By Ivan Carter
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 21, 2005
Talk about a transition game. It was only Wednesday night that Mystics forward DeLisha Milton-Jones was playing with her professional team in Spain.
By Thursday morning, Milton-Jones was on a plane out of Barcelona, and by Thursday afternoon she was at MCI Center going through her first practice with her new team in preparation for tonight's WNBA season opener at Charlotte.
Milton-Jones hasn't had a chance to see much of Washington yet.
"I saw the Pentagon and the White House as I went by, but that's about it," Milton-Jones said. "But I'm here, and that's all that matters."
Milton-Jones, who was traded to the Mystics by the Los Angeles Sparks for Chamique Holdsclaw in March, represents one of several changes for the Mystics as the franchise prepares to begin its eighth WNBA season.
Richie Adubato becomes the eighth head coach in team history, replacing Michael Adams, who left to become an assistant for the University of Maryland men's program. Adubato spent the last five seasons coaching the New York Liberty and coached 19 seasons in the NBA. He has a strong reputation as a solid teacher.
The Mystics must replace the production of Holdsclaw, who was the team's leading scorer and rebounder, as well as guard Stacey Dales-Schuman, who started 26 games and averaged 8.2 points. Dales-Schuman retired to become a full-time analyst for ESPN.
The Mystics finished 17-17 last season, which put them in fourth place in the six-team Eastern Conference, and lost 2-1 in the first round of the playoffs to the Connecticut Sun.
The good news is that second-year guard Alana Beard emerged as one of the league's bright young stars last season, averaging 13.1 points, 4.2 rebounds and 2.6 assists.
Beard will miss tonight's season opener with a sprained ankle but expects to play in tomorrow night's home opener against Connecticut at MCI Center.
Milton-Jones is not a scorer in the mold of Holdsclaw but has been a steady player throughout her six-season career with Los Angeles; she helped the Sparks win a pair of WNBA championships.
Milton-Jones, who has won a pair of Olympic gold medals with the U.S. women's basketball team, expressed excitement about making the move from Los Angeles to Washington and said it shouldn't take her long to find a comfort zone with her new teammates and coaches.
"The first day I came in it felt like I'd been on this team for five years already," said Milton-Jones, who has a career scoring average of 11.2 points per game. "I don't know if it was because I already know some of the people on the team or what, but everyone's been so welcoming and warm and that really helps."
The Mystics will also welcome free agent signee Charlotte Smith-Taylor, a veteran forward who averaged 8.2 points per game last season with Charlotte, and rookie first round pick Temeka Johnson, a quick point guard who ended her LSU career as the Southeastern Conference's all-time assist leader.
Adubato's early-season plan is to play Beard at point guard and bring Johnson off the bench. As Johnson develops, her role will grow.
"The most important thing I like about her is she has a good assist-to-turnover ratio," Adubato said. "She's under complete control, and she also possesses an outside shot. A lot of times when you have a player with her quickness, people will give her two or three steps. You can't do that with her, she makes the outside shot."
The Mystics also have a solid group of returning players in Chasity Melvin, Murriel Page, Tamicha Jackson, Nakia Sanford, Kiesha Brown and Coco Miller. Still, many experts have picked the Mystics to finish at or near the bottom of the Eastern Conference.
"The people who are writing us down at the bottom can leave us at the bottom, I don't care," Beard said. "If they were always right, they would be millionaires right now. . . . This is a competitive league and it's hard to predict anything, but I like our team."
The Mystics traditionally have received some of the strongest fan support in the WNBA -- Milton-Jones said she enjoyed playing at MCI Center more than at any other road venue -- but maintaining their current fan base and adding new fans could be tougher now that Holdsclaw is gone and the Nationals are playing Major League Baseball at nearby RFK Stadium.
Adubato and veterans such as Milton-Jones have emphasized the importance of getting off to a good start and protecting the home court in order to establish a team identity.
"We'll just have to win enough games, because winning is what brings the fans out," Adubato said. "We have a strong fan base and hopefully, we'll give them an exciting brand of basketball, one where we do a lot of pressing, we shoot a lot of threes and we create a lot of up-tempo basketball that fans like to see."