HOUSTON Houston Comets point guard Kim Perrot, a feisty leader who guided the WNBA team to championships the last two years, died on Thursday of cancer. She was 32. The Comets said in a statement that Perrot, surrounded by family and friends, died peacefully at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. Perrot was diagnosed with lung and brain cancer in February and had been undergoing an alternative medical treatment in Tijuana, Mexico when her condition worsened.

She was flown back to Houston on Sunday where doctors tried unsuccessfully to save her life. Perrot, who graduated from southwestern Louisiana University in 1990, played for teams in Sweden, Germany, Israel and France before joining the Comets in the WNBA's maiden season in 1997. She was just 5-foot-5 (1.65 meters) and not expected to make the Comets, but quickly became the glue holding together a team of stars such as Cynthia Cooper and Sheryl Swoopes. With Perrot at the point, the Comets won the WNBA's first two championships.

Cooper, the league's most valuable player both years, gave full credit to her former teammate. "She willed us to two championships when no one even knew who she was," Cooper said in a recent television interview. "She really just showed us how to love the game of basketball and how to play it to the fullest every single night." (Reuter)