Arvia: In Joanne McCarthy’s league — Lingerie Basketball League — it’s skins vs. skins

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Joanne McCarthy inbounds the ball during a Lingerie Basketball League game in Los Angeles. | Supplied photo

Updated: January 23, 2012 3:20AM

Joanne McCarthy gives good quote. So good, it is easy to forget the decorum of the standard fluff interview and suggest things a gentleman might not otherwise suggest when chatting up a representative of the Lingerie Basketball League.

But again, this is Joanne McCarthy, of the West Elsdon McCarthys. Made by St. Turibius grade school and Mother McAuley High School. Made infamous by sister Jenny’s turn, in a McAuley-esque schoolgirl skirt, as a Playboy Playmate of the Year; made fabulous by Jenny’s rise to A-list celebrity.

She can hang. She laughs like a dude. Set records playing hoops at UIC. Played a year in the old ABL for the Chicago Condors.

And, um, this is where the interview could have gone off the rails: It is suggested to her she didn’t really have a lingerie-style game.

Pause. Momentary anxiety. Dude laugh. Relief.

“I still don’t,” she said last week by telephone from Los Angeles. “I am really aggressive.”

And honest.

“I didn’t care what I had to wear to play again.”

What McCarthy wears playing for the Beauties in the four-team LBL isn’t much. Something akin to a bikini top, a garter belt, not so much stockings as laces criss-crossing from thighs to high-tops.

“I like that it’s different to play not in a sports bra,” she said. “But I could use a little more help in that department, keeping things down.”

This is where the prudes get in a snit. McCarthy doesn’t give a snit.

“I don’t feel like this league exploits women at all,” she said, noting the league president is female. “It’s fun. It’s sexy.

“I’ll probably get in trouble for saying this, but if uniforms in the WNBA were a little sexier, maybe more men would come to the games.”

Ah, how much trouble can she get in? McCarthy isn’t in this to get rich. She’s a Hollywood makeup artist — having worked on 10 of the 12 seasons of “Dancing With the Stars” — and owns her own business — Brown Buns Airbrush Spray Tans.

She’s just in this to play.

“Basketball is my first love,” she said. “Even before boys.”

So, at 36, she came back to her love after not playing since that 1998 season with the Condors, because she heard about tryouts for the LBL.

“I bought shoes the night before,” she said. “I didn’t even stretch before I went out there.”

Now, she’s a charter member, the oldest player in the league — which, she said, “consists of models who have played basketball before and athletes. You can definitely tell the difference.”

The season lasts seven weeks, then playoffs. By then, no doubt more than a few models will have learned the difference between lingerie basketball and basketball, McCarthy style.

Paging Tommy Bartlett

If you’re looking to squeeze the last breath out of summer, head out to Waters Edge Estates in Wilmington through Saturday for the USA Water Ski National Championships. Action begins at 7 a.m. daily.

You’ll even be able to root for a few locals, swinging in from various branches of the Jacobi family tree.

Dr. Jean Paul and Lillian Jacobi, of Olympia Fields, began competing in the 1950s. They’ll be watching as six relatives hit the water.

Their daughter, 57-year-old Janet Jacobi Madden, of Homer Glen, qualified after winning her age group in the Midwest Regional. Their son, Homewood’s Jonathon Jacobi, will compete in the jump event. Janet’s daughter, Christine, is qualified in three events: jump, tricks and slalom.

Best of all, cousins Paul Ogren (23, of Homewood), Sean Jacobi (20, Homewood) and Andy Madden (22, Homer Glen) will all be competing in the men’s age 18 to 24 category, after finishing first, third and fourth, respectively, in the jump at the Midwest Regional in Center City, Minn. Ogren’s winning jump of 176 topped his cousins by 12 and 16 feet.

“Paul has a chance to win it,” Janet Madden said. “And I think my brother (John) can win his division.”