ShareThisLOS ANGELES - Forgive Los Angeles Lakers coach Phil Jackson for quickly shooting down Commissioner David Stern's assertion that a woman may play in the NBA in the next decade, but Jackson has firsthand evidence to support his argument.
When Jackson ran a youth basketball camp in Montana early in his coaching career, he recalls pitting a state champion high school girls team against a group of middle-school boys who had never played together. The outcome of the game was so one-sided in favor of the boys that it has stuck in Jackson's mind ever since.
"(The girls) were all four to six inches bigger than these boys, and they got beat by 40 points," Jackson said. "It was one of those things that opened my eyes to the differences. Even though the girls had skill and knowledge as a group and the boys hadn't played together, they just trapped and pressed and did all kinds of things that changed the game."
The possibility that a woman might play for an NBA team in the next 10 years was originally raised by Sports Illustrated last week. "I don't want to get into all kinds of arguments with players and coaches about the likelihood," Stern told SI. "But I really think it's a good possibility."
Barring a scenario like the gender dispute that cast doubt on South African runner Caster Semenya's 800-meter gold medal from last summer's world championships, Jackson could not disagree more.
"That's not going to happen," said the coach with 10 NBA titles on his resume. "Without a doubt, women's basketball has made great strides, but I can't see it in 10 years. I think the boys are going to increase as much as the women do in those 10 years. That's the way we're evolving."
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
Must credit The Press-Enterprise of Riverside, Calif.
