The Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) is an organization governing a professional basketball league
for women in the United States. The league was formed in 1996 as the women's counterpart to the NBA. It features
some of the greatest female basketball players in the world and is the longest-running and arguably most successful women’s
professional team sports league in United States history. League play started in
1997 and the regular season is played from May to August with the playoffs starting in late August running into September.
Many WNBA teams have NBA counterparts and play in the same arena. The
Connecticut Sun are the only team to play without sharing the city with an
NBA team. The Chicago Sky are the
only other WNBA team that does not share an arena with an NBA team.
Also, the Chicago Sky, Connecticut Sun,
Houston Comets, Los Angeles Sparks,
Phoenix Mercury, and the Washington Mystics
are independently owned.
Organization
Regular Season
The league is divided into two conferences. As of 2007, there are 7 teams in the Eastern Conference and 7 teams in the Western Conference. Each team plays a 34-game regular season schedule, beginning
in May and ending in late August. Every team plays four teams in their conference 4 times each and play the remaining 2 teams 3
times apiece (22 games). Then they each play teams from the opposite conference twice (12 games), once on each's home court. The
four teams in each conference with the best Win/Loss records go on to compete in the WNBA Playoffs during September with the
WNBA Finals following later in the month.
All-Star Game
In the middle of July, regular play stops temporarily for the WNBA All-Star Game. The game is part of a weekend-long event,
held in a selected WNBA city each year. The actual game is played on the selected WNBA team's home court. The All-Star Game features star players from the Western Conference
facing star players from the Eastern Conference. During the season, fans get to vote for the players they would like to see start
the game. The 2006 All-Star Game was be the first game to feature custom uniforms that match the decade anniversary logo.
WNBA Playoffs Series
The top 4 teams in each conference compete in the WNBA Playoffs after the regular
season, usually in August and early September. Each conference has two conference semi-final series, putting the team with
the best record in each conference against the team with the 4th best record in the conference. The team with the 3rd best record
in each conference faces the team with the 2nd best record in the same conference. The winning teams from each of these series
face each other in the conference final, with the winning team in each conference facing the other team in the WNBA Finals.
First and second round playoff games series are best-of-three playoff games series.
The first game of the series is played on the home court of the team with the lower seed, while the last two games are played on
the home court of the higher ranked team. The WNBA Finals is a best-of-five playoff games series, held in September.
History
Officially approved by the NBA Board of Governors on April 24, 1996, the creation of the WNBA was first announced at a press
conference with Rebecca Lobo, Lisa Leslie and
Sheryl Swoopes in attendance. While not the first major women's professional basketball
league in the United States (a distinction held by the defunct WBL), the WNBA is the only league to receive full backing of the NBA. The WNBA
logo, "Logo Woman" paralleled the NBA logo and was selected out of 50 different designs.
We Got Next
On the heels of a much-publicized gold medal run by the 1996
USA Basketball Women's National Team at the 1996 Summer Olympic
Games, the WNBA began its first season on June 21, 1997 to little fanfare. The league began with eight teams; the first
WNBA game featured the New York Liberty facing the Los Angeles Sparks in Los Angeles. The game was
televised nationally in the United States on the NBC television network. At the start of the 1997
season, the WNBA had television deals in place with NBC (NBA rights holder), and the Walt Disney Company and Hearst Corporation joint
venture channels, ESPN and Lifetime Television
Network, respectively. Penny Toler was the first woman to score a point in the league.
The WNBA centered its marketing campaign, dubbed "We Got Next", around stars Rebecca Lobo, Lisa Leslie and Sheryl Swoopes. In
the league's first season, Leslie's Los Angeles Sparks underperformed and Swoopes sat out much of the season due to her
pregnancy. The WNBA's true star in 1997 was WNBA MVP Cynthia Cooper, Swoopes' teammate on the Houston
Comets. The Comets defeated Lobo's New York Liberty in the first WNBA Championship game.
The initial "We Got Next" advertisement would run following each NBA season until it was replaced with the "We Got Game"
campaign.
Struggle for Relevancy
In 1999, the league's chief competition, the American Basketball
League, folded. Many of the ABL's star players, including several Olympic gold medalists (like Nikki McCray and Dawn Staley) and a number of standout college
performers (including Kate Starbird and Jennifer
Rizzotti), then joined the rosters of WNBA teams and, in so doing, enhanced the overall quality of play in the league.
When a lockout resulted in an abbreviated NBA season, the WNBA saw faltering TV viewership.
Four teams were added after the 1997 season, bringing the number of teams in the league up to twelve. The 1999 season began
with a collective bargaining agreement between players and the league, marking the first collective bargaining agreement to be signed in the history of women's professional sports.
The WNBA made a huge step on May 23, 2000, when the Houston Comets became the first WNBA team to be invited to the
White House Rose Garden.
Expansion, Contraction, and Relocation
By the 2000 season, the WNBA had doubled in size. Two teams were added in 1998; the Detroit
Shock and the Washington Mystics. Then another two in 1999; the
Minnesota Lynx and the Orlando Miracle. And then
in the 2000 season four more were added to the league; the Indiana Fever, the
Seattle Storm, the Miami Sol, and the Portland Fire. Teams and the league were collectively owned by the NBA until 2002, when the NBA sold WNBA
teams either to their NBA counterparts in the same city or to a third party. This led to two teams moving; Utah to
San Antonio and Orlando to Connecticut. With the move the Sun became the first WNBA team
to be owned by a third party instead of an NBA franchise. It also led to
two teams folding, the Miami Sol and Portland Fire.
In addition to the restructuring of teams, players also caused changes in the league. In 2002, the WNBA Players Association
threatened to strike the next season if a new deal was not worked out between players and the league. The result was a delay in
the start of the 2003 preseason.
After the 2003 season, the Cleveland Rockers folded because the ownership of that
franchise was unwilling to operate the franchise.
The 2004 season proved to be the most competitive in league history, with almost all the teams in the league vying for playoff
spots. On October 21, 2004, in the wake of this success, Val Ackerman, the first WNBA
president, announced her resignation, effective February 1, 2005, citing the desire to spend more time with her family. Ackerman
later became president of USA Basketball.
On February 15, 2005, NBA Commissioner David Stern announced that Donna Orender, who had been serving as the
Senior Vice President of the PGA Tour and who had played for several teams in the now-defunct
Women's Pro Basketball League, would be Ackerman's successor as
of April 2005.
The WNBA awarded its first expansion team in several years to Chicago (later named the Sky) in February 2005. In the
off-season, a set of rule changes was approved that made the WNBA more like the NBA.
The 2007 season was the WNBA's 11th; in 2006 the league became the first team-oriented women's professional sports league to
exist for ten consecutive seasons. On the occasion of the tenth anniversary, the WNBA released its All-Decade Team, comprising the ten WNBA players deemed to have contributed, through on-court
play and off-court activities, the most to women's basketball during the period of the league's existence.
In December of 2006, the Charlotte Bobcats organization announced it would no
longer operate the Charlotte Sting. Soon after, the WNBA announced that the Charlotte
Sting would not operate for the upcoming season. A dispersal draft was held January 8,
2007, with all players except for unrestricted free agents Allison Feaster and Tammy Sutton-Brown available for
selection. Teams selected in inverse order of their 2006 records, with Chicago receiving the first pick and selecting
Monique Currie.
In October of 2007 the WNBA awarded another expansion franchise to Atlanta. Atlanta
businessman Ron Terwilliger will be the owner of the new team. The yet to be named team will receive its players in an expansion
draft and will be begin play in May of 2008.
Rules
Rules are governed by standard basketball rules as defined by the NBA, with a few notable
exceptions:
- The three-point line is 20 feet and 6.25 inches (6.25 m) from the middle of the basket, in line with FIBA regulations.
- The regulation WNBA ball is a minimum 28.5 inches (72.4 cm) in circumference, 1.00 inch (2.54 cm) smaller than the NBA ball.
As of 2004, this size is used for all senior-level women's competitions worldwide.
- There is no block/charge arc under the basket.
- Quarters are 10 minutes in duration instead of 12.
Starting with the 2006 WNBA season, all games are divided into four 10-minute quarters as opposed to the league's original two
20-minute halves of play, as to fit with international procedures (many WNBA players play in Europe or Australia in the Northern
Hemisphere autumn and winter). The NBA rule on jump balls is used for determining possession
for the second, third, and fourth periods (i.e. team winning tip is awarded the ball at the beginning of the fourth quarter; the
other team gets it to start the second and third periods). Under the two-half format both periods started with jump balls,
presumably to prevent teams from purposely losing the opening tip in order to get the ball first in the second half. Under the
four quarters this is not a problem because the team that wins the tip gets the ball first in the final period.
Also in 2006, the shot clock was decreased from 30 to 24 seconds and the league began
adopting NBA rules (14 second reset on any defensive foul if less than such time remains when a foul is called). The rule changes
signaled a move away from rules more similar to those of college basketball and
toward those that provide a more NBA-like game.
In 2007, the rules were changed again; the amount of time that a team can move the ball across the half-court line went from
10 to 8 seconds. In addition, a referee can grant time-outs to either a player or the coach, as in the NBA.
Teams
There have been a total of 17 teams in WNBA history. A total of 4 teams have folded since the league's inception: the
Cleveland Rockers, the Miami Sol, the
Charlotte Sting and the Portland Fire. Two other
teams, the Utah Starzz and the Orlando
Miracle moved to San Antonio (Silver Stars) and Uncasville, Connecticut (Sun) respectively. Most team names are also very similar to those of NBA
teams in the same market, such as the Washington Wizards and Washington Mystics, the Sacramento Kings and
Sacramento Monarchs, the Phoenix Suns and
Phoenix Mercury, and the Minnesota
Timberwolves and Minnesota Lynx.
Eastern Conference
| Team |
Colors |
Arena |
Founded |
| Atlanta |
TBD |
Philips Arena |
2008 |
| Chicago Sky |
Sky Blue, Gold |
UIC Pavilion |
2006 |
| Connecticut Sun |
Navy Blue, Red, Gold |
Mohegan Sun Arena |
1999 |
| Detroit Shock |
Blue, Red, Navy Blue |
The Palace of Auburn Hills |
1998 |
| Indiana Fever |
Navy Blue, Gold, Red |
Conseco Fieldhouse |
2000 |
| New York Liberty |
Blue, Liberty Green, Orange |
Madison Square Garden |
1997 |
| Washington Mystics |
Blue, Black, Bronze |
Verizon Center |
1998 |
Western Conference
| Team |
Colors |
Arena |
Founded |
| Houston Comets |
Red, Navy Blue, Silver |
Toyota Center |
1997 |
| Los Angeles Sparks |
Purple, Gold |
Staples Center |
1997 |
| Minnesota Lynx |
Blue, Green, Silver |
Target Center |
1999 |
| Phoenix Mercury |
Purple, Red, Chartreuse |
US Airways Center |
1997 |
| Sacramento Monarchs |
Purple, Red, Silver |
ARCO Arena |
1997 |
| San Antonio Silver Stars |
Black, Silver |
AT&T Center |
1997 |
| Seattle Storm |
Green, Red, Gold |
Key Arena |
2000 |
Former Teams
Future Teams
On October 16, 2007, the WNBA announced an expansion team
for Atlanta, that will begin play in 2008. The unnamed team will play in Philips Arena, but is not affiliated with the NBA's Atlanta Hawks [1].
Other cities may get teams at some point. Some reports state that as many as 9 to 15 markets are interested in WNBA
franchises. While nothing has been confirmed, there have been rumors of investor interest in starting new teams in
Albuquerque, Atlantic City,
the Bay Area, Bentonville,
Charlotte, Cleveland,
Colorado, Fort Wayne, Kansas
City, Knoxville, Memphis, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh.
In 2007, investors took steps to recreate the Colorado Chill, a previously successful
franchise in the now-defunct NWBL, as a WNBA expansion team, but in
September, Chill backers announced that they had not raised enough money to join the WNBA in 2008.
Business
WNBA Presidents
Finance
So far the WNBA has not mirrored the monetary success of the NBA, though it is targeting profitability in 2007. The NBA has
provided annual subsidies of approximately $12 million dollars to cover operating losses. The average attendance of WNBA games,
league-wide, is roughly half the average attendance of NBA games. As of the agreement signed in 2003, WNBA players who had up to
three years of experience were capped at $42,000. By comparison, $385,277 was the minimum salary of an NBA rookie. WNBA rookies earned
$30,000 per year. The maximum salary for a WNBA player in 2007 was $100,000. Many WNBA players choose to supplement their
salaries by playing in European or Australian women's basketball leagues during the WNBA off-season.
2007 Team by Team Attendance
| Team |
2007 Attendance Avg. |
Arena |
| Chicago Sky |
3,710+ |
UIC Pavilion |
| Connecticut Sun |
7,970+ |
Mohegan Sun Arena |
| Detroit Shock |
9,749+ |
The Palace of Auburn Hills |
| Houston Comets |
8,166+ |
Toyota Center |
| Indiana Fever |
7,227+ |
Conseco Fieldhouse |
| Los Angeles Sparks |
8,695+ |
STAPLES Center |
| Minnesota Lynx |
6,971+ |
Target Center |
| New York Liberty |
8,698- |
Madison Square Garden |
| Phoenix Mercury |
7,711+ |
US Airways Center |
| Sacramento Monarchs |
8,413- |
ARCO Arena |
| San Antonio Silver Stars |
7,569+ |
AT&T Center |
| Seattle Storm |
7,974- |
KeyArena |
| Washington Mystics |
7,788- |
Verizon Center |
+/- Increase or Decrease over last season
Media Coverage
As of 2007, WNBA games are televised throughout the U.S. by ABC, ESPN and NBA TV. In the early
years two women's-oriented networks, Lifetime and Oxygen, also broadcasted games including the first game of the WNBA. NBC showed games from 1997 to 2002 as part of its larger contract with the NBA before losing those rights to ABC.
WNBA games are also seen in multiple countries around the world.
Starting in the 2009 season, the league will enter a broadcast agreement with ABC/ESPN. The financial terms of the deal, which
runs through the 2016 season, were not disclosed.
Many teams have local telecasts, and all games are also on local radio and Sirius
Satellite Radio.
Champions
-
Players and coaches
-
A decade after the launch of the WNBA, in 2006 only 7 players remain from the original 1997
WNBA Draft: Tamecka Dixon, Vickie Johnson,
Lisa Leslie, Mwadi Mabika, Wendy Palmer-Daniel, Sheryl Swoopes and Tina Thompson. Only four of these players remain on the same teams that they were selected by in the
1997 WNBA Draft: Leslie and Mabika with the Los
Angeles Sparks, and Swoopes and Thompson with the Houston Comets.
Each April, the WNBA holds the WNBA Draft in the city that hosted NCAA Women's Final Four. Interestingly, the average height of a WNBA
player dropped from about 184 centimeters to 183.5 centimeters from the 2006 season to the 2007 season.
In 2007 Paul Westhead of the Phoenix Mercury
became the first person to earn both NBA and WNBA championship rings as a coach.
WNBA Awards
After the end of the regular season, these league awards are awarded to both coaches and players:
2007 Winners
See also
References
External links
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Either I would find an open shot or help create one for someone else.
