Three of the best stories in women’s basketball were in Madison Square Garden Sunday afternoon, and only one of them was the New York Liberty advancing to 4-0 in its best start since the inaugural WNBA season.
As inspiring as the Liberty’s 83-82 win over the Phoenix Mercury (4-3) was – and it was a helluva game, with rookie Jessica Davenport scoring the winning three-point play with 6.9 seconds left – two greater inspirations were in the “World’s Most Famous Arena.”
After the first quarter, the Rutgers women’s basketball team was introduced and took the Garden floor. The team, which put together a spectacular run after an abysmal start and ended up playing for the national title before being subjected to the likes of Don Imus, was honored “for their inspiring and magical run through the 2007 NCAA Tournament.”
And the Garden crowd stood and cheered. The fans stood and cheered for the team’s on-court accomplishments, yes, but more precisely the applause embraced each young woman for they way they rose with dignity above the words meant to bring them down.
The ovation was like few I’ve seen during a women’s basketball game at the Garden. The team, which showed such grace in the face of ignorance and ugliness, smiled and waved and soaked in the appreciation. The applause went on longer than it has for the introduction of the great Martina Navratilova and perhaps for Liberty legend and Garden favorite Teresa Weatherspoon when she was honored last year. It went on and on and stopped only as play was about to resume.
Another inspiration rose amid the crowd.
In the second half, the screen above the Garden floor focused on the cancer-ravaged countenance of Coach Kay Yow, sitting in the front row facing the Liberty bench. As the announcer introduced her, citing her North Carolina State team’s rally to reach the Sweet 16, the crowd rose again. Yow, a Hall of Famer, had taken a temporary leave from coaching this past season to battle a cancer recurrence, and when she returned her team adopted her never-say-die attitude and fought and scrapped their way past the No. 1 and 2 teams in the country and deep into the NCAA tournament. All this while Yow was undergoing chemo and was sometimes too weak to stand during practice. She stood yesterday at the Garden, and the fans stood with her.
The Liberty stood up too, to its toughest opponent so far in this young season, with a young team matching up against a more experienced one that has the best backcourt in the WNBA. It had looked for a while that Diana Taurasi might single-handedly outscore the Liberty, who got off to a slow start. But the Liberty defense buckled down, and the offense came alive behind Loree Moore’s career-high 22 points. The home team withstood an onslaught by Taurasi’s backcourt mate, former Rutgers star Cappie Pondexter, who had put the Mercury ahead, 82-80, with 10.3 seconds left. Then Davenport did her thing. Again, the Garden crowd stood and cheered.
Not to diminish what the Liberty accomplished on the court Sunday – but sometimes the game is transcended by the strength that surrounds it.