Savage Words: ‘Houston selects ... the Big Russian’

The 28th annual WNBA Draft is Monday.

The fact that the league has been around 28 years is still a double-take for me. I was there for the first one, and it really, really doesn’t seem that long ago.

But every year in the nearly three decades of the Draft, I still get a chuckle when I think about my time with the Houston Comets in the first few years of the league. I was there in 1997 and 1998, the first two years of the league where the Comets won the title. It was a super fun time, and my first foray into professional sports.

In the 1997 Draft – the first one ever – we had the No. 1 pick, simply from a draw. We selected Tina Thompson of USC. It turned out to be the correct pick, but our head coach, Van Chancellor, toiled over the selection. He couldn’t get it narrowed down to Thompson and Pam McGee. Thompson averaged 15.1 points per game in 17 seasons and went on to be a nine-time All Star and three-time WNBA All First Team. McGee played just two years in the WNBA where she averaged 8.6 points in 57 games total. So, yea, Van made the correct pick.

But it’s the 1998 Draft that always brings a smile to my face. An out-loud chuckle, actually.

In the early years of the WNBA, the draft wasn’t nearly the spectacle that it is today. No live ESPN coverage, no hype, nothing really. It was simply a conference call with eight teams in eight different cities making their selection.

In Houston, I was fortunate enough to get to sit in the war room with Van and his assistant coaches. I was simply there to take record of the day and to crank out a press release when it was all over.

But again, just like in 1997, Van was anxious for Houston’s pick. Unlike the previous year, we now picked 10th overall. The coveted No. 1 selection was no longer ours after we won the WNBA title a year earlier.

There was one player in particular that Van wanted, but he was certain she’d be gone by the 10th pick. Her name was Polina Tzekova from Bulgaria.

He wanted her bad, and paced the floor all day before the conference call began.

Born in Louisville, Miss., Van had a southern drawl that would make Forrest Gump blush.

When the Draft began, Van had a look of panic on his face. He looked squarely at me and said, “If we get her, I’m not a hundred percent sure I can pronounce her name right.”

Polina Tzekova. I guess I understood his concern.

But I did some research heading into the Draft, assuming we might just get this 6-foot-5 center from Bulgaria.

As the picks began to wind down and things were closing in on our 10th pick, he was truly, truly stressed, not only because there was a real chance we could get her, but he reiterated to me how nervous he was to say her name on the conference call with executives from the league and the other seven teams.

I did my best to calm him down. I went to the white board in the war room and wrote POLINA on one line, and drew a great big check mark below it with OVA next to it..

“Polina,” I said as I looked him back squarely in his eyes. “Check - Ova.”

The board read:

[X]  POLINA   NOVA

He said he liked it. He sort of made fun of me for writing POLINA, but he appreciated the assist on the last name.

“I get the first name, son,” he said, as the word ‘son’ came dripping out of his mouth. “It’s that last name that gets me. But this helps.”

As the ninth pick was put in the books, the moderator came on and said, “Houston, you’re on the clock.”

Sure enough, Polina Tzekova was available, and Van wanted her. But, he was still stressing on the name.

“Houston, you have 30 seconds,” the moderator said.

Van sat back in his chair, and stared at the white board with my check mark and OVA staring back at him.

“Houston, you have 10 seconds,” the phone in the center of the room rang out.

Van looked at me, back up at the white board, and slowly moved into the phone.

“Houston selects,” he said. “The Big Russian.”

Needless to say, we were all caught off guard, both in the room in Houston, and in seven other cities around the country. We laughed, I clarified it to the moderator, and Polina Tzekova was now a Houston Comet.

Clearly, he never got comfortable with her last name, or her country of origin. He also likely missed on this one. Unlike the Thompson pick a year earlier who turned out to be one of the WNBA’s greatest players, Tzekova played in 32 total games for the Comets, averaging 6.1 points per game.

She now lives in her native Bulgaria … or Russia.