Azzi Changed Our Way of Thinking About Women's Basketball

By: Ann Killion, Mercury News Can one naive teenager change the mindset of an entire region? You bet. Beginning 20 years ago, Jennifer Azzi changed the way the Bay Area thought about women's basketball. Azzi, who will be inducted into the San Jose Sports Hall of Fame tonight, turned the Bay Area into a hot spot. She helped change the way people thought about basketball. About women's team sports. Maybe even about women. "It always felt like it was about more than just basketball," said Azzi, 38. "Basketball was a vehicle to change perceptions about women." First came the coach. Tara VanDerveer arrived from Ohio State in 1985, ready to change things. But to do it, she needed a player. Not just any player, but a star to build around. "One person does make a difference," VanDerveer said. "What Jennifer brought was exactly what we needed." Her staff scoured the country and found Azzi. A hard-nosed, competitive, charismatic point guard who had the grades to get into Stanford and the desire to leave home. Which just happened to be in Tennessee -- one of the nation's true hotbeds for women's basketball. That Tennessee mindset was an important attribute that Azzi brought to Stanford. Fortunately for VanDerveer, Pat Summitt wasn't interested in Azzi. "They said they had an extra scholarship if I wanted it," Azzi said. "But I didn't feel like they wanted me to come there. And I never wanted to go there. I wanted a different experience." She wanted adventure and academics. And she just assumed that -- no matter where she went -- people would like to watch women's basketball. "We had 20,000 fans at our state tournament," she said. "I grew up in that atmosphere." The first time she got on an airplane was her recruiting trip to Stanford. The first time she set foot in California was that trip. She didn't have any second thoughts, no concerns about homesickness or adjustments. "I'm blessed sometimes with not being very realistic," Azzi said. "It didn't hit me until I got there, my first night in the dorm." That wasn't the only adjustment, when she arrived in 1986. When the team played, they didn't pull out the bleachers. No one came to the games. The team was terrible. "It was pretty depressing," she said. Azzi called her father and said she wanted to come home. He said he'd come and get her, but to get a good airfare he needed to purchase something a month in advance. Meantime, he wrote her every day. "By the time he came out, I was fine," she said. Except for the basketball part. One night after a loss, Azzi sat in darkened Maples Pavilion by herself, wondering what she'd committed herself to and despairing. Also sitting in the dark, having similar thoughts, was her coach. VanDerveer moved next to Azzi and told her, "Picture this place full. Picture us selling out by your senior year. Now picture us winning the national championship. Can you do that?" Azzi, still not very realistic, told her coach, "Sure." "I'd seen 10,000 fans at high school games," Azzi remembered. "Why not here? Why can't we make that happen?" Azzi helped make it happen. She and her teammates papered the dorms with fliers. She helped recruit other key players, such as Sonja Henning. Fans started to come. Victories started to pile up. "It was an obsession almost," she said. "We were so passionate about it." She made the Bay Area notice. She ran VanDerveer's up-tempo offense and embodied the coach's mantra of selling the sport every time she took the court. By Azzi's junior year, the team won the Pac-10 title and she was the league's player of the year. By her senior year, Maples was sold out. Azzi was the Naismith player of the year. And the team won the NCAA championship, in Azzi's home state. Azzi graduated in 1990. She was a member of the national-team pool and in 1995 was reunited with VanDerveer, who took a sabbatical from Stanford to coach the Olympic team. After the triumphant Atlanta Olympics -- where the team won the gold medal -- Azzi and a handful of other stars helped launch the American Basketball League. Azzi played for the Lasers at the Event Center at San Jose State. "That was my favorite 2 1/2 years of my career," she said. "I remember seeing people lined up around the Event Center on opening night. It was amazing what we had accomplished." But the ABL eventually folded because of stiff competition from the WNBA. Azzi played for the WNBA, in Detroit, Utah and San Antonio. She retired in 2004. Now she does public speaking and continues a relationship with the NBA. She's moving back to the Bay Area from Utah -- recently closing on a house in Mill Valley. She's sad that the excitement about women's sports that peaked in the late 1990s has died down. She's concerned that players don't realize they still have to sell the game. "I wonder if we've gotten a little bit lax," she said. "Each person has to earn their own respect." She'd love to see the Bay Area become home to a WNBA team, building around a local name such as -- for instance -- Candice Wiggins. For now, Azzi plans to catch some games as a fan at Maples, where the Cardinal will be putting together a run it hopes ends at the Final Four. Azzi can sit in the bleachers -- which will be pulled out and packed. And she can witness what she helped start two decades ago.