Candace Parker is pregnant with her and husband Sheldon Williams first child. Parker, of course, is the best player in women's basketball, and also one of the most physically attractive. Williams, of course, is a lottery bust who plays for one of the NBA's worst teams and has a face that looks like it's been trampled by a herd of buffalo. So yeah, let's hope the baby gets Parker's looks.

The Detroit Shock's Plenette Pierson and the Los Angeles Sparks' Candace Parker started a melee last night after tangling twice over rebounding position. Rick Mahorn, Michael Cooper, and Bill Laimbeer ended up in the scrum, while Karl Malone's daughter, Cheryl Ford, blew out her knee acting as peacemaker. This one is just ripe for an NBA "passing the torch" type of commercial. If we can watch Kevin Garnett and Bill Russell make virtual love to one another in a studio, I don't see any reason we can't watch Mahorn, Laimbeer, and their successors like Pearson and Parker discuss the finer points of antagonism and brawling.

Also, It seems there's something about the Palace in Auburn Hills.

I've grown to embrace the women's game, but one thing that still bugs me about the WNBA is how it actually seems to get incrementally tougher for players to score the closer they get to the rim. What would be gimmes in the men's game feel like boulder lifts in the women's game. Why? No hops. But the young lady in the above video doesn't seem to share this burden.

The Connecticut Sun, who possess the best record in the WNBA at 9-2 after last night's 74-67 victory at Seattle, are everything the Storm aren't. Specifically, they're young (their oldest player is 31) and deep. To the latter, when the Sun's starters came out flat in the earlygoing last night, Sun coach Mike Thibault sent his second-stringers in en masse with 5:32 to play and his team down 10-2. The subs, led by former Storm swingwoman Barbara Turner (13 points), clawed their way back in the game, willing the Sun to a 37-36 halftime lead that they would never relinquish in a very competitive game that saw the Sun bench outscore the Storm bench 29-5.

The bench wasn't the only reason the Storm dropped their first home game in falling to 7-6; Swin Cash (3-12, 7 points) and Sheryl Swoopes (2-10, 8 points) were both awful from the field, and Lauren Jackson, good as she was (26 points, 7 boards, 4 steals, 2 blocks) playing out of position at center, made a critical defensive error late in the game, leaving Asijha Jones (15 points) to double a guard in the paint, which led to a gimme layup when the teams were trading leads. Speaking of gimme layups, the Storm, namely Cash, missed too many of those to beat a team of Connecticut's caliber.

But back to the bench: Brian Agler actually started the fourth quarter with an all-reserve lineup of Kimberly Beck, Katie Gearlds, Shyra Ely, Florina Pascalau, and Tanisha Wright (who started in place of injured center Yolanda Griffith last night, and played extremely well), who held their own for two long minutes before most of the starters were re-inserted. Precarious as this situation felt at a key juncture in the game, Agler needs to roll the dice like this more often, especially with Gearlds, a remarkably fluid offensive talent who needs to be a lot more aggressive -- and might require more floor time to help bolster her confidence. Of all the teams in the WNBA, the month-long Olympics layoff in August should benefit the brittle Storm more than anyone, as their starters can log long minutes with virtual impunity, serious injury notwithstanding. It'd just be nice if the fate of their season didn't stand to ride on such a peculiarity.

Saturday night’s Storm game at the Key Arena was only the second WNBA game I’ve actually attended.  The first was a couple of weeks ago in Phoenix, AZ with a bunch of my extended family. We sat in a suite and I listened to all of my male cousins complain about the WNBA being unimpressive, both for their low-scoring games, and because they can’t dunk.  111 points for the Phoenix Mercury later, I was impressed, and my cousins continued their tirade on basketball not being worth paying to watch unless there was a slam-dunk involved. 

Sitting courtside at the Storm game I picked out all the familiar Storm faces that gave up potential modeling contracts to become professional athletes.  Then I started watching the group dynamic, not just golden-girl Lauren Jackson, and her partner in press-time Sue Bird, but feisty firecracker Betty Lennox, the awkwardly graceful Iziane Castro Marques, and the quiet, but obviously respected Janell Burse, and suddenly I saw an obvious parallel.  I realized a WNBA team is a lot like the women’s college I attend.  When there are no men around, women tend to fill up all of the roles, there’s no need for them to standout in their field as women, they just standout, period.  But, just like the products of women’s colleges, even though these standouts run the gamut in (dare I say it) diversity, only the pretty, reserved, white, socially acceptable in the “real-world” women are publicized. (i.e. Hillary Clinton, Gloria Steinem, Sue Bird, and Lauren Jackson.)  

This isn’t by any means the fault of “the acceptable ones,” Lauren Jackson coming back from illness, then cracking open her chin on a Lynx player’s head in the first quarter and still scoring 30 points after getting stitched up was incredible to witness.  But the thing that gave me chills was watching it all come together.  It was Iziane Castro Marques’ rebound in the second quarter that she fed to Betty Lennox, who used her incredible speed and energy to bring the ball down the court, setting up Jackson perfectly for a 3 pointer that put every one of the 8,105 Storm fans in attendance on their feet.  As the All-Star ballots come due in the next few weeks, I hope fans throughout the WNBA will remember these moments of integrated brilliance and not just the Cover Girl snapshots on the front page the next day.