WHO’S HAUTE? THURSDAYS: CAPPIE PONDEXTER

Cappie Pondexter is everything a team could want in a player; she is ambitious, she is fierce and she is a true leader. She shined at Rutgers University where she was named the 2006 Big East Player of the Year. Following her college success, Cappie was a first round draft pick by the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury and was named an All-Star during her rookie year. At 27 years old, and only 5 years in the WNBA under her belt, her list of accomplishments is endless. Cappie is a three-time WNBA All-Star, a two-time WNBA champion, a Finals MVP and an Olympic champion. And with the 2010 season underway she is now on a bigger stage, playing for the New York Liberty.

Cappie is not only taking her game to NY this season, but she’s using the move to help her new fashion business. The basketball star co-founded a style consulting firm called 4 Season Style Management. The NY-based company provides private fashion and image advice to professional athletes and other high-profile clients.

Cappie Pondexter is Who’s Haute.

Cappie Pondexter is reclining in a chair just off the Garden court, as relaxed as a sunbather in one of those Co r o n a beer ads. If she feels any pressure about being The Self-Anointed One, it does not show.

After teaming with Diana Taurasi to help the Phoenix Mercury win the 2009 league championship, Pondexter, who starred at Rutgers, demanded a trade to the metropolitan area.

“Yes, I demanded it, I’m just being honest,” Pondexter said of the three-way trade that cost the Liberty Shameka Christon and Cathrine Kraayeveld.

“It was nothing negative about Phoenix,” Pondexter added. “It was not about me not liking Diana Taurasi or being overshadowed by her - we’re great friends, we have been since high school. For me, I just realize basketball is not going to be here forever and I realize this is the best place for me.”

Pondexter could be the best thing that ever happened to the Liberty - and vice versa - if she can lead them to their first WNBA title.

For the first time in 14 seasons, the Liberty finally have a superstar, finally can get away from that laudablebut-boring style of Velcro defense, share-the-ball offense, ugly game decided in the final few seconds.

“We’re going to be a lot more fun to watch this season,” general manager Carol Blazejowski said.

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Speaking to the press during media day earlier this week, Cappie Pondexter was all smiles, thrilled over playing for the Liberty in New York this season.

And the Liberty couldn’t be happier to have Pondexter on board for an opportunity to help bring a WNBA title to the world’s greatest basketball city for the first time in franchise history.

Pondexter brings two rings, an Olympic gold medal and All-Star experience to a talented Liberty squad that fell short of a postseason berth following an Eastern Conference Finals appearance in 2008. She won’t guarantee a championship in her first season with the team, but winning is certainly her No. 1 priority.

“I don’t want to put us out there and say, ‘Yeah, we’re going to win a championship this year,’” Pondexter said. “No, we’re going to work hard and we’re going to compete for it. I can say that.”

Pondexter will have a very solid supporting cast around her as she hopes to become a team leader on and off the court this season. The Liberty had perhaps one of the most impressive offseason’s in WNBA history, acquiring Pondexter along with All-Stars and former champs Nicole Powell and Taj McWilliams-Franklin. New York also drafted Kalana Greene, who helped lead UConn to a National championship last month.

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Cappie Pondexter wants it to be known: she is not the same person she was when she played college ball at Rutgers.

The point guard who took the Madison Square Garden floor Sunday afternoon in her debut with the WNBA’s New York Liberty isn’t the one who used to be harangued by her college coach for being “too nice” to take over games, or the one who once avoided telling her teammates what to do lest she might be considered arrogant.

Basketball is still clearly first, second and third in Ms. Pondexter’s life. She has two WNBA titles and three All-Star appearances to her name. She’s won another two titles in the Russian Superleague where she plays in the off-seasons. She’s widely considered to be the best guard in the women’s game.

But the player who drove and pointed, directed her teammates and scored 22 points during the Liberty’s 85-82 win over the Chicago Sky Sunday hasn’t just come to the sports world’s biggest stage for a chance to show off her newfound assertiveness. The decision is also a practical one: She has ambitions for her life after basketball, too.

Last year, Ms. Pondexter and a friend launched 4 Season Style Management, a New York-based firm that offers private fashion and image coaching and consulting for professional athletes and other high-profile individuals.

Ms. Pondexter is not a household name in the way Los Angeles star Candace Parker is. Moving to New York from the relative obscurity of Phoenix should bring her more endorsement opportunities and a bigger pool of potential leads and clients for her burgeoning company.

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Surely Cappie Pondexter has learned by now not to listen to the media or the fans or the bloggers. The only advice she needs to heed is her teammates’ and her coach’s. So hear this, Cappie: “When we were rolling and things were going, she thought she could give other people opportunities,” Liberty coach Anne Donovan said. “That’s not what I want from her. I want her to be aggressive all the time.”

As important as it was for the retooled Liberty to open the season with a win, Pondexter, the prize pickup of the off-season, must get the message that this is her team and her season.

Pondexter scored a team-high 22 points to go along with eight assists and five rebounds to lead the Liberty to an 85-82 win over the Chicago Sky at the Garden. But the Liberty won’t get to the WNBA finals with the former Rutgers star trying to be their distributor.

Donovan reminded Pondexter of that during a third-quarter timeout. Pondexter had helped the Liberty surge to a 68-52 lead by being aggressive offensively. With the game seemingly in hand, she got passive, and Chicago tied the score at 76-76 with three minutes left.

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TARRYTOWN, N.Y. — This could be five years ago on the Busch campus at Rutgers. Instead it is a few days ago, at the Madison Square Garden Training Center.

Cappie Pondexter is still the leader, Kia Vaughn remains the youngster, and Essence Carson is as consistent as her dry humor.

They are reunited now as professional basketball players, and Sunday at 4 p.m. they will wear the same uniform for the first time since March 2006.

That’s when they open the WNBA season at Madison Square Garden for the New York Liberty against the Chicago Sky.

But a few days before the opener they are playful college buddies, talking careers, talking Rutgers, and laughing with and at each other.

“We understand each other,” Vaughn says. “We’re all the same breed.”

The breed is a group of adopted daughters of Rutgers coach C. Vivian Stringer. Or, as Liberty coach Anne Donovan calls them, “The Trifecta.”

“The consistent theme with all three kids is they are so intelligent, so bright, such good team players, and an incredible work ethic,” Donovan says. “It all goes back to Coach Stringer.

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Jesse D. Garrabrant/NBAE via Getty Images Cappie Pondexter has averaged 19.2 points per game over four WNBA seasons.

When you’ve won two WNBA championships in the last three years, it might seem easy to conjure up a successful formula, which is what Cappie Pondexter has been doing her entire professional career. Despite four trips to the Finals, a title has eluded the Liberty since the league’s inception in 1997, but the addition of Pondexter at guard in March gives the team a shot.

“I want to make it happen for them,” Pondexter said. “Our franchise works hard to make it happen.”

Pondexter will be one of three former Rutgers players taking the court for the Liberty in the team’s season opener against Chicago on Sunday. Pondexter actually recruited Essence Carson and Kia Vaughn, the other Scarlet Knights who will be playing for the Liberty this season, to Rutgers. This reunion wasn’t planned, however.

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Cappie Pondexter and Taj McWilliams-Franklin got the new-look Liberty off to a winning start Sunday.

Pondexter, acquired in a trade, scored 22 points and McWilliams-Franklin, a free-agent signing, had 20 as the Liberty beat the Chicago Sky, 85-82, at Madison Square Garden.

The Liberty used an 18-0 run in the third quarter to take a 16-point lead but allowed the Sky to tie the score late in the fourth.

Pondexter put the Liberty ahead for good with a jumper, and McWilliams-Franklin blocked a potential tying layup by Sylvia Fowles with 1 minute 7 seconds left.

“When we have a 16-point lead, you gotta push your foot on their throat, and we didn’t do it,” Pondexter said.

Cappie Pondexter is mesmerizing, both on and off the court.

If you don’t believe this, you should have seen the way the Liberty’s new All-Star guard tied up pedestrian traffic during a photo shoot on the corner of Seventh Avenue and 33rd Street outside Madison Square Garden last week. Wearing black harem shorts, a white blazer and 4-inch black platform heels, the 5-9 Pondexter strutted down…

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