Michael Cooper

A woman will be president of the United States sooner than a woman will coach a men's professional or college basketball team. That's the way of the sports world. Men are welcomed as coaches for women's teams. Women are invisible when it comes to being coaches for men's teams. Tonight at Staples Center, Michael Cooper will coach the Sparks and Cynthia Cooper will coach the Phoenix Mercury. Nine of the coaches in the 16-team WNBA are men, seven are women.

The Sparks' rookie head coach, Michael Cooper, was named the WNBA's coach of the year before Sunday's Western Conference playoff game with Houston, then was left with an empty feeling after Houston eliminated his team. Cooper, who succeeded the fired Orlando Woolridge after last season, received 37 votes in polling by WNBA media. Runner-up was Cleveland's Dan Hughes with nine votes.

In the moments after the Houston Comets' 77-56 demolition of the Sparks on Thursday night, Spark Coach Michael Cooper seethed, furious that his players picked the opener of the Western Conference finals to turn in their season's worst performance. What a difference a day makes. By Friday afternoon, Cooper called Thursday's Compaq Center rout "a blessing handed to us on a silver platter."

"I love the sounds of basketball," Michael Cooper was saying. "I even love being off the court, in a locker room, when a game is underway and hearing the crowd react--I can almost see what's happening." He was referring to the events of July 21 in Phoenix, when a security officer escorted him off the court after he'd been ejected for a second technical foul. Confined alone in the Spark locker room--with no TV--he listened, and smiled. "I didn't need a TV, I could hear.

This is about a friendship, one that has endured 33 years, or since the day Michael Cooper, fresh from Pasadena City College, arrived at Albuquerque to enroll at the University of New Mexico in 1977. "Coop had on a T-shirt, overall Levi cutoffs, high white socks and black sneakers," recalled Henry Estrada, a Lobo teammate of Cooper's. "I think a week passed before he said anything to anybody.

He listened, suffering in silence, to the sounds of happy, shouting children as he sat on his grandmother's front porch, forbidden to join them. Forbidden to walk. Forbidden to leave the porch. Forbidden to be a child. He was allowed only to sit and watch children riding bikes; kicking, throwing or batting balls out front, in the street, where he yearned to be. "I'd try inching my way off the porch, toward the kids, and I'd hear, 'Pole! You get back on this porch!' " Michael Cooper remembers.

When it hit the pages of the Houston Chronicle on July 4, no one believed it. Cynthia Cooper was retiring? Why? To many, it still makes no sense. At 37, she's averaging 35.1 minutes and 18 points a game for the Houston Comets. She has been virtually indestructible, having had one major injury in the last 18 years when she tore ankle tendons in 1988. She was the WNBA's most valuable player in its first two seasons.

It's time for somebody to beat Houston. New Los Angeles Spark Coach Michael Cooper has a prediction on this. After his Sparks opened their fourth season with a 69-62 victory over the Utah Starzz Wednesday night at the Great Western Forum, Cooper said, quite emphatically, "If this team plays up to its capabilities, I think you're looking at the next WNBA champions." Cooper was not talking about the Starzz.

For the time being, call it "Coop-ball." Michael Cooper, in his debut as Spark coach, deployed hard-knocking, on-ball defensive pressure Wednesday night in L.A.'s 69-62 victory over Utah in the season opener at the Great Western Forum. It was a smashing debut for the Sparks, who spent much of training camp stressing defense. Although L.A. faded in the stretch, making it uncomfortably close in the closing minutes, Cooper's strategy worked. Less successful was the club's marketing efforts. L.A.'

Michael Cooper, as expected, was named coach of the Sparks on Thursday. And he said Spark partisans can expect a new, busier defensive look next summer and, hopefully, some big, young players from the April college draft who can provide relief for Lisa Leslie. Cooper became the team's fourth coach after its third season, following the dismissal Sept. 30 of Orlando Woolridge by team President Johnny Buss. Cooper was Woolridge's assistant.