Fledgling League Has Plenty of Challenges

When WNBA president Val Ackerman arrived at her family’s western New Jersey country retreat Sunday morning, all was quiet at the Houston Summit.

The confetti, balloons and signs had all been swept up and dumped, and cleanup crews were going home.

Ackerman’s daughters, Emily, 4, and Sally, 2, squealed happily when they saw their mom, and of course demanded: “What did you bring us?”

So out of Ackerman’s bag came two coloring books and two pony-tail holders, bought at the 24-hour drugstore across the street from the WNBA headquarters hotel in Houston.

Such are the constraints on shopping when your boss, NBA Commissioner David Stern, has assigned you the task of turning women’s pro basketball into a prime-time sport in a 16-month span.

As Ackerman eased into a few days off after guiding her league to a successful first-season conclusion Saturday, she could look back on the summer and see a mixed bag of triumphs and emerging challenges:

* Summer basketball sells. It sold everywhere, and nowhere was this more astonishing than in New York. Even on sunny Sundays, New Yorkers trooped into Madison Square Garden, 13,000-16,000 strong. Twelve times, WNBA crowds topped 16,000.

The challenge: Will women’s hoops sell during the NBA playoffs?

The NBA and its sister league, which wants to avoid a conflict with the NFL, will have a collision next season. The addition of two expansion teams and a longer schedule means, Ackerman says, that the WNBA schedule must begin earlier.

The season that ended Saturday beat the NFL’s opening weekend by a day.

And will men buy the women’s pro game in significant numbers? Most in the average WNBA crowd of 9,669 were women--moms, grandmas, aunts and teenage daughters. Ackerman has said her league will never be considered entirely successful unless it hooks men too.

A WNBA crowd study showed 30% of WNBA spectators were under 18, compared to 13% for the NBA. WNBA crowds were 60-40 female to male, while women are 37% of NBA crowds.

* The, ahem, other league.

The challenge: Will there eventually be one women’s league?

WNBA people are generally annoyed by the question and Ackerman dodges it, , but it won’t go away: “When will the NBA buy out the ABL?”

Sniffed one WNBA official the other day, “How many ABL players have you seen on a cereal box? How many on TV commercials? What was ABL attendance like? What makes you think we need them?”

They do need them, of course. As matters stand, on talent, the WNBA is closer to triple-A than the big leagues of women’s hoops. A Sunday count of every Division I All-American team since 1975 shows 31 in the ABL, 24 in the WNBA.

* Coopergate.

The challenge: Houston’s Cynthia Cooper is, by acclamation, the WNBA’s best player, and now the league must show her the money.

The WNBA maximum salary is $50,000--unless your name is Lisa Leslie, Rebecca Lobo or Sheryl Swoopes, in which case you have a $250,000 NBA personal-services contract.

If Cooper isn’t offered at least Big Three money, her agent says “we would entertain” a 1999 offer by the ABL, which is paying rookies--Kate Starbird, Kara Wolters--$150,000 to $200,000.

* Everyone else’s salary.

The challenge: Ackerman has indicated that the WNBA pay scale of $10,000 to $50,000 will be adjusted.

“It’s our highest priority right now,” she said Sunday.

But how much would be sufficient, after your attendance is double preseason projections?

Los Angeles Spark guard Penny Toler wondered that recently, as she prepared for another winter season in Israel, saying, “If I could ask Ackerman to do one thing, it would be to raise the salaries to the point where most of us wouldn’t feel like we have to go overseas anymore to play.

Meanwhile, Chapter 3 of women’s hoops wars began Monday.

ABL players reported to nine training camps for their second season, beginning Oct. 12.

WNBA people keep hoping the ABL will expire on its own, freeing up its players for the WNBA at no cost. As New York Liberty General Manager Carol Blazejowski put it, when asked about prospects of the NBA buying out the ABL, “Maybe we won’t have to.”

But the possibility of the ABL’s failure seems dim, what with the league poised to announce an enhanced TV package and more venture capital investment, possibly including an entertainment industry group buying the Long Beach StingRay franchise from the league.