Remembering a Houston dynasty
When I think about the Houston Comets, I think about the big three of Cynthia Cooper, Sheryl Swoopes, and Tina Thompson and the instant dynasty they created at the outset of the WNBA’s existence.
They won the first four WNBA championships in history, produced the league’s first 3 out of 4 MVPs, its all-time leaders in every meaningful statistic (some still standing), and produced a thrilling brand of ball that resonated throughout the city, captivating male and female fans alike. They demanded and earned respect. Few dynasties have done more.
I remember those first games, the first title, and the excitement they created in a Houston pro sports landscape awash with success with both the Rockets and Astros providing playoff teams and title contenders at that particular time.
It’s a shame now because the Comets, gone from the WNBA landscape since 2008, were the league’s flagship franchise from the very start. An ultra-talented roster of Olympic medal winners, European stars, former collegiate standouts, and one helluva likable Hall of Fame coach.
Now they’re all gone and their legacies, memories, and accomplishments are mostly of the numerical sort — stuck on a web page for any wanting to see but otherwise scrubbed from mass public consciousness, minus the four championship banners still hanging from the rafters of Toyota Center.
Few seem to remember Cynthia Cooper’s explosion onto the scene at 34 years-old. She wasn’t just Houston’s best player, she was the league’s first megastar (perhaps its last).
By the time the inaugural WNBA season started in June 1997, the Rockets had fallen just short of a 1990s affirming NBA Finals match-up with the Chicago Bulls, losing to Utah in the Western Conference Finals thanks to John Stockton’s soul-crushing buzzer-beater in Game 6.
The 96–97 season had been Houston’s first with Charles Barkley on the roster, so Houston’s ‘Big Three’ experiment with Hakeem, Drexler, and Barkley was expected to yield a third Finals appearance in four years.
It didn’t seem likely that the brand-new Houston Comets would be able to soothe the pain of that plan backfiring.
No one knew what to expect from the new eight-team women’s pro league. Would it be entertaining? Would it rake in the same kind of ratings (and money) that the NBA did? Would male basketball fans respect the women’s game?
Looking back, the WNBA wasn’t necessarily its own thing. It was like when a successful TV show decides to launch a spin-off of its still-active parent show (think Walking Dead). It was its own league, but the NBA was ultimately in control.
The NBA’s Board of Governors founded the league in April 1996, but enthusiasm was hard to drum up initially. They figured the easiest thing to do would be to create eight teams and affiliate them with NBA counterparts in Houston, New York, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Sacramento, Utah, and Charlotte. They would share arenas and, essentially, be sister teams.
The inaugural regular season would be 28 games, and the playoffs would consist of four teams and two one-game playoff rounds.
From the beginning, the Comets stood head and shoulders above the crowd.
For starters, they hired legendary Ole Miss head coach Van Chancellor as their first head coach — a massive coup for the upstart league. In 19 years at Ole Miss (1978–1997), Chancellor had led the Rebels to a 439–154 (.740) overall record.
He was considered a master team builder and an insanely player-friendly coach who also had a knack for silly radio spots that my dad and I still quote to this day.
The Comets then went out and made the league’s first player acquisition, landing free agent legend Sheryl Swoopes.
Swoopes was already an NCAA champion and an Olympian of high international repute by 1997, so the idea of Swoopes, a Texas-native, becoming the face of the Comets was essentially written in stone. Only she was pregnant and would end up missing the team’s first 19 games and never really hit her stride that first season, despite making it back to the court an astonishing six weeks after giving birth.
Still, Swoopes would go on to become the greatest two-way player in league history, a three-time MVP (2000, 2002, and 2005) and a three-time Defensive Player of the Year (2000, 2002, and 2003) — both firsts for the league.
Swoopes would also become the first WNBA player to have shoes named after her, the NIKE Air Swoopes, and would become the highest profile athlete at the time to come out as gay, which she did in October 2005.
Swoopes was already a legend upon her arrival in Houston, with three Olympic Gold Medals under her belt and a record 47-point performance for Texas Tech in the 1993 NCAA Women’s Championship Game. She was often referred to, even back then, as the “female Michael Jordan”.
It’s impossible to argue against that label. That said, if Swoopes is Jordan, Cynthia Cooper was Magic.
While Swoopes would become a star in the league by the following season, Cooper took the league by storm in ’97, winning the league’s first two MVP awards, as well as the first four WNBA Finals MVP awards. Quite simply, she was the GOAT.
Though already 34-years old by the time she began her WNBA career, Cooper, a USC alum with gobs of international pedigree, was an absolute behemoth of a player. Quick and agile to the basket, a deep threat behind the arc and a consistently good defender, Coop endeared herself from day one as the Comets, and the league’s, first megastar.
It created a market in Houston that the WNBA could thrive on. While other cities struggled with attendance, the Comets thrived, packing The Summit/Compaq Center summer after summer.
So little exists in the way of highlights of her career and it pisses me off because holy hell was she a joy to watch. From her raise-the-roof motions she’d make after big shots, the slashing and cutting to the hoop, and her flawless footwork, she was a true star and ambassador of the game. A role model for up and coming players, male and female.
Then came Tina Thompson — the first-ever draft pick in WNBA history.
A four-year star at USC and already a USA Basketball veteran, Thompson provided size, elite athleticism, superior interior defense, and a Robert Horry-like knack for hitting big shots when most needed.
Together, Cooper, Swoopes, and Thompson formed a dynastic trio that would shape the WNBA for years to come, bring the first four-ever WNBA Championships to Houston, and increase their own legacies, along with that of their legendary head coach.
But any talk of the Comets, their dynasty, and their impact on Houston’s professional sports standing is incomplete without Kim Perrot.
Perrot was like a prototype Patrick Beverley or Rajon Rondo. She wasn’t statistically at the level of her ‘Big Three’ teammates, but she was just as important to their initial success.
She was aggressive and feisty; a pinpoint passer and lock-down perimeter defender and the classic ‘glue-that-keeps-the-team-together’. Her effort, drive, and tenacious nature made her an instant fan favorite in Houston and a known commodity throughout the league.
Like Beverley today, she wasn’t a main attraction name, but opponents worried about her just as much as they did those stars. She hassled giants and effected the game on the court and on the sidelines.
Of course, any mention of Perrot comes with the sad post-script of her tragic and untimely passing due to lung cancer in 1999 at the age of 32.
TITLETOWN, USA
The Rockets were only two years removed from their back-to-back championships in 1994 and 1995 when the Comets started up and brought home back-to-back-to-back-to-back titles to the city (1997–2000). Coupled with the Astros’ three straight division titles (1997–1999), it was easy for me as a pre-teen to view the city as on par with other championship utopias like New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago.
But while the Rockets have still never captured another title, or been particularly close to it since that ’95 title, and the Astros would wait until 2017 to capture their first World Series title, the Comets seemed like a mortal lock to win it all every. damn. year.
It wasn’t just The Big Three and Perrot bringing those titles in, it was key role players like Janeth Arcain, Tammy Jackson, Wanda Guyton, Monica Lamb, and Sonja Henning.
They were strong, cohesive, and uber-talented. They understood their roles, played team ball, made the extra pass and hustled all the time. They were a phenomenal team to watch all four of those championship years.
KIM PERROT
When the Comets lost Kim Perrot in August 1999, the team was wrapping up a 26–6 regular season which featured many appearances throughout the season of Perrot as she battled her disease.
Her death at the outset of the postseason gave some people reason to believe that the Comets wouldn’t be able to three-peat. The team would defy those odds, beating Lisa Leslie and the L.A. Sparks, 2–1, in the West Finals and then dispatched the New York Liberty yet again, 2–1, to capture their third title and creating one of the early iconic images in WNBA history.
THEIR LEGACY
In the 11 years since the Comets folded due to a lack of ownership and fan interest, the team’s legacy has fallen away. While the Rockets keep the Comets’ banners hanging and some hoops fans keep their legacy going, it’s tough to keep it mainstream when there’s no way to overtly celebrate what they did.
There’s nowhere to go buy their jerseys or merchandise. No memorabilia that’s both affordable and easy to access, and there’s no immediate presence for them in Houston.
While Cooper is now head coach at Texas Southern University in Houston, Swoopes is an assistant at Texas Tech, and Thompson is head coach for Virginia University. All three are Hall of Fame inductees, along with the retired Van Chancellor, and yet none of them have a heavy presence in Houston.
There’s no statues, no anniversary celebrations of their titles, and no obvious demand for such things. It’s sad.
That team kept the good times rolling once the Rockets went downhill and kept hoop fans engaged. The city fell in love with these players because they perfectly defined what it meant to play Houston basketball in the late 90s. They were tough, scrappy, and fun as hell.
I hope one day that their legacy will be properly memorialized. These weren’t the Houston Aeros — a random minor-league hockey team filled out with anonymous names and long-lost statistics. They were pros and could ball with the best of them. They don’t deserve to fade away.
