What's next

Sporting News, The, June 30, 1997 by Earl Gustkey

A typo. It had to be a typo, right? Any southern Californian looking at a box score of the Women's NBA opener last Saturday between the New York Liberty and the Los Angeles Sparks and seeing the attendance listed as 14,284 would have thought that.

Fourteen thousand? For a women's game? In L.A.? No way.

"We were overwhelmed by (the crowd)," Sparks center Lisa Leslie says.

Anyone who follows U.S. women's basketball will tell you the college game has been well-attended lately in virtually every region of the country. Los Angeles hasn't been one of those regions.

USC women's basketball, even when it had Cheryl Miller, couldn't get attention in the city. A big crowd for Miller's two NCAA title teams was 2,000. The same went for UCLA, even when Ann Meyers played there. Students at her games sometimes numbered in the dozens.

So the turnout at the Forum was an encouraging sign for the WNBA, and for women's basketball in general, not to mention another victory for the NBA's marketing machine.

On a day in which the opening day crowds were a much bigger story than the results, the WNBA finally rolled out its oatmeal-and-orange ball and played its first three games. The Liberty beat the Sparks, 67-57. Later that night. 11,455 showed up in Cleveland's Gund Arena to see the Houston Comets pound the Rocker, 76-56. And in Salt Lake City, 8,915 saw the Sacramento Monarchs beat the Utah Starzz, 70-60.

Now, with the glitz of the opening week fading, it's time to get down to some serious basketball. Here are a few things hoops fans should know about the league:

Who's the best player?

It's Leslie, but give her another week or so for her talent to really show. Once teams were assembled, they had only three weeks to prepare for a 10-week season, so it may take a little more time for players to get adjusted to each other. In the Sparks' opener, New York's Rebecca Lobo, who has done some work in the weight room this year, actually outplayed Leslie for most of the game. But in time, Leslie, 6-5, will show the form she displayed in Atlanta last summer. She is a force inside and outside, her game has no soft spots and she's only 24, so she will only get better. Leslie is so well-rounded that Sparks coach Linda Sharp says she wouldn't hesitate to use her at point guard if needed.

Long shot bet for MVP: Houston's 6-3 Tina Thompson, the league's first draft pick, out of USC. Thompson's coaches will wind her up, and she will score 18-22 points per game and grab 12-14 rebounds. She will do it in the next Olympics, too. In her WNBA debut, she made her first six shots -- including two 3s -- and finished with 14 points.

Who is the most fun

to watch?

That's easy. The Phoenix Mercury's Michele Timms, a 5-7 guard from Australia. Because of her short blonde hair and almost maniacal intensity on the court, her friends call her "Tank Girl," after the lead character from the 1995 movie. Timms relentlessly covers the court, and she can light it up from the 3-point line.

How does the WNBA

compare with the ABL?

The WNBA has a few marquee names, but the ABL, which will begin its second season in October, has better players, for a simple reason: It pays triple what the WNBA pays.

Examples: Last season's two premier collegians, Stanford's Kate Starbird and Connecticut's Kara Wolters, signed three-year deals for salaries between $150,000 and $200,000. The top salary in the WNBA is $50,000, unless your name happens to be Lisa Leslie, Rebecca Lobo or Sheryl Swoopes (who was awaiting the birth of her first child and is expected to be out until August). They are getting the $50,000 plus WNBA personal services contracts that pay them much more.

The WNBA is the winner, however, in exposure. The league has a dynamite TV package for a startup league, with games on NBC, ESPN and Lifetime. The ABL is still only at the cable level, with ABL chief Gary Cavalli trying to cut a deal with ABC.

The WNBA wants to average a paid attendance of 4,000 per game league-wide. The ABL averaged 3,500 last year, playing in midsize arenas. But ticket sales are up on all fronts, ABL people say, after it signed 10 of the top 13 senior collegians drafted last spring.

The franchise in New England, they say, since the Wolters signing, already has sold more season tickets than it did last season, when it led the ABL in attendance (5,008 per game).

Eventually, the ABL will merge with the WNBA or be bought out. But it won't happen anytime soon.

There are a lot of

international players in

the league. Why?

Because it would be unconscionable for a U.S. league to deny foreign players.

Were it not for the pro women's leagues in Europe, South America, Australia and Asia, dozens of American women, such as Liberty forward Kym Hampton, would never have played pro ball at all.

Take guard Cynthia Cooper, who played on back-to-back USC national championship teams with Miller. Before joining Houston, she played 11 seasons in Spain and Italy. Her teammate, forward Janeth Arcain, has spent the last seven years playing in Brazil. Sacramento guard Ruthie Bolton-Holyfield has played six seasons in Sweden, Hungary and Italy.