Off and Running : ABL Fired First Shot in Women's Pro Basketball Wars, but Will WNBA Have It Jumping Through Hoops?

By EARL GUSTKEY

Dec. 18, 1996 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

In a 1993 interview, during the Women’s Final Four in Atlanta, when Sheryl Swoopes and Texas Tech had sold out the Omni, NBA Commissioner David Stern was asked about women’s professional basketball.

“I think a women’s pro league is an idea that should not be scoffed at,” he said. “In fact, I have some staff in Atlanta now, studying those crowds.”

Fast forward to September 1995.

At a news conference in Palo Alto, nine members of the 1996 U.S. women’s Olympic team announced they had signed letters of intent to play in the new American Basketball League, beginning in October 1996.

The abrupt announcement by the ABL forced the NBA, which had been a major sponsor of the women’s gold-medal Olympic team, into a hurry-up role to get its own league started, a role it’s still playing. The Women’s National Basketball Assn. begins its first season in June.

Most of the available premier U.S. players are already playing in the ABL. About two-thirds are under one-year contracts.

The Portland Power, for example, is a 3-13 team with such players as guard Michelle Marciniak of Tennessee, last season’s Final Four MVP; Tanja Kostic, one of the nation’s premier offensive players at Oregon State last year; Katy Steding, a 1990 Stanford All-American and ’96 Olympian; Lisa Harrison, a 1993 Tennessee All-American, and Jennifer Jacoby of Purdue, the Big Ten’s best point guard in 1995.

Portland also has UCLA’s Natalie Williams. She was a two-time first-team All-American and the greatest rebounder in Pacific 10 history. She was the ABL’s leading rebounder by a margin of six per game when she went out for several weeks in November because of a knee injury. In her absence, the Power was 0-8.

The major question facing the ABL now is what happens after this inaugural season?

How many of its players will re-up for 1997?

What happens when ABL players see in the off-season the huge advantage the WNBA will have in TV exposure--NBC, ESPN, Lifetime? The ABL’s televised games are lost in the vast jumble of cable sports programming.

And can the ABL prevail against the WNBA next spring, when this year’s crop of college seniors becomes available? Namely, Stanford’s Kate Starbird, USC’s Tina Thompson, Georgia’s La’Keshia Frett and Alabama’s Shalonda Enis.

And here’s a major question for the WNBA: Will basketball fans pay to see summer basketball?

For now, the eight-team ABL is off to a running start, well over its preseason attendance goal of 3,000 paid per game.

The ABL--as of Tuesday--is averaging 3,504 paid per game. The New England Blizzard is the runaway leader at 5,319, playing in Hartford, Conn., and Springfield, Mass.

The best team in the league, the Columbus Quest (14-1), is by far the worst draw, at 2,220.

The ABL is a cheap ticket, of course. The range at San Jose Laser games, for example, is $35 courtside down to $5.

The Olympic team players in the ABL make a league-high $125,000. The minimum is $40,000. The WNBA won’t confirm it, but sources put the WNBA pay range at $20,000 to $50,000.

“The WNBA is selling their players on the fact the better TV exposure in the WNBA [and subsequent marketing opportunities] will more than make up for the salary differences,” longtime women’s player agent Bruce Levy said.

The ABL has showed a market exists for women’s pro basketball.

“We’ve proven our point, that there is a market for women’s pro basketball during the men’s season,” ABL Executive Director Gary Cavalli said. “Now our challenge is to build on what we have.”

From the start, ABL strategy has been three-pronged:

--Sign as many premier U.S. players as possible.

--Keep the rent down by playing in small to mid-size venues.

--Run everything at the league level.

The only owner in the ABL is the league office, in Palo Alto. All paychecks (for players, coaches, officials, etc.) flow from there. The first team owners will be whoever buys two expansion teams for next season.

The tab is said to be $3 million, and two frequently mentioned sites are Tennessee and Texas. Irvine and Long Beach are considered outside shots.

The ABL is avoiding NBA-size arenas. At San Jose, for example, the Lasers play in the 4,600-seat San Jose State Events Center rather than the city’s downtown 19,000-seat arena. The WNBA will play in NBA arenas.

The ABL is playing a 40-game season, ending in early March, the WNBA a 28-game schedule ending Aug. 30. Both leagues will play a single championship game.

Already, the ABL has a controversy. It was clear early in the season that ABL officials were allowing some aggressive play. It is now seen as a risky move for a league with 10-player rosters.

Olympian Jennifer Azzi of San Jose was knocked out of bounds in a November game at Seattle on a fastbreak, landed on her right shoulder and required surgery. She’s out for the season.

“No one likes games becoming free-throw contests, but there’s also a point where you just have to start blowing the whistle,” she said.

Then, in Sunday’s all-star game at Hartford, Clarissa Davis-Wrightsil of New England, held on a rebound play by Seattle’s Cindy Brown, delivered a straight right hand to Brown’s cheek. Brown crashed to the floor with a concussion and temporary amnesia.

Davis-Wrightsil was fined $1,500 and suspended for two games.

Cavalli is one of four ABL founders. Eighteen months ago, he and 1960 Olympic swimmer Anne Cribbs were running a Palo Alto sports public-relations firm. A mutual friend was onetime Hewlett-Packard executive Steve Hams. All have basketball-playing daughters.

They began talking about a possible women’s league, and mentioned it to Olympian Teresa Edwards, who told them an Atlanta businessman, Bobby Johnson, wanted to do the same.

The parties met in Atlanta, and the ABL was actually born at the Atlanta Marriott in June of 1995.

Their first step was to sign 1996 Olympic team members and employ stealth, so as not to tip off the NBA. Seven Olympians are playing in the league, though Lisa Leslie, Swoopes and Rebecca Lobo have signed with the WNBA.

“We all agreed the women’s Olympic team was going to be a huge story at the Olympics, and we were right,” Cavalli said. “For us, it couldn’t have worked out more perfectly. And we think those Olympics crowds [32,000-plus] confirmed a lot for us too.”

For the ABL’s older players, it has been a grand homecoming.

The story of Debbie Black, a 5-foot-3 guard from St. Joseph’s, is typical. When she got out of college in 1988, it seemed that every country in the world had women’s pro basketball except her own.

She wound up in Tasmania, playing for the Australian pro league for seven years and working off-seasons as an energy consultant, for $55,000 per year. Her basketball salary: $20,000.

She has become an ABL star for Colorado, with her compelling, high-energy, in-your-face defensive game.

Home at last, she doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

“Just look at all the money spent on marketing and promotion of men’s sports in the U.S.,” she said.

“And nothing for women. I’m happy it’s finally happened . . . but why did it take so long? The people in Tasmania couldn’t have treated me more nicely. I loved playing and living there.

“But I’m an American. I kept wondering: ‘Why can’t I play pro ball in my own country?’ ”

At long last, she is, along with many of the best of her generation . . . in a league of their own.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Women’s Basketball at a Glance

This year’s women’s professional basketball teams, with ABL average paid home attendance:

ABL

* New England Blizzard: 5,319

* Portland Power: 4,225

* Colorado Xplosion: 3,554

* Atlanta Glory: 3,355

* San Jose Lasers: 3,206

* Seattle Reign: 3,151