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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 the greatest female basketball players in the world and is the longest-running and 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 6 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. The Western Conference teams play four teams in their conference 4 times each and play the remaining 2 teams 3 times apiece (22 games). They play teams from the opposite conference twice each (12 games). The Eastern Conference plays all 5 conference teams 4 times apiece (20 games) and the Western Conference teams 2 times (14 games). The four teams in each conference with the winningest 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 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 . RULES Rules are governed by standard Basketball Rules as defined by the NBA, with a few notable exceptions:
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 Ball s is used, including 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 Western Conference Former Teams
Future Teams Commissioner Donna Orender has stated that expansion could come as early as the 2007 offseason, meaning that new team(s) could play in the WNBA starting with the 2008 season. http://www.wnba.com/news/orender_call_070514.html Some Reports state that as many as 9 to 15 markets are interested in WNBA franchises. {Link without Title} While nothing has been confirmed, there have been some minor talks of interest in Albuquerque, Atlanta, Atlantic City, the Bay Area, Bentonville (Arkansas), Charlotte, Cleveland, Colorado, Fort Wayne, Kansas City, Knoxville, Memphis, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh. In addition, it seems the top candidates for 2008 expansion are Atlanta, Colorado, and Kansas City. Colorado currently has the $15 million needed to make the Colorado Chill a WNBA expansion team for the 2008 WNBA season. The Chill were a successful franchise in the now-defunct NWBL , winning the 2005 and 2006 NWBL championships. Although some details have yet to be worked out, it looks like the Colorado Chill will be in the WNBA for the 2008 season; it just hasn't been officially announced yet. Reports state the Chill will be headquartered in Fort Collins, CO and play at two home courts, one being the Budweiser Events Center in Loveland, CO and the other being Pepsi Center in Denver, where the Denver Nuggets play. 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. {Link without Title} 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 an or Australian women's basketball leagues during the WNBA off-season. 2007 Team by Team Attendance
+/- 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. {Link without Title} 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 , 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 2005, the first NBA coach with an NBA championship ring to join the WNBA is Paul Westhead who joined the Phoenix Mercury . WNBA Awards After the end of the regular season, these league awards are awarded to both coaches and players:
2007 Winners SEE ALSO
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