Search for the Starzz: Utah's squad scattered

Deseret News (Salt Lake City), May 31, 2005 by Linda Hamilton Deseret Morning News

The WNBA and Starzz have been gone from Utah summers for two years now.

The San Antonio Silver Stars, the relocated Starzz franchise, are about a week into their third season.

"Actually, I was talking about it with one of my friends," said guard Marie Ferdinand about the Starzz-Stars. Her friend was LaTonya Johnson, also a former member of the Utah team. Johnson was waived in April by the Houston Comets.

"I was telling her I'm the only member from the original Utah Starzz left," Ferdinand said about the San Antonio roster that has almost completely changed since the club left Utah. "That's like so crazy, unbelievable," Ferdinand said.

One constant with the Starzz-Stars franchise is that San Antonio is on its fourth set of coaches since the team left Utah with former Cleveland coach Dan Hughes taking over this season and trading 7- foot-2 Margo Dydek to Connecticut and waiving Andrea Garner and Jessie Hicks, who had both played for Utah.

Hughes also picked up former Utah center Wendy Palmer-Daniel as a free agent in early April and former Utah guard Dalma Ivanyi in late March but put her on the injured list to start the season last week.

Ferdinand probably doesn't realize it, but her new teammate Palmer-Daniel was a member of the first-ever Starzz team in 1997 before it picked up native Salt Laker Natalie Williams and traded Palmer to Detroit.

Palmer-Daniel -- married in the last off-season -- and forward Elena Baranova of the New York Liberty are the only two original members of the inaugural 1997 Starzz team still playing in the WNBA.

Baranova (New York), Palmer-Daniel (San Antonio), Ferdinand (San Antonio), Ivanyi (San Antonio), Williams (Indiana), Dydek (Connecticut), Adrienne Goodson (Houston), Kristen Rasmussen (Houston) and Olympian Scott-Richardson (Sacramento injured list) are the only former Starzz still in the WNBA.

Baranova, Palmer-Daniel, Ferdinand, Williams, Dydek and Rasmussen are starters for their teams, and Goodson, now 38, is the Comets' sixth player.

"Yeah, I miss Utah," said Ferdinand, who played two seasons in Salt Lake City but uses the Karl Malone reference. "Utah is a pretty cool (state)," she said. "I enjoyed the summertime being there, and also being able to catch some of the Rocky Mountain Revue games. The fans were very supportive and very friendly, and the organization was a classy organization, so of course I miss it there."

Ferdinand says she sees a lot of growth in herself since the franchise moved to San Antonio, transferred by Jazz owner Larry H. Miller, who didn't want to deal with the expense of the WNBA's change from the league owning player contracts to the more conventional situation in which teams own and negotiate player contracts and looming free agency.

"I'm now a veteran," said Ferdinand. "When I was there, I was like a rookie. The other day I remembered just being drafted and being in Utah, and now here I'm considered one of the veterans. It's neat to see how I've grown and matured and developed into a leader."

Ferdinand is in her fifth WNBA season. She returned just about two weeks ago from spending part of a season playing in Istanbul, Turkey, which she enjoyed because of that city's half-European, half- Asian culture. She played several years ago in Poland on Dydek's club team and spent another WNBA off-season playing in Russia.

She doesn't know how long she will continue to play, but she has begun building on another dream. Her bakery will open this fall in her hometown of Miami, the first of what she hopes is a list of her restaurants. She's also interested in selling real estate.

That's what Williams, 34, will do full time once this WNBA season is done. She has already announced that this will be her last round in pro ball, and she will retire to Salt Lake City and sell property.

"I decided to come back one more year because I love my team so much, and we have a better squad this year, so hopefully we'll do well," Williams said of her Indiana Fever club, for which she has played since San Antonio traded her just a day before she arrived in Texas for the first Silver Stars training camp. She was en route to San Antonio when she learned of the trade and had to turn north.

"I'm also into real estate," said Williams, "so I'm comfortable knowing what I'm going to do after I'm done, and I'll also probably do some (basketball) camps." Williams will also return to being an assistant coach at Skyline High School but plans on a career selling land parcels rather than houses. She did that in the last off- season and liked it.

Retirement is "something I've been thinking about over the last two years. My kids start kindergarten in the fall," Williams said. They'll miss the first month of school because their mom is playing ball, but they'll catch up.

"I worked extremely hard in the off-season to be in the best shape I could be for this year to help them hopefully win a championship because I knew this would be it," said Williams. "I went into it kind of going gung-ho.

"I even made a sacrifice on New Year's Eve," Williams added with a laugh, "and gave up chocolate and soda for the whole season. Chocolate is my favorite, so I gave up something I love the most.