|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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 to August (North American Spring and Summer). Most WNBA teams play at the same venue as their NBA counterparts. Image:Wnba locations map.PNG WNBA team locations
OrganizationRegular SeasonThe league is divided into two conferen ces. As of 2006, 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 best winning records go on to compete in the WNBA playoffs during September. ROBYN REID IS SO COOL All-Star Game
In the season of 2006 a young lady by the name of Robyn Reid from Wingham Ontario was played in the "All Star" game in Goderich, Ontario. Scoring 22 points out of the 56 her team scored Reid led her team to the final win. She recived MVP of the game. Shes got a beautiful shot with the heart of a champion. Reid hopes to play ball for a good team someday in the city of Toronto Ontario. WNBA may ever be in this 15 year olds future. WNBA Playoffs SeriesThe top four 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
We Got NextOn 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 RelevancyIn 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. On May 23, 2000 the Houston Comets became the first WNBA team to be invited to the White House Rose Garden. ExpansionBy 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 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 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. 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. RulesRules 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 balls will be 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). Also beginning in 2006, the shot clock will be decreased from 30 to 24 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. TeamsThere 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 or the Minnesota Timberwolves and Minnesota Lynx. Eastern Conference
Western Conference
BusinessWNBA Presidents
FinanceSo far the WNBA has not mirrored the monetary success of the NBA, though it is targeting profitability in 2007. The NBA provides a multi-million dollar annual subsidy to cover operating losses. 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 $42,000. By comparison, $385,277 was the minimum salary of an NBA rookie.[1] WNBA rookies earned $30,000 per year. The maximum salary for a WNBA player in 2004 was $90,000. Many WNBA players choose to supplement their salaries by playing in European or Australian women's basketball leagues during the WNBA off-season. Media CoverageAs of 2006, WNBA games are televised throughout the U.S. by ABC, ESPN2 and NBA TV. Two women's-oriented networks, Lifetime and Oxygen, have also held broadcast rights at various times in league history. 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. Many teams have local telecasts, and all games are also on local radio and Sirius Satellite Radio. Champions
|
Sites |
Searched sites for "Women's National Basketball Association" |
|
No sites found. |
Sorry, no matching site records were found. |
Want your site listed here?
|
|
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
