Last Sunday, the Valkyries easily beat the New York Liberty by a score of 76-67, while also celebrating the WNBA\u2019s 30th anniversary. It\u2019s something the league as a whole is promoting this season. As the WNBA’s first superstar, Lisa Leslie, told audiences earlier in June: “We look forward to 30 more years of greatness and an impact on this country.”<\/p>\n
The longevity of the WNBA is certainly historic, but Leslie\u2019s math here is slightly off. Because while this is indeed the 30th season of the WNBA, it was actually 29 years ago – on June 18, 1997 – that the New York Liberty and LA Sparks played in its inaugural game.<\/p>\n
If you really want to look 30 years back into the history of women’s basketball, you\u2019ll find that at the time, the WNBA existed – but in name only. In the summer of 1996, another pro women\u2019s league had just completed its first season: the American Basketball League, or ABL. <\/p>\n
The co-founders of the ABL were a scrappy trio of entrepreneurs from right here in the Bay Area. They were sick of waiting around for the NBA to start a women\u2019s league. And they were confident in their vision.<\/p>\n
“We feel like we have the greatest product in the world,” said co-founder Anne Cribbs in a 2000 KQED documentary about the ABL. Her league offered competitive salaries, included player input, and drafted the top talent of the time – including the majority of the 1996 Olympic gold medal team. But the ABL lacked something that the NBA had \u2014 corporate connections. <\/p>\n
“A lot of people just don\u2019t know the ABL exists because we\u2019re not on television,” said Cribbs in 2000. <\/p>\n
So when NBA commissioner David Stern announced his own women\u2019s league in April of 1996, the ABL was in trouble. “It\u2019s really tough when a competitor has the kind of resources and is able to influence decision-making,” explained Cribbs. <\/p>\n
In December of 1998, the ABL went bankrupt, and the WNBA declined to merge. But many of the league\u2019s best players became stars in the W. And to this day, the ABL\u2019s impact can\u2019t be overlooked. <\/p>\n
“We wouldn\u2019t be here if they didn’t built those leagues beforehand,” said Valkyries head coach Natalie Nakase on Sunday. “And again having that belief, and having that risk factor of \u2014 let\u2019s just try this, let\u2019s see what this is gonna look like.”<\/p>\n
Thirty years ago, that\u2019s exactly what the women of the ABL did.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last Sunday, the Valkyries easily beat the New York Liberty by a score of 76-67, while also celebrating…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":738357,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":["post-738356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=738356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/738357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=738356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=738356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=738356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}