Shock to the System

Basketball Digest, Summer, 2000 by Chuck O'Donnell

After a dismal 1999 WNBA season, women's hoops legend Nancy Lieberman-Cline is trying to spark her Detroit team to a turnaround

IT'S MARCH, THE DEAD OF THE WNBA offseason, but Nancy Lieberman-Cline's schedule is as busy as ever. On this day, the coach and general manager of the WNBA's Detroit Shock is on her way from one meeting to another to another.

"How are we going to be [this season]? I have no clue until the draft," says Lieberman-Cline. "We lost four players to the Olympics. I've been in meetings all day. We'll be dependent on the draft."

The little girl who told her mother she would someday be a great player, who honed her skills in the schoolyards of Queens by playing with the boys, who became a superstar on the collegiate and international stage, who was a trail blazer for women's basketball everywhere, says being on the coaching side of things is a big challenge.

"The greatest thing you can do is play the game," says Lieberman-Cline. "The next best thing is to coach, because you're in the trenches with them and helping them. It's hard. I have a lot of respect for coaches. The hours are incredible."

Her first two years with the Shock have been mixed. She made a great splash in 1998, leading Detroit to a 17-13 record and a .567 winning percentage that is the highest of any first-year team in pro sports history. Yet, the Shock narrowly missed the playoffs.

Last season was rough. Three players were suspended for their roles in a fight in a game against the Cleveland Rockers. The Shock suffered their worst loss in their short history, an 85-46 blasting at the hands of the Houston Comets. Fans at the Palace booed and brandished signs ripping Lieberman-Cline after she traded fan favorites Korie Hlede and Cindy Brown. Still, the Shock's 15-17 record was good enough to sneak into the postseason, were they promptly bowed out to the Charlotte Sting in a one-game playoff.

If there's anyone who can lead the Shock out of their abyss, it is Lieberman-Cline. At 16 and still in high school, despite being told she was too young to try out, she became the youngest basketball player ever to make the USA women's team. Shortly after turning 18, Lieberman-Cline became the youngest basketball player to win an Olympic medal when the United States struck silver at the 1976 Montreal Games.

It was on to Old Dominion, where she was a three-time Kodak All-American, two-time Wade Trophy winner (awarded to the top women's player taking into account academic excellence and community service), and a two-time Broderick Cup winner (awarded for the outstanding women's player).

"I was tall for a point guard back then, about 5'10", and played with a lot of style and flair, so people began to call me the female Magic Johnson," Lieberman-Cline says.

Lieberman-Cline was also the driving force behind Old Dominion's back-to-back Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women national titles, including the memorable 1979 championship [see sidebar]. That season Lieberman-Cline averaged over 17 points a game, while dishing out about seven assists and grabbing eight rebounds a game.

"We had a lot of fun beating a lot of teams that year. We won our first 26 games and were ranked No. 1 in the polls from the fourth week of the season on. After losing to South Carolina, we got back on a roll," Lieberman-Cline says.

Upon graduating, Lieberman-Cline was the top pick of Dallas Diamonds of the Women's Basketball League. She later played for Dallas again in the Women's American Basketball League. In 1986, Lieberman-Cline became the first woman to play in a men's professional league, suiting up for the United States Basketball League's Springfield Fame. The next year she played for the USBL's Long Island Knights and then moved on to the Washington Generals, the long-time foils of the Harlem Globetrotters. On Washington she played alongside a CBA veteran named Tim Cline, and one year later--in an unprecedented move--the two former teammates married.

She ended up in Springfield again in 1996, but this time she was there to join the game's immortals in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. It's usually a nice way to cap a career, but at 38, Lieberman-Cline caught the bug to play again.

She was contemplating a return to the pro ranks with the fledgling WNBA when Magic Johnson--the man she was always likened to on the court--gave her a little advice. "He said, `Do you love it? Are you willing to pay the price? Then make the commitment and do it," Lieberman-Cline recounts.

And she did, making the Phoenix Mercury her fourth pro team in 1997.

"The coolest thing about playing in the WNBA was that people who hadn't seen me for years would come up to me and say, `Thank you.' Or they would tell their little daughter, `This is the Cynthia Cooper when I played.' I was almost embarrassed. It's very humbling when people remember you."

Besides her playing and coaching, Lieberman-Cline has worked extensively for several networks as a broadcaster, written two books, and was even for a time in the early '80s the personal trainer for tennis superstar Martina Navratilova.