Edwards Takes Abl On Her Aching Back

Teresa Edwards bounces off the court, chugging a bottle of water, looking fresher than all her 20-something teammates. Age, though, is starting to catch up with the grand old lady of basketball.

“I’ve got to get out of this thing,” she said Thursday, cooling down after a 2-hour workout with her new team, the Atlanta Glory. “Man, my legs are hurting. I won’t be able to walk in old age if I don’t get out soon.”

One more year, she vows, two at the most. At age 32, after winning four Olympic medals, Edwards has taken on the final challenge of her playing career: helping the American Basketball League get off the ground.

For the first time in more than a decade, American women have a basketball league to call their own. Training camp opened this week for the Glory, which opens its season in the eight-team ABL at San Jose Oct. 18.

And there was Edwards, running up and down the court with women 10 years her junior, barking out instructions, schooling the youngsters in the fine art of basketball. After winning a gold medal last month with the women’s version of the Dream Team, this is a big step down.

“I’ve already learned that I need to learn a little more patience with the people around me,” said Edwards, the only American basketball player - male or female - to play in four Olympics. “I really understand what Larry Bird and Magic Johnson saw when they got out on the court. It’s crazy. It’s not like some of these kids are a step behind you. It’s like they’re five steps behind you mentally. It’s a whole new level.”

Sure, the quality of play can’t possibly match up to her Olympic experience. Certainly, she could have made more money by going overseas for another year. But Edwards believes in the ABL, wants it to be a success - aches for it to be a success.

After playing professionally in Italy, Japan, Spain and France for the better part of a decade, this self-professed “Southern girl” - born and raised in the tiny south Georgia town of Cairo and a star at the University of Georgia in the mid1980s - is finally back home.

For years, she wondered what “it would feel like to practice and go back to my own home, to call my mother on the phone, to see my mother every other weekend, to have the opportunity for her to come see me play.”

Now, she knows.

“We’re not big on that stardom thing,” Edwards said, grinning. “You’ve got to be from California or New York for that stuff. I’m grounded right here in Georgia. I always have been.”

The only time her cheery demeanor turns a little sour is when she discussed a rival women’s league backed by the NBA which will start next summer. Several Olympians who had committed to the ABL including Edwards’ longtime friend and former Georgia teammate, Katrina McClain - changed their minds, perhaps so they can play in the Women’s NBA.

“I think it’s hurtful that they made a choice to sign an agreement to play in this league, and in some cases actually took money for it, and then when the NBA made its announcement, all of a sudden they had a choice,” Edwards said. “For me, I didn’t have a choice. When I made that agreement and said I would play in this league, I meant it.”

She is skeptical of the NBA’s commitment to women’s basketball, especially when that league will play during the summer when the arenas are vacant anyway. She doesn’t think the NBA will ever allow its league to be anything more than a sideshow to the Michael Jordans and Shaquille O’Neals.

Edwards also has trouble understanding the young women who look at the NBA salaries and complain that they’re only making $40,000 in the ABL, which has a strict salary cap that keeps even the top players in the low six-figures.

“It’s a different generation,” she said. “They don’t want to work for it. They want to have it already there for them.”

Edwards said she “wouldn’t mind trailing off into the sunset.” Already, she has accomplished more in 32 years than most people accomplish in a lifetime. But she can’t quit. There’s still work to be done.

“There is a group of people out there that enjoys women’s basketball,” she said. “There’s a bunch of little girls out there that like to go to camp, who start out playing basketball at a young age. They need people they can relate to and can look up to.”