LEAGUE CAN'T AFFORD DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR.

Byline: KAREN CROUSE

You know how it is with kid sisters. They'll obstinately try to keep pace with their big brothers, no matter how gaping the age difference. So it is with the WNBA, which is 47 years younger than the NBA and already showing a precocity that is truly scary.

As the women of the NBA get their second season under way this week, there are signs everywhere of the strides they're making to catch up with their richer, more renowned male counterparts.

The league has shot up physically, adding two more teams, in Detroit and Washington D.C. Growth is good, but some of the so-called signs of maturity are as attractive as acne. In Phoenix, the Mercury repaid the fans who made the team the league's top draw by raising ticket prices. A necessary evil, said one team executive, ``to remain competitive with the rest of the league.''

To get a head start on the competition, some agents are swooping in on the top collegiate players, slipping business cards into their hands and whispering sweet salutations in the ears of even those who have one, two and three years of eligibility remaining. The agents are bloodhounds smelling dollar signs, hot on the trail of players such as the reigning player of the year Chamique Holdsclaw, who reportedly could command an estimated $10 million in endorsements.

And the scent of money already has some high school players swooning. Rising senior Nina Smith, a 6-foot-4, 210-pound center from Waterloo West High in Iowa, is said to be contemplating a leap straight from preps to the pros. She would have to wage a legal battle to do so, since both the WNBA and its rival league, the ABL, have rules against accepting players of college age or younger. But where there's Spencer Haywood, who successfully challenged a similar NBA rule in 1971, there's hope.

Finally, from New York comes the word that a players' union possibly is in the offing. The better to raise the low-end salaries and, as New York Liberty standout Rebecca Lobo explained, ``to keep the game pure.''

Which begs the question, pure as what? The Hudson River?

Last year you could buy T-shirts that bragged on the WNBA, boldly making the claim, ``INVENTED BY MAN, PERFECTED BY WOMAN.''

That was the original idea, anyway - for women to adopt all that is terrific about pro sports. Namely the opportunity to play for decent pay and pay back the surrounding community in myriad ways while steadfastly refusing to follow their male counterparts down the path of avarice and arrogance.

The guiding principle was supposed to be that standby of mothers everywhere: Just because your big brother dives headfirst into shallow water, does that mean you should?

But where there's money, there's the potential for greed. Where there's popularity, there are outside pressures.

Until just recently, the athletic careers of females came with an expiration date that coincided with either their high school or college graduations. Because female athletes knew they couldn't bank on their sporting prowess, they had no choice but to pursue alternate ambitions, which they did oftentimes with the same discipline and determination they brought to the athletic arena.

The result were women with a head start in the game of life, high achievers such as Sparks rookie Allison Feaster. She took her academics seriously enough to pursue, at her own expense, an Ivy League education at Harvard. She wound up with a job offer on Wall Street, as an investment banker at Merrill Lynch.

Her 9-to-5 job is on hold while she plays out her basketball career. Feaster has set herself up for success no matter how many points she averages for the Sparks this or any subsequent season. But what of future generations? With money to be made in sports, will they follow the lead of Feaster or waver like Waterloo West's Smith?

To avoid the tunnel vision that has blinded so many male athletes, the course for the WNBA is clear:

Scotch any plans to form a players' union. If it's higher salaries the players want, there's a ready answer: the ABL. Last year, WNBA salaries averaged between $20,000 and $40,000, with the six-figure salaries of a select few skewing the total picture. In the ABL, salaries in the first year fell between $40,000 and $150,000.

The ABL has survived two years playing when the sports calendar is overcrowded, soldiering on despite a minimal marketing budget. The ABL needs the NBA's publicity arm and the WNBA's summer schedule. The WNBA could use the ABL's star players.

The marriage of the two leagues would be one made in hoops heaven, provided the executives of both leagues put aside their egos long enough to hammer out a prenuptial agreement that is acceptable to both parties. United, women's pro basketball can prosper. Divided, it's the 1997-98 Lakers, laden with potential but laced with too many individual agendas to have staying power.

Refrain from resorting to base instincts. The only black eye the WNBA should have should come courtesy of smudged mascara. The last thing the league needs is for another incident like the one that occurred last year, when Nancy Liebermann-Cline executed a headlock on the Sparks' Jamila Wideman.

The sport eventually will be pinned if players persist in acting more like Alonzo Mourning than Ann Meyers.

Implement a certification process for agents, and fast. The only people handing college players slips of paper should be young fans seeking autographs.

The bottom line: In an age full of young girls trying to follow in the footsteps of their big sisters in the pros, the only beaten path should be the straight and narrow one.

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Photo

PHOTO Sparks' Mwadi Mabika, with ball, and Cleveland Rockers' Eva Nemcova should resist the temptation of forming a union.

Gus Ruelas/Daily News