Columnist Dean Juipe: Pregnancy takes toll in WNBA

Dean Juipe

Monday, July 1, 2002 | 9:48 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4084.

Actually, with some 240 players and coaches in the league it's a wonder it doesn't happen more often.

But really, what are the women in the Women's National Basketball Association doing getting pregnant?

I know, I know, it's nobody's business but their own. And far be it for an aging male columnist in Las Vegas to take anyone to task for their personal choices.

Yet it strikes me as shortsighted that a woman would sacrifice one of the precious few years of her professional basketball career to give birth to a child that, in theory, she could have a little later in life.

There's a time and a place for everything, right? And if you're skillful and fortunate enough to have the type of ability it takes to play pro ball, you should take advantage of it while the getting is good.

Motherhood, I think it's fair to say, could wait.

This is the sixth season for the WNBA but the first one in which pregnancy is remotely topical or even much of an issue. While in the previous five WNBA seasons only seven players missed time due to pregnancy or having given birth, this season three players and a coach are out for the year.

And that's with three-quarters of the season yet to be played.

Most recently, Phoenix Mercury coach Cynthia Cooper felt the need to resign after giving birth to twins on June 15. She stepped down last week.

Also taking themselves out of action this season are Cleveland Rockers point guard Helen Darling, Charlotte Sting forward Shalonda Enis and Phoenix center Maria Stepanova. Each had been a member of her team's starting lineup.

Darling gave birth to triplets -- hmmm, Cooper, a former player, has twins and Darling has triplets; must be something in the WNBA's water cooler -- on April 13. Enis gave birth to a son on May 1. And Stepanova is sufficiently pregnant to have already left the Mercury.

The impact their absences have had on their teams is fairly significant.

Darling was a defensive specialist who spearheaded Cleveland's remarkable average of only 55 points-per-game allowed last season, and this year the Rockers are permitting 73. Enis contributed to Charlotte's Eastern Conference championship team last season but this year the Sting is winning only at home. And taking Stepanova and Cooper from the Mercury has Phoenix stuck in the middle of the Western Conference pack.

In previous years, the only notable player to become pregnant and miss time was the great Sheryl Swoopes, who was sidelined most of the 1997 season yet saw her Houston Comets teammates win the first of their four league championships.

Naturally, the WNBA had the foresight to allow for players becoming pregnant and has always accommodated them. Bylaws state that a pregnant player will go on the injured list and will receive half of her salary and full medical benefits; a player who gives birth during the offseason is not obliged to return to her team until the following year.

Nonetheless, a pregnant player isn't doing her career any good and she has just cost herself half of her season's salary. She may also return to the team to find that she has been replaced.

Then, I guess, she can always go home and be a mother.