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 centered its marketing campaign, dubbed "We Got Next", around stars Rebecca Lobo, Lisa Leslie, and Sheryl Swoopes. Houston domination and league expansion (1997–2000) Penny Toler scored the league's first point. 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 Netwok. The game was televised nationally in the United States on the NBC television network.
The first WNBA game featured the New York Liberty facing the Los Angeles Sparks in Los Angeles. 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. The WNBA logo, "Logo Woman", paralleled the NBA logo and was selected out of 50 different designs.
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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 began with eight teams: the Charlotte Sting, Cleveland Rockers, Houston Comets, and New York Liberty in the Eastern Conference and the Los Angeles Sparks, Phoenix Mercury, Sacramento Monarchs, and Utah Starzz in the Western Conference. The new WNBA had to compete with the recently formed American Basketball League, another professional women's basketball league that began play in the fall of 1996 but would cease operation during its 1998–99 season. The creation of the WNBA was officially approved by the NBA Board of Governors on April 24, 1996, and announced at a press conference with Rebecca Lobo, Lisa Leslie, and Sheryl Swoopes in attendance. History League founded and play begins (1996–97) The Aces are owned by Mark Davis, who also owns the Las Vegas Raiders of the NFL. The Dream, Sky, Sun, Wings, Aces, Sparks, and Storm are all independently owned. The Atlanta Dream, Chicago Sky, Connecticut Sun, Dallas Wings, Las Vegas Aces, Seattle Storm, and Washington Mystics do not share an arena with a direct NBA counterpart, although four of the seven (the Dream, the Sky, the Wings, and the Mystics) share a market with an NBA counterpart, two (Mystics and Dream) play in NBA G League arenas, while the Storm shared an arena and market with an NBA team, the SuperSonics, at the time of its founding. The regular season is played from May to September, with the All Star game being played midway through the season in July (except in Olympic years) and the WNBA Finals at the end of September until the beginning of October.įive WNBA teams have direct NBA counterparts and normally play in the same arena: Indiana Fever, Los Angeles Sparks, Minnesota Lynx, New York Liberty, and Phoenix Mercury.
The league was founded on April 22, 1996, as the women's counterpart to the National Basketball Association (NBA), and league play started in 1997. It is composed of 12 teams, all based in the United States. The Women's National Basketball Association ( WNBA) is an American professional basketball league.
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