SPARKS SET SIGHTS ON SKEPTICS.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

Nicole Anderson has never watched the Los Angeles Galaxy. ``I honestly couldn't tell you what it is,'' she said of the local soccer team. She has never watched the Anaheim Piranhas, an arena-football team, either.

But Anderson thinks you should watch a Los Angeles Sparks women's basketball game.

Jamila Wideman has never attended one of those ``minor'' sports events that begged for her attention in the San Francisco Bay Area, as they beg for ours here. She has never attended a Golden State Warriors or San Francisco 49ers game, for that matter.

But Wideman wants you to come to one Sparks game, because you'll be coming back for more.

Kim Gessig has been to Galaxy and arena-football games because she's a soccer fan and once dated an arena-football player. (They broke up, and she can't remember which team she saw.)

Gessig, too, hopes people will give the Sparks a look even if they aren't women's basketball fans already or dating the starting center.

Gessig, Wideman and Anderson were among about a dozen players who appeared in the West Los Angeles College gym on Wednesday morning to open Sparks training camp and to pitch the WNBA to the public through about a dozen reporters.

``Everybody should show some interest, mainly because it gives you a different view of basketball,'' Anderson, a former UCLA star, said of the NBA-sponsored women's league whose first season begins June 21 with the Sparks facing the New York Liberty at the Forum. ``I'm positive they'll be impressed.''

All the Sparks ask is that you buy a ticket - which costs $7.50 or $20 - and let them entertain you.

And even if, come to think about it, they're asking you to do something for them that they haven't done for the other upstart franchises that fight for shelf space in the crowded Southern California sports market.

That doesn't make them hypocrites. But it shows what the WNBA and its local franchise is up against.

The Sparks know that to make a go of it, they must reach beyond their sport's existing fan base. The biggest crowd to watch UCLA women's basketball at Pauley Pavilion last season was 3,928 for a January game against USC. The biggest crowd to watch USC women's basketball at the Lyons Center last season was 1,417 for a February game against UCLA. Either would make the Forum look emptier than Dodger Stadium on Roger Cedeno Poster Night.

So the Sparks must entice the curiosity-seekers and even convert a few skeptics.

``I need to (do that) to survive,'' said Sparks president Johnny Buss, one of Jerry Buss' four children. ``I think to get into the 10,000 to 12,000 (attendance) range, we're going to have to win over the skeptics.''

Which is easier said than done. As Johnny Buss surely knows. His family - the Flying Wallendas of the sports business - has operated franchises in team tennis, indoor soccer and pro volleyball leagues that went belly up, in addition to its more successful ventures in the NBA and NHL.

Indoor soccer: Try it, you'll like it.

Not enough people tried it, though.

The WNBA has a few advantages that other fledgling leagues didn't or don't. It has the NBA's backing. It will play during the summer, the emptiest stretch in the sports calendar.

``The NBA gives you so much basketball during the playoffs - and then they cut you off. Now, here we come,'' Sparks general manager Rhonda Windham said during the camp-opening press conference, in which the words ``exciting'' and ``historic'' were thrown around like the WNBA's orange-and-white balls.

But the disadvantages will be daunting. The WNBA starts out in competition with the year-old American Basketball League, and although the NBA's backing should give the WNBA the upper hand in the seemingly inevitable merger talks, the ABL has held its own in the fight for marquee players.

That contest will be nothing compared to the WNBA's fight against human nature. The women's leagues are noble ventures, overdue outlets for talented athletes who have been forced to go overseas to play professionally. But that probably won't be a good enough reason for sports fans to change their habits.

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2 Photos

Photo: (1--Color) Members of the WNBA's Sparks enter the West Los Angeles College gym to be introduced.

(2) Lisa Leslie, center, smiles during the press conference.

David Sprague / Daily News