Chubby Checker is still doing the twist. Wayne Newton croons "Danke Schoen'' at the Stardust in Vegas. Helen Wagner is in her 48th year playing "Nancy'' on "As the World Turns.''

	Swin Cash and Detroit are 16-14 since Bill Laimbeer took over on June 19, 2002.

But ... people sometimes do things that surprise you.

When Fannie Flagg was yucking it up on "Candid Camera'' or "Match Game,'' you weren't thinking she'd one day author a wonderfully funny and poignant lesbian love story set in 1930s rural Alabama, right?

When Donna Rice was caught on film snuggling with soon-to-be-former presidential candidate Gary Hart, no one pegged her as a future leading lobbyist against child porn, did they?

And the other day, I heard somebody say, "OK, when did Trapper John (Wayne Rogers of "M*A*S*H'') become a financial expert?''

Now we have Bill Laimbeer, once the big, smirking bad guy for the Detroit Pistons, turned into the Detroit Shock's women's basketball coach and director of player personnel. And the guy who helped stabilize a franchise that some figured was on the flat-line list or close to it.

You wonder how this happens, and then you realize two things: Some people really do grow and often we just don't see the entirety of a person when he or she is in a celebrity spotlight.

For Laimbeer, it's both. How much did he know or care about women's hoops when he was playing in college at Notre Dame from 1976-79 or in the NBA from '79 to '93?

Zilch. For Laimbeer, the portal to the "other side'' of sports opened like it does for many men: when he had a daughter. As she grew, Laimbeer developed an interest in what the sport offered for her and other girls.

"That didn't come into my life until my daughter turned 8 or 9 years old,'' he said of Keriann, who's 16 now. "About five years ago, it really dawned on me that the competition at the younger ranks in girls basketball was exploding. The talent is phenomenal. You could really see what great potential there was.''

	“	I'm very much enjoying myself. The women listen very well to me, respect what I have accomplished. I treat them as professional basketball players and I know how you should manage them. I was a very smart player and we (the Pistons) were a smart team, we were self-motivated. The coach was there to guide us through the problems, and that's how I'm trying to do it now.”
		— Detroit coach Bill Laimbeer

Having a daughter doesn't affect all men this way, of course. But for those whom it does, we often get a person who has a great deal to offer women's athletics.

In the case of Laimbeer, it was someone who had both basketball and community credibility. And seems to have earned it even among a more skeptical part of the community: longtime women's hoops fans. There is still a wariness among them of the "NBA guys'' getting involved in the women's game.

But it has worked in Los Angeles with Michael Cooper and New York with Richie Adubato. And Detroit is leading the East at 7-1 (eventually, the Shock will play as many games as everybody else) and the players are sold on Laimbeer.

One of his starters, guard/forward Deanna Nolan, grew up in nearby Flint, Mich., and at least had an awareness of Laimbeer's Pistons teams. Not enough, though, to have any preconceived ideas of what he'd be like as a coach.

"He tells you how it is,'' Nolan said.

Which means he has told Nolan the same thing he tells observers about her: "Her game right now is approaching the peak before she really turns it on. With her natural ability, she has made a conscious effort to perform every night. You're seeing the results of it. If she decides at some point to be the best player in the league, you'll see a whole other gear.''

What's riveting about that for Shock fans, of course, is that as Nolan figures out how good she is, Swin Cash, Ruth Riley and Cheryl Ford will be doing the same thing.

That Cash would bring her maturity, versatility and winning mindset to the pros was a given.

"Her best trait is her leadership,'' Laimbeer said of Cash. "In practice, she's extremely competitive. I wish she would slow down a little. She gets mad when she loses a shooting game, just a dumb thing in the middle of practice.''

Probably because at Connecticut, Cash got the idea that everything in practice really mattered.

Riley and Ford so obviously improved each year they were in college that their continued growth in the WNBA seemed pretty sure, too. Laimbeer chuckled that within Riley's first 30 minutes of practice with the Shock, who got her in the dispersal draft, "Everybody's eyes got wide, like, 'Look what we have here; here's our center.' ''

Again, it's fascinating how things can turn out. Imagine going back to 1979 and telling Laimbeer, who helped take Notre Dame to the Final Four that year, that one day he'd be coaching a center who had led the Fighting Irish to a national championship in 2001.

By the way, you'd add, the center's name is ... Ruth. Think he'd buy that?

Now, you're saying, "Wait a second, you lost me with that stupid, 'Imagine going back to 1979 ...' '' OK, you can't do that ... probably ... but the point is the same. Neither fans nor Laimbeer himself might have envisioned one day there would be a WNBA or that he'd be coaching in it, but the potential was always there.

Asked if he thinks people have seen a different side to him now than they saw when he was a player, Laimbeer said, "If you were inside my team then, I think you'd say I'm not much different now than I was back then. I'm maybe a little less intense. Now I have more responsibility to represent the organization.

"I'm very much enjoying myself. The women listen very well to me, respect what I have accomplished. I treat them as professional basketball players and I know how you should manage them. I was a very smart player and we (the Pistons) were a smart team, we were self-motivated. The coach was there to guide us through the problems, and that's how I'm trying to do it now.''

Mechelle Voepel of the Kansas City Star is a regular contributor to ESPN.com. She can be reached at mvoepel@kcstar.com.