How Lauren Got Her Groove Back

When Seattle Storm forward Lauren Jackson has some downtime, she likes to visit the Kangaroo & Kiwi, an Aussie pub in north Seattle. Sure, the window looks out on busy Aurora Avenue instead of a field of cows and sheep and bouncing kangaroos, but otherwise it feels just like home to the 6'5" Aussie. There's Tooheys beer in the cooler, meat pies on the menu and Aussie sporting events on the telly. The pub's owner, Bradley Howe, grew up in Harden Murrumburrah, New South Wales, about two hours from Jackson's native Albury. "We're both country kids," says Jackson, "and country kids are a different breed."

Perhaps that explains why Jackson, 26, continues to defy basketball convention. Now in her seventh year in the WNBA, the 2003 league MVP is playing the most productive and joyful basketball of her career despite stress fractures in her left shin. At the All-Star break Jackson was leading the league in scoring (22.4 points a game, the highest average of her career), blocks (2.16) and double doubles (10) and was ranked second in rebounding (9.3). She was also 12th in three-point shooting, hitting at a 40.5% clip. " Lauren Jackson is not a prototype, she's a freak," says Chicago Sky coach Bo Overton. "She's a post player with a guard's body control and skill, who can shoot the three, drive and handle the ball. There's no one like her."

Medical experts might agree after learning the details of Jackson's off-season. When prudence suggested she take time off to have surgery on stress fractures in both shins that limited her to 30 minutes a game and caused her to sit out every other practice last season, Jackson instead pounded the hardwood abroad for nearly six months, collecting some coveted international hardware and six-figure paychecks along the way. After stops in Brazil, South Korea and Russia, she rejoined the Storm in May--20 pounds lighter, a step quicker and feeling, she says, "10 times better physically than I have in a long time."

She still has two fractures in her left shin. "I don't know if she got used to the pain or what," says Storm trainer Kyla McDaniel, "but she hasn't complained."

"I still have days," says Jackson, "but as long as the fractures aren't getting any worse, I'm not going to let them hold me back anymore. After last season I decided I was either going to play all out in the off-season or not at all. A little practice here, a little practice there was driving me crazy. I couldn't get in a groove."

The first step in getting her groove back came shortly after the Storm was eliminated in the first round of the WNBA playoffs, when she joined the Australian national team as it prepared for the women's world championships in S�o Paulo. Jackson led her country to its first gold medal, defeating Russia on Sept. 23. "That was amazing, and totally unexpected," says Jackson. "We've always been the little sister to America."

After taking three months off, Jackson joined Samsung Bichumi in Seoul for four months as its one foreigner. "It was fantastic that no one else on my team spoke English," says Jackson, who averaged a league-record 30.2 points. "It was very easy to just play basketball and not have any drama."

Jackson's next stop was Moscow, where she was paid six figures for a one-month stint with Spartak Moscow Region, a team that already had three U.S. Olympians-- Storm point guard Sue Bird, Phoenix Mercury guard Diana Taurasi and Houston Comets forward Tina Thompson. Jackson moved in with her good friends Bird and Taurasi, sharing a luxurious manse courtesy of the Spartak owner, who also lavished his foreign stars with diamond earrings, expensive dinners and salaries that were quadruple their WNBA take. "This house had everything you could ever imagine--a pool, a spa, five bathrooms, an enormous living room," says Jackson. "Then you go to the window and it's overlooking a nuclear power plant. It was so Russian. It was awesome."

A day after Jackson and her mates sewed up the Russian Superleague title, she was on a plane back to Seattle, far wealthier--in her five months in Korea and Russia she made "as much as I have in my entire career in America," says Jackson--and happier than when she left in August. "When she's on the floor now, she just floats," says Storm assistant coach Shelley Patterson. "There's a real lightness to her."

"I had always felt a step slow in the past," says Jackson. "Now my rebounding is better, my defense is better. A lot of things are better."