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Just Out chats with Portland's new W N B A coach
by O riana G reen
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Linda Hargrove (center) with Portland Trail Blazers President and General Manager Bob
Whitsitt and members of the Blazers-supported YM CA Midnight Basketball League
L
inda Hargrove estimates “a large per
centage, or a very significant percent”
of professional women athletes are
lesbian. And she says it’s no big deal.
“(Coming out] is just something
that is a personal decision for them. From a
coaching standpoint, 1 certainly try to treat
everyone that’s on my team with the same kind
of respect, and I don’t try to get into people’s
personal lives,” she says.
Though the Portland-based Women’s
National Basketball Association team has no
name and no players, it finally has a leader in
Hargrove, who was tapped earlier this month to
become the Trail Blazers’ W NBA franchise
coach and general manager.
After 27 years coaching at the college level
in Kansas, Hargrove finally got her big break
when she became coach of the American Bas
ketball League’s Colorado Xplosion— only to
see the league collapse late last year.
Now she finds herself a long way from
Kansas, in a city where many Portland Power
fans are still smarting over the loss of the ABL
and the loss of former Power coach Lin Dunn to
Seattle’s W NBA expansion team.
Hargrove and Dunn are old friends and occa
sional rivals. But that isn’t likely to help Har
grove rally all the fans to her side of the court.
One diehard Power fan sums it up: “To me
the Power was a cause— this is big-time corpo
rate basketball, and there is no emotional com
mitment here.”
For her part, Hargrove is eager to fan the Fire
(one contender for the team name).
“I see our rivalry as an interesting sidebar,"
she says, adding, “The focus is still going to be
the players.”
But first things first. "The main thing right
now is just to make sure Portland has a team,”
Hargrove says, referring to the task at hand:
securing 5,500 season ticket deposits by Oct. 15.
As of Aug. 19, roughly 2,000 had been sold.
Hargrove plans to scout the W NBA playoffs,
and was recently in Canada scouting the Pan
American Games.
“The Power was a very, very, very talented
group," she says. “Oh my gosh, 1 would be in sev
enth heaven if 1 thought I could have that
Power team here ”
Hargrove is most optimistic about snagging
the former Power team captain, who has been
hired by the franchise as its community liaison.
“Our hope is that [Lake Oswego resident]
Katy Steding will be playing for Portland, but
the league will not give us that OK at this point.
Hopefully we’ll be able to get some of the Power
players back here,” she says.
As for other challenges, Hargrove is aware of
the resentment felt by many ABL fans who
blame the demise of the league on the WNBA.
“I think we all felt that way, everybody who
was involved with the ABL. We saw this big bad
machine out there being the NBA and the
WNBA, and we were this little grass-roots
upstart organization that was trying to get some
thing really good started,” she says.
But Hargrove says it was the economics of
television scheduling that really did in the ABL,
which couldn’t get the kind of air time it need
ed to succeed during the winter.
“We fought against the summer schedule so
much, we just felt like that wasn’t natural to be
playing basketball in the summer,” she says.
Unnatural or not, summer is when the
WNBA plays, and Hargrove has accepted her
new reality: “The bottom line is, we’ve got to get
over that. If we’re going to support professional
women’s basketball, then we’ve got to jump on
the W NBA bandwagon, because the scary thing
is, the W NBA isn’t here forever either."
This is big business with a bottom line, and if
women’s basketball doesn’t turn a profit, the
players will be on the next airbus for Europe.
It’s no secret the Power drew much of its sup
port from lesbian fans, which begs the question:
Is it a community Hargrove is comfortable work
ing with?
“Oh absolutely. I know in Colorado that was
a big part of our fan base there,” she says. “I am
extremely comfortable working with alternative
lifestyles, and I just think there is so much room
in this game for everyone.”
As for the gay-friendly vibe at Power games,
Hargrove says she hopes to duplicate the feeling
via the WNBA team.
"And I know I’m going to do everything I
can to make sure we have that kind of atmos
phere,” she vows.
We all deserve it.
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