Cheryl Miller was the transformative women’s basketball player of the 1980s, and if she once privately bemoaned being born a generation too soon to cash in on her sublime skills, she no longer does. Today’s continuous news loop, fed by cellphone cameras, Facebook entries, Twitter feeds and 24-hour cable sports networks like ESPN might have irrevocably scarred Miller before she had a mature into her role as the face of women’s basketball.
As a young player, first at Riverside Polytechnic High and then at Southern California, Miller was as hotheaded as she was hot-handed. Her elbows were as sharp as knives and she had no compunction about throwing them.
Miller said she often would loiter outside opposing locker rooms after games, spoiling for a fight with whomever was responsible for inflicting that night’s bruises. Her U.S.C. teammates, usually Pam and Paula McGee or Rhonda Windham, became accustomed to finding her and dragging her back to the Trojans’ locker room before she did anything she might later regret.
“If I was playing today with ESPN SportsCenter and YouTube and Twitter and Facebook, I’d be in trouble,” Miller said Saturday with a rueful laugh.
Miller works for N.B.A. T.V. and T.N.T. and has coached U.S.C. and the Phoenix Mercury of the W.N.B.A. An astute observer of the game, she phoned Saturday in response to an interview request for this feature on Brittney Griner, the 6-foot-8 freshman center from Baylor who can dunk and block shots with aplomb but is mostly known for the punch she landed, breaking an opponent’s nose, during a game on March 3.
“I’m probably one of the few people who, while I don’t condone what she did, understand it,” Miller said. “I lived it.”
Back when she was playing, Miller said, as now: “There is sometimes a different standard for people who are bigger and stronger. It’s like the officials assume you should be able to absorb more contact. My one knock on women’s basketball is a foul’s a foul whether you’re 5-foot-8 or 6-foot-8 and that’s how the officials should call it.”
The 19-year-old Griner was on Miller’s radar long before she threw the punch that earned her an ejection and a two-game suspension and gave, in many people’s view, a black eye to women’s basketball.
Watching Griner play, Miller can’t help but wonder if David Stern, the N.B.A. commissioner, might have erred on the conservative side when he said he could envision a woman playing in the N.B.A. in 10 years.
“Looking at Brittney, my reaction is he might have been one or two years off,” Miller said.
Griner, she said, is that good. “She’s got great hands, she’s got great footwork, she’s very fluid,” Miller said. “She’s not just going to take women’s basketball to the next level, she could be the absolute savior of women’s basketball. When she grows into her body, oh my God, are you kidding me?”