Women's National Basketball Association

The Women's National Basketball Association or WNBA is an organization governing a professional basketball league for women in the United States. The WNBA was formed in 1996 as the women's counterpart to the National Basketball Association, and league play began in 1997. The regular WNBA season is May-August (North American Spring and Summer). Most WNBA teams play at the same venue as their NBA counterparts.

Organization

Regular season

The league is divided into two conferences. As of 2006, 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 (after the NBA regular season mostly during the North American winter) and ending in August. The four teams in each conference with the best winning records go on to compete in the WNBA playoffs during September.

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 allstar game would be the first game to feature custom uniforms that match the decade anniversary logo.

WNBA Playoffs Series

The top four teams in each conference compete in the WNBA Playoffs, held in September, after the regular season. Each conference has two conference semi-final series, pitting 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.

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 world's most competitive professional basketball league. 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 in June 1997 to much 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.

Milestones

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 began coming into its own.

Four teams were added after the 1997 season, bringing the number of teams in the league up to twelve. Pre-season drafting of University of Tennessee Lady Volunteers star Chamique Holdsclaw signaled a new youth movement in a league traditionally comprised of international and college veterans.

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.

On May 23, 2000 the Houston Comets became the first WNBA team to be invited to the White House Rose Garden. Bill Clinton became the first president to celebrate a WNBA championship.

Expansion

By the 2000 season, the WNBA had doubled in size. Two more teams were added in 1998, another two in 1999 and four more in 2000. 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 and two teams folding before the 2003 season began. The Cleveland Rockers folded after the 2003 season.

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.

In 2003, the Orlando Miracle relocated and became the Connecticut Sun. It was the first franchise owned by a party other than the NBA or one of the NBA team owners.

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 Basketball League, would be Ackerman's successor as of April 2005.

The WNBA awarded its first expansion team in several years, to Chicago, Illinois (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 2006 season was the WNBA's tenth; 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.

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.

In the 2006 WNBA season, all games will be 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 winter). The NBA rule on jump balls will be used, including determining possession for the second, third, and fourth periods.

Also beginning in 2006, the shot clock will be decreased to 24 seconds from 30 seconds and will adopt 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.

Current teams

There have been a total of 17 teams in WNBA history. A total of 3 teams have folded since the league's inception: the Cleveland Rockers, the Miami Sol 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.

Eastern Conference

Team	Colors	Arena	Founded
New York Liberty	Blue, Black, Orange	Madison Square Garden	1997
Chicago Sky	Light Blue, Yellow	UIC Pavilion	2006
Connecticut Sun	Orange, Blue, Gold	Mohegan Sun Arena	1999
Detroit Shock	Blue, Red	The Palace of Auburn Hills	1998
Indiana Fever	Navy Blue, Yellow, Gray	Conseco Fieldhouse	2000
Charlotte Sting	Orange, Blue, Black	Charlotte Bobcats Arena	1997
Washington Mystics	Blue, Black, Bronze	Verizon Center	1998

Western Conference

Team	Colors	Arena	Founded
Minnesota Lynx	Blue, Black, Silver, Green	Target Center	1999
Seattle Storm	Green, Yellow	KeyArena	2000
Houston Comets	Red, Silver	Toyota Center	1997
San Antonio Silver Stars	Black, Silver	AT&T Center	1997
Los Angeles Sparks	Purple, Yellow	Staples Center	1997
Phoenix Mercury	Purple, Orange, Gray, Black	US Airways Center	1997
Sacramento Monarchs	Purple, Black, Silver	ARCO Arena	1997

Business

WNBA Presidents

Val Ackerman ........... 1997-2005
Donna Orender .......... 2005-Present

Finance

So far the WNBA has not mirrored the monetary success of the NBA, though it is targeting profitability in 2007. The WNBA's efforts to find committed American professional women's basketball fans finally gave at least one pay-off in 2004. With official online ticket sales facilitated through the WNBA website, all three 2004 WNBA Finals games sold out. The average attendance of WNBA games, league-wide, is roughly one 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 States dollar|$" target="_blank" >^*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 2004 was $90,000. Many WNBA players have to supplement their salaries by playing in European women's basketball leagues during the WNBA off-season.

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: Lisa Leslie (Los Angeles Sparks), Mwadi Mabika (Los Angeles Sparks), Sheryl Swoopes (Houston Comets), and Tina Thompson (Houston Comets).

Each year, the WNBA holds the WNBA Draft to draft new talent to WNBA teams.

In 2006, the first NBA coach with a NBA championship ring to join the WNBA is Paul Westhead who joined the Phoenix Mercury.

Awards

After the end of the regular season, the league awards various awards to both coaches and players:

References

External links

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