Slow Start by Sparks Costly to Windham

The Sparks’ stumbling start to a season holding such promise has cost General Manager Rhonda Windham her job.

She was fired late Thursday night by club President Johnny Buss, after the Sparks’ worst effort of a 3-4 season, an 86-73 loss to Minnesota at the Great Western Forum. It was the Sparks’ fourth defeat in five games.

Buss cited “philosophical differences” in a Friday announcement.

“We have very high expectations for this very talented team,” he said.

“That we do not have a winning record, nor a history of making the playoffs, is not acceptable in a city that prides itself on its history of basketball championships. . . . I feel it is necessary to take action before we reach a point from which we may not recover.”

Windham said Buss told her she was fired immediately after the Thursday loss.

She said it wasn’t a surprise.

“We’d been in a rocky situation for a long time,” she said. “I began to feel he’d either fire me or I’d resign. It was kind of day-to-day.”

Buss said he would assume the role as general manager while he interviews replacement candidates.

Windham was a four-year starter at USC and the point guard on the Trojans’ 1983 NCAA championship team. She briefly played pro ball in Italy, then went to work in the Lakers’ public relations department in 1990. She became the Sparks’ first hire when Buss named her general manager in January 1997.

Her first two seasons were turbulent. She fired coach Linda Sharp--her coach at USC--early in the Sparks’ 14-14 debut season, then last July 30 fired her replacement, Julie Rousseau, late in a 12-18 season.

Assistant Orlando Woolridge first was made interim coach, then head coach last winter.

In her team’s first two seasons, Windham was unable through the draft to acquire sufficient core players to win.

In the WNBA’s 1997 elite player draft, after the WNBA had allocated to Los Angeles Lisa Leslie and Penny Toler, Windham used her first pick to take one-time Tennessee star Daedra Charles, called by Coach Pat Summitt “the best inside player we ever had.”

In retrospect, the choice was a disaster. Charles showed up for training camp weighing nearly 300 pounds and was never a starter. Next Windham drafted 6-foot-8 Chinese Olympian Haixia Zheng, an impossibly slow center. She has since retired.

The Sparks’ first pick in the ’97 college draft was Stanford guard Jamila Wideman, a solid defender who had substantial offensive shortcomings. She was traded last week to Cleveland.

The second pick, Tamecka Dixon from Kansas, is the only player from those six 1997 draft rounds still with the club.