A little girl, maybe 8 years old, walked up to 7-foot-2 Malgorzata Dydek, who was sitting on the concrete steps at the Utah Starzz' practice gym Thursday evening after her first workout with her new team.
The girl hesitated, perhaps a little awed by the woman in front of her, then said, "I think you're great. I think you're going to win."Dydek was obviously very touched. She put her arms around the girl and hugged her and asked her name and thanked her.
"I like to speak with children," said Dydek, who'd spent 15 1/2 hours flying to Salt Lake City on Wednesday from her home near Warsaw, Poland.
"They teach me the language," says Dydek, 24, known as "Margo." She speaks five of them: Polish, Russian, Spanish, French and English. If she has a question about a word, she likes to ask the children for its meaning.
Not that children were nice to Dydek when she was a child and only ever knew one boy who was as tall as she was. They laughed at her. "Always," she says.
"When I was young, I have a complex," she says. "I would come back home, and I was crying. My mom, she was like, `Oh, don't cry.' All the time, I go to do shopping, or I come back to school, and I hate it," recalls Dydek.
But the WNBA's No. 1 draft choice, who is about to embark on a whirlwind summer-long journey as the league's showpiece in its second year and the Starzz' ticket to respectability after a 7-21 record in 1997, holds no bitterness toward former classmates who laughed and those who still stare.
"Right now, I don't feel it when people look at me. It's my life," she says. "Always they look at me."
Dydek is big in ways other than physical size.
Nicknamed "Mega" by a fan, she is about to give America a megadose of the old-fashioned kind of athlete this country used to idolize.
Mega is open, gracious, friendly, humble, genuine and a pretty good player, too, with shooting and shot-blocking skills that might rival a Shawn Bradley, an effortless run that makes almost no sound as her feet gobble up the floor and an ability to laugh at herself when she misses a free throw in practice and makes the team have to run an extra lap.
"It's my friends," she says of the way she learned to handle the taunts, the looks. "They helped me a lot. When I stay with my friends and we go somewhere in the town to drink coffee or to do shopping, I don't see the other people laughing at me because I don't care.
"Sometimes when I go alone, I see more because I don't have somebody who can help me."
Here's a prediction: Dydek won't be alone in the U.S.
With her personality, she'll have a team-full of supporters and a legion of fans like the little girl who got the appreciative hug from the woman who, before basketball discovered her at age 12, spent her free time in a scouting-like group that did service projects like helping old people. Some of her favorite activities now are billiards and going to movies with friends.
In the Dydek family, height is rampant. Both grandfathers and her older sister Katarzyna are all about 6-7, and her 16-year-old sister is 6-3 and still growing. "Me and my older sister, when we were children, we don't like what we are," Margo says, "but the younger one, she says she doesn't want to stop. She wants to be two meters (about 6-7) and more. It doesn't bother her."
Margo's growth spurts were measured each holiday. One time, at age 12 or 13, she grew 20 centimeters (nearly eight inches) between holidays. "For me, all holidays, it was like, too much," she says.
Her mother is a professional seamstress, so finding clothing to fit lengthening arms and legs wasn't too hard, though getting clothing for sports was more difficult.
In fact, had Dydek not been held up a couple days waiting for a visa, she might not have had a practice outfit. Her uniforms, including practice tank and shorts, which were ordered on April 29, the day she was drafted by the Starzz, arrived Thursday morning while Dydek was getting her physical exam.
Dydek brought little with her in the way of luggage. One thing she hates to do is pack, she says, so Katarzyna did that for her, compressing what Margo would have put in four bags down to three. "She was, like, jumping (on the bags to make them fit)," says Dydek.
Katarzyna, who talked a reluctant Margo into playing basketball at age 12 ("I didn't like basketball," she says), played two seasons ago in the WNBA's rival league, the ABL, in Colorado. She will arrive here May 24 to see Margo, try to catch on in the WNBA and eventually return to college in Missouri.
"Mega" completed a year of college, studying physical education and coaching, but she wants to change course and perhaps become a physical therapist because she would feel like she'd be learning more.
But college will wait as Dydek continues her growing hoop career, which is bringing in enough money to help her family build a new home. As one of the first three picks in the 1998 WNBA draft, Dydek will reportedly earn a $50,000 base salary, paid by the league, which owns player contracts, for the 30-game season. Housing and per diem for all players is also paid by the league, as are bonuses for postseason play and making all-star teams or league honors.
Dydek makes more in Europe, where the season is longer. She's not sure where she'll play next fall. She has an invitation to return to Poole Getafe, a championship team in Madrid, and she wants to play for Poland next year in the European championships.
As for her first practice with the Starzz Thursday afternoon, Dydek said she was still dizzy from Wednesday's long flight. "I feel today like my legs weight 200 kilograms," she said, but she had no trouble keeping up with those who'd been in training camp since Monday. She didn't dunk - she can - but she showed a nice shooting touch, made layups with either hand and blocked a teammate's shot by grabbing it one-handed out of the air. When a pass on a weave drill was thrown slightly behind her, she directed the ball to teammate Wendy Palmer in stride for a layin.
And Dydek's still surprised that she was the WNBA's No. 1 draft pick.