Storm pleased to take a timeout for Olympics

Maybe it says something about the Olympic Games. Certainly it says something about women athletes.

"I'd give up everything, a zillion dollars, to play in the Olympics," said Storm guard Sue Bird. "When I was a little girl, there was no WNBA. The coolest thing for me was the Olympics. It was the ultimate."

Unlike baseball, which won't allow anyone of any nationality on a major-league roster to play in the upcoming Olympics, the WNBA will shut its doors for August to allow Bird to play basketball for the United States, and Storm teammate Lauren Jackson to play for Australia.

"It was a big decision for the league," said Anne Donovan, coach of the Storm. "We're a new league. We could lose the momentum we'd gained during the summer, faced to start up again as the NFL is starting up.

"But for me, it was the only decision that makes sense."

Like Bird, Donovan is bitten by the Olympic bug. There will be no complaining about traffic and air pollution in Athens, not for Donovan, who missed the Moscow Olympics because of a U.S. boycott in 1980 but did play in them in Los Angeles in 1984 and Seoul in 1988.

This time she will be an assistant coach for the U.S. team.

Because the WNBA plays during the summer and conflicts with the Olympics, tremendous pressures have been applied to foreign athletes to boycott the league for a year.

All the Brazilians have been told to stay home. Houston will lose its third-leading scorer, Janeth Arcain.

For that matter, the Storm will lose South Korean Jung Sun-Min and Australian Sandy Brondello, the team's fourth-leading scorer last season, both of whom succumbed to national pressure.

"I played in Japan. I understand the Asian culture pretty well," said Donovan, "and there is no way they would let one individual, like Sun, come to Seattle while the rest of the team got ready for the Olympics."

At the same time, Australian Tully Bevilaqua chose to report yesterday with her Storm teammates and hopes she'll be selected for her country's Olympic team, anyway.

"Playing for the Storm is my livelihood," she said. "I decided I wanted to be here, that I could improve my game more by being here, and hope in the end people in Australia notice."

Starting center Kamila Vodichkova also is taking her chances of making her country's team, which qualified for the Olympics without her. She will spend the summer playing for the Storm, hopeful the Czech Republic will need her badly enough to take her anyway.

Jackson, widely advertised as the best female player in the world, can do what she wants, and that's to play for the Storm and star for Australia.

"The Olympics are going to be very, very competitive," said Bird, one of nine core members of the U.S. team.

"Russia and Australia will be very good. Right now, we are with our WNBA teams while Sandy Brondello is practicing all summer with her Australian team. The Aussies are getting ready. The Russians are getting ready.

"It's not going to be easy."

The American team will have the first two weeks of August to hastily prepare a defense of the Olympic title it won in Sydney, though the team has been together much of the spring while playing in both Eastern Europe and Cuba.

The Storm plays Charlotte on Aug. 1, and won't play again until Sept. 1 against Sacramento, the first of nine post-Olympic games to finish the regular season.

"People could get pretty excited about your team in May, June, July, and then we're gone," said Bird. "It could hurt ticket sales."

The reverse is likely to happen as a world that much of the time doesn't care a jump shot about sports, turns to the Olympics, to see Bird playing for the Americans and Jackson for Australia.

Women's basketball will get the exposure it desperately needs.

Donovan pushed hard for the hiatus.

"I know if we'd have continued to play in August, I wouldn't be coaching in the Olympics," she said. "There was no way I would have left Seattle.

"And what kind of team would we have fielded without Sue Bird, Lauren Jackson and Kamila Vodichkova? It wouldn't have been fair to our fans."

Donovan said she put no pressure on Vodichkova, for example, to pick the Storm over her homeland.

"The Olympics are truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience," she said. "I couldn't tell anyone what to do. It would be wrong for anyone but the individual athlete to decide."

Bird knew what she was going to do. No matter what it cost.

Blaine Newnham: 206-464-2364 or bnewnham@seattletimes.com