Mega Starzz

To her friends and basketball fans in her homeland of Poland, 7-foot-2 Malgorzata Dydek is known as "Ptych."

It means "Big Cake." Cake is the Polish nickname for a blocked shot.Dydek is big on cakes - among the many other basketball and people skills the second-year Utah Starzz hope to reap from the WNBA's 1998 No. 1 overall draft choice.

The 24-year-old Ptych, also known as "Margo," "Mega" and "Large Marge," joins the Starzz' other important draftees Olympia Scott (drafted No. 11 overall), LaTonya Johnson (No. 21) and Tricia Bader (No. 31).

Those four plus trade acquisitions Chantel Tremitiere (from Sacramento for Lady Hardmon) and Fran Harris (from Houston for Karen Booker) and free-agent guard Kari Gallup (BYU, NCAA 3-point contest winner) give '97 league doormat Utah a slam-dunk of a second chance at this WNBA thing.

Which is important to restoring a fan base that, thanks to a 7-21 record and last-place finish in 1997, has slipped from 2,500 season tickets a year ago to a current level of 1,800, while the WNBA reports a 60 percent overall increase from an average of 2,500 to an average of 4,000 in 1998.

And the towering Dydek is one of the keys.

The modest WNBA rookie can dunk easily and did so a number of times to please the crowd at last Thursday's Starzz Delta Center scrimmage but hasn't done it yet in an American game.

"They like," she said of the fans and the dunk.

"I don't like."

But Dydek said she will do it in competition. "Yeah, when I have the opportunity."

An anticipated crowd of about 5,000 is hoping that opportunity will come during Thursday night's season opener. If not, they'll just have to settle for a mega-matchup as coach Denise Taylor and the Starzz play host to the Los Angeles Sparks (14-14 last year) and their own giantess - Haixia Zheng of China. While six inches shorter than Dydek, Zheng, at 254 pounds, has a 30-pound weight advantage over the slender-built Pole.

Like Dydek, Zheng (who requested that the order of her name be Americanized to first-name first, rather than the traditional Chinese family name first) has an enchanting personality to accompany uncommon physical size.