By Jayda Evans
Seattle Times staff reporter
Sunday, May 21, 2006 - Page updated at 12:00 AM
The 12-year-old girls lined up along a gym wall.
Squatting at a 90-degree angle, as if sitting in an invisible chair, was little Lauren Jackson and her teammates. The nearly-30-minute leg-strengthening drill was punishment from her coach, who coincidentally relocated to the country town of Albury, Australia, from Seattle. What the players did to irritate the coach, Jackson doesn't remember. The searing pain that crept up her leg like burning lava, she'll never forget.
Gulp. The first swallow of secrecy took place "I didn't tell anyone," Jackson said of the childhood moment.
"After that I had problems in my shins and I didn't know what it was. I thought it was just my calves being sore because I used to get cramps when I was a kid and the more that I played, the worse it got.
"But all I did was play basketball. I dreamed about it. I'd be at my mom's practices. I coached my brother. When you're around it that much, you're always on the court shooting or running around with other kids. I played a lot and it just built from there.
Now a visible lump protrudes from Jackson's left shin like a bad mosquito bite. She brushes her hand over the area about mid-shin and casually says, "That's it, that's the stress fracture right there."
It'll be the most watched area of the Storm this season, which begins at 6 tonight at KeyArena against the Los Angeles Sparks.
Jackson's trek began at the beginning of training camp, when she sat down with coach Anne Donovan, who needed to manage Jackson's stress fracture but still use the star enough to win games and hopefully another WNBA title.
Donovan will cut Jackson's minutes to about 30 per game, down from a career-high 34.6 in 2005. Jackson has averaged 33.8 minutes during her five-year career. The Aussie also will not practice following game days and will ride an exercise bike if a blowout limits her to less than 15 minutes of court time. How the Storm will handle back-to-back games, the first coming June 14-15 on the road in Minnesota and Chicago, is uncertain.
Jackson, 25, doesn't like the idea of playing less, although she understands the precautionary measures to prolong her career.
She has spent much of training camp sitting on the sideline with both shins bound in thick packets of ice. She said she feels healthy, and doesn't think the sore shins are something that should keep her off the court.
"That's not going to happen," she said of Donovan playing her less. "I'll be playing, don't worry.
"It's a Catch-22, really. The more I'm out there, the more it's going to affect my body. The less I'm out there, the more it's going to affect my head. But I feel myself getting better with each practice and whatever happens, happens."
But Jackson said she could understand why Donovan would want to be careful.
"I trust Anne. She's not ever done anything to hurt me. She's been a wonderful coach and I'm not even going to argue with her, there's no point."
Jackson, whose bone-density tests show strong bones, is trying a more mature approach this season since receiving the initial results of her exam last fall. She was with former Storm assistant Carrie Graf when she pulled the X-ray film out of the envelope, held it up to the light and saw the jagged line that appeared to split her leg in two.
Graf suggested Jackson wait to react until she spoke with doctors. They told her she'd be out a year and most likely needed to put poles in her legs to keep them from fracturing.
But a week later, after a CT scan, doctors gave Jackson a glimmer of hope, telling the Olympian the injury could heal on its own.
"It was one of those moments where you go, 'OK, what am I going to do now?' " said Jackson, who will stop playing year-round, agreeing only to compete for her national team and a 2 ½-month stint in South Korea this offseason. "There wasn't one stage of my life where I ever thought of being anything else. We [Aussies] don't have to go to college. We can go be basketballers at the Institute, finish high school, and after that you kind of do whatever you want to do.
"And I never thought one day my career would be over and I'd have to do something else. At one point I wanted to be a primary-school teacher or a park ranger, but now, I don't really see myself doing any of it."
Jackson is enrolled in courses to earn a degree in business management, allowing her studies to drift her mind from the frustrating parts of basketball. She returned to the court, leading her native Canberra Capitals to their fifth WNBL title, although a March X-ray showed the left stress fracture hadn't completely healed. Jackson went on to lead the national team to a gold medal in the Commonwealth Games and starred in the surprising defeat of Donovan's Team USA in the Opals World Championship.
The Americans won the overall title, but the final game was historic, occurring in Jackson's hometown with the fans who have watched her develop.
"It was a huge deal," Jackson said of the win. "And I captained the Australian team for the first time as well, so to be able to beat the Americans like that was awesome. That it was in Canberra, which could be my last game there ever, it was very emotional. I feel like I left Australia on a really good note."
Yet, getting on the plane to Seattle was difficult.
The 2005 WNBA season started with Jackson scoring eight points against the Sparks, ending her streak of 84 consecutive games scoring 10 points or more. It ended with a first-round playoff loss to Houston, with Jackson limited by a lower back strain. Those memories toyed with her during the flight.
She found comfort in six other returning Storm faces, including all of the starting five. Despite injuries, general managers are still picking Jackson to win another MVP award, and her team, last season's leading scorers (73.5), is one of five picked to win the championship, according to league surveys.
But the stress fractures will always be there. Even after acupuncture, ultrasounds and "crazy stuff that hasn't been proven, but people do."
It's simply a matter of whether she can tame her will to play all-out constantly in order to help her team when it counts.
"I hate going back to the best year and the worst year of my life all rolled into one, but that was the championship year," said Jackson of 2004, when her maternal grandmother died in the midst of the Storm winning the title. "I definitely love the accolade [of being MVP], but it's a team sport. I love being at the level I'm at and I love being recognized as one of the better players, but at the end of the day I wouldn't trade a WNBA championship for the world."
Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company
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