Sky the limit for Parker?

Just as the Bulls have faced the Kobe Bryant question, the Chicago Sky could face the Candace Parker question.

How much is too much for one of the best players in the world?

Bryant has made no secret that he wouldn't mind leaving the Los Angeles Lakers, and that Chicago is one of his target destinations.

Great. But what will that cost? How much of his team would Bulls general manager John Paxson be forced to liquidate in order to add Bryant to the mix?

Is one player worth mortgaging the house?

It's possible Bryant might be, despite the fact that he has put some mileage on his wheels and isn't getting any younger. Ditto for Candace Parker, despite the fact that she has a history of injury to her knee.

Both still are once-in-a-lifetime acquisitions.

An All-American forward at Tennessee, Parker is widely considered one of the best players in the history of the women's game.

She will be the No. 1 pick in April's WNBA draft -- unless she elects to stay at Tennessee for the 2008-09 season. That would be her fifth year of eligibility, earned when she sat out her freshman year with an injury.

But chances are she'll leave. And that gives the Los Angeles Sparks, winners of the No. 1 pick in this week's WNBA draft lottery, all kinds of leverage.

The Sky received the No. 2 pick, and would love to have Parker. The question is, how far would the Sky be willing to go to make a Parker deal worth it for the Sparks?

Would no one on the current roster, including all-star forward Candice Dupree, be off limits?

"It's so early right now, and I have to be a little diplomatic with this one because I really like my players. I like my team," said Bo Overton, Sky coach and general manager. "But we're going to do a lot of things to get in line to get that (No. 1) pick. We want to do what's best for this franchise and this city.

"(Parker) is that good of a player."

But that's not all Parker could be.

In Chicago, she could be a marketing gold mine.

Parker is from here, of course, a state champion at Naperville Central who took girls basketball in Illinois to a different level when she started dunking in games.

The Sky, two years into its existence, needs more fans. Desperately. Parker could deliver like a … well, slam dunk.

"I don't go anywhere in this city where somebody doesn't ask me about her," Sky president Margaret Stender said of Parker. "It's quite extraordinary that she has the visibility that she does.

"With a player like her, and being in the city we're in, where she has so many ties, you have to at least explore what it's going to take to get her here and what the possibilities are."

And there are possibilities, of course, thanks to a little bit of luck.

The Sky wasn't lucky enough to get the No. 1 pick in the draft, but they did leapfrog a few positions.

With only 97 of the 1,000 lottery balls, the Sky's chances of a high pick were less than 10 percent. Technically, the team should have wound up with about the fifth pick.

In getting the second pick, the Sky got not only a pleasant surprise but a much more legitimate bargaining chip.

"If we couldn't get 1, we're happy where we are at 2," Stender said. "Because we have the second pick, we have tools. We have great athletes already on our team, and (the No. 2 pick) gives us even more tools.

"So it's not like (the Los Angeles Sparks) aren't going to take our call. Us having the No. 2 pick makes that conversation a much more level playing field."

But even if that conversation goes nowhere, the Sky will still get a franchise player. The 2008 draft will be one of the deepest in WNBA history.

The No. 2 pick likely will be the long, athletic Sylvia Fowles from LSU. She is a 6-foot-6 center who can bang in the post and also dunk. Like Parker, with her size and athletic ability, Fowles is a rare commodity, the kind of player who doesn't come around very often.

"She's got great size and is such a presence inside," Overton said of Fowles. "She's a legit 6-6. She's big, she's long. She can dunk a ball easily. She defends, she can run. You see her out there moving and she looks like she's 5-11.

"I was crossing my fingers and my feet and I had my lucky golf marker with me during the lottery. But when we didn't get the No. 1 pick and we got No. 2, I felt real good."

Overton says he's excited with about five or six players who will be in the draft.

"Those top players are all going to be excellent, automatic starters," Overton said. "All of them would help us. And I think we still have a chance if Candace comes out. We've got some really good assets to put us in line for something like that to happen. Either way, we're going to get a very good player."

Watch it: Sky guard Armintie Price, the 2007 WNBA rookie of the year, will be featured on TLC's "Home Made Simple" to make her in-season apartment in Chicago feel more like home. The episode will air today at 11 a.m.

The show's crew worked on some projects around the apartment and showed Price how to make simple, healthy meals and how to organize her belongings.

Her helpers were Sky guard Stephanie Raymond and strength and conditioning coach Ann Crosby.