a two-time national champion at Tennessee regarded by many as the greatest college player ever, may prove just that.
Not that she was getting ahead of herself when this game began. She admitted that a storm of nerves had racked her before tip-off, the same queasy feeling she'd experienced in her opening high school and college games. On both occasions, she recalled tossing up air balls when first attempting to score.
This time was a bit different. In the opening moments of Saturday's game, with nearly 14,000 in attendance and a national TV audience focused on her every move, she drew a deep breath, gathered the ball near the baseline and turned to the basket. From there, she "just prayed for my first shot to hit the rim." The shot missed, but hit the rim it did.
Turned out to be one of the only times she clanked one off the iron. Quickly, she settled, making 12 of 19 shots the rest of the game as she flashed a remarkable repertoire. There were three pointers, scoop shots and turnarounds. There were fade-aways and bankers and fastbreak layups.
