When Phoenix Mercury coach Cynthia Cooper and Utah Starzz coach Fred Williams meet in Phoenix for Utah's first regular season game tonight, each will see a familiar face in the opponent.
They've met before, not as foes but friends. They've battled before, not each other but mutual enemies on and off the court.
Fred Williams was once Cooper's coach, and without his efforts, she said she wouldn't be the person she is today.
It was a long time ago, before Cooper played 11 years as a professional in Italy and Spain. Before she won a bronze and a gold medal in two different Olympics. Before the WNBA was even a hope for talented women basketball players, and before she became the league's leading all-time scorer, its MVP and a key player in Houston winning all four of its championships.
"He is the one who convinced me to come back and play (at USC)," Cooper said. As for Williams, he's modest about his involvement in talking one of the most popular female athletes back to USC after she quit right before her senior year.
"I don't like taking credit for anybody's (accomplishments)," Williams said. "It feels great to hear her say that . . . The payback for me is to see her prosper."
Cooper and Williams met when she was a sophomore and he came to USC as an assistant coach. He'd just finished college himself at Boise State and was trying to make it as a free agent in the NBA. The two bonded quickly because he grew up in South Central Los Angeles, and Cooper and her family still lived close by in Watts. He understood how difficult the transition to college was for a child of the inner city.
"Cynthia and I developed a strong bond because of the things we had mastered," Williams said. "We related very well."
The Trojans won two consecutive NCAA titles in 1983 and then the spring of 1984. And ironically, that's when Cooper's trouble began. The Olympics were held in Los Angeles that summer and two of the Trojans were on the team that won the gold medal. She said she couldn't afford a ticket, and no one offered her one. She watched her mother struggle financially and dealt with a deteriorating relationship with her then-boyfriend.
With her personal problems mounting, her grades slipped, and in the fall of 1984, what should have been her senior year, she was redshirted for academic reasons. Not being able to play a game she'd always used to help her release any pent up anger or disappointment, she spiraled downward.
In the fall of 1985, she quit.
She got a job as a bank teller and avoided calls from any of her coaches. Then on the eve of accepting an offer to play professionally overseas, Williams came looking for her. He drove through the streets of Watts looking for her. It almost cost him his life.
"A bunch of gang members surrounded my car," Williams said. "They wanted to make sure I wasn't a rival gang member. They knocked on Cooper's door and her mother, Mrs. Cobbs, answered. She said, "That's coach Williams, now you leave him alone. She saved my life that day."
The day before she was scheduled to fly to Vienna, Williams got Cooper on the phone. He had a plan to get her eligible and told her USC was the place for her, not Europe. She turned down professional money for her senior year.
"I don't think that I would have been the person that I am if I had gone pro because I just matured a lot more by going back to school," she said. "I felt a sense of accomplishment, quitting school and then going back to school."
The two have remained friends, even talking constantly when the WNBA was first organized. Both have found their way to success through basketball and now it pits them against each other. They've met twice in the preseason and each has a win. How does it feel to look down the sideline at the opposing coach and see a friend?
"It's weird," Cooper said. "Fred, he's the reason why I had a basketball career as a player. It feels kind of strange to see him on the other end and actually coaching against him. Fred is the man; he's come a long way, even as a coach. I'm very excited for him."
Williams is more accustomed to seeing former students and current friends as opponents. Cooper's predecessor was another USC product in Cheryl Miller.
"It doesn't really affect me," Williams said. "I'm focusing on our team, and I very rarely look down at the other coach . . . We've got to be enemies on the floor, but we'll get together as friends (afterward)."
E-MAIL: adonaldson@desnews.com