Expansion Theme of New Season

The WNBA is stretching out. Way out.

In just its fourth season, the league has already doubled in size from eight teams in 1997 to 16. Teams in Seattle, Portland, Indianapolis and Miami join the WNBA for the 2000 season.

Another theme this summer will be the Olympics. The league condensed its season to allow players to join their national teams for the Sydney Games.

“We had our origins with the great success of the 1996 Olympics and see it as an important story line,” WNBA president Val Ackerman said. “We see it as an exclamation point at the end of our season.”

Games begin Monday with a nationally televised rematch of last year’s championship, New York at Houston.

The new season brings new rules, too, including an unlimited number of players from the defunct ABL on all rosters and eight teams, not just six, in the playoffs in a best-of-three format in all rounds.

The 32-game schedule will be squeezed into 11 weeks, meaning plenty of back-to-back games that may affect play in a league that sent two losing teams to the 1999 playoffs.

“If you did that in the NBA, four expansion teams in one year, you’d have four horrible teams,” New York Liberty coach Richie Adubato said. “They’d win 16-18 games. That isn’t the case. You still have all those ABL players, all the European players. They can play.”

Last year’s collective bargaining agreement allowed just three ABL players per team, while the 1999 expansion teams in Orlando and Minnesota were allowed five.

The coaches in Seattle and Portland look to develop a rivalry before someday challenging the three-time defending champion Houston Comets in the Western Conference.

Linda Hargrove, coach of the Portland Fire, said she and Seattle coach Lin Dunn are “Northwest expansion sisters.”

“Portland and Seattle have a natural rivalry that will be very healthy,” Hargrove said. “The West is so strong, it’s important that we win against each other, making our rivalry even more intense.”

Czech Republic star Kamila Vodichkova, the No. 9 pick in the draft, will be the centerpiece of the Seattle Storm’s offense. Dunn, who turned the last-place Portland Power of the ABL into a conference champion in one season, never saw Vodichkova play in person before selecting the 6-foot-4 forward.

“We got a steal,” Dunn said. “She’s 27, strong, physical, can run and is just learning my system.”

The WNBA draft began with an international flavor when the Cleveland Rockers selected 19-year-old Ann Wauters of Belgium as the top pick.

Like many players returning from European and South American leagues, the willowy Wauters, who can dunk, missed the first two weeks of the 22-day training camp.

“I know her to be the Belgian sensation,” Ackerman said. “She’s a player with some size, but also very versatile, not unlike a Lisa Leslie.”

Ackerman said eight of the 12 Olympic women’s basketball teams will have current or former WNBA players on their rosters. The WNBA championships will end no later than August 27 so players can rejoin their national teams before the start of the Olympics in mid-September.

The league rode the popularity of the 1996 U.S. gold medal team, signed many of its stars and has averaged more than 10,000 fans in the last two seasons.

Besides Teresa Edwards, 10 of 11 members on the U.S. national team will be in WNBA uniforms this summer. Edwards, training for an unprecedented fifth Olympic appearance, did not agree to terms with the league for the second consecutive season. She was a founding member of the ABL.

Coach Anne Donovan of the Indiana Fever coached Edwards with the ABL’s Philadelphia Rage and would have welcomed her to Indianapolis.

“I think Teresa Edwards is the greatest player in this game,” Donovan said. “I would love to have seen Teresa in this league where she could be showcased and the public would get an opportunity to see her more than just during the two weeks of the Olympics.”

Washington Mystics All-Stars Chamique Holdsclaw (broken foot) and Nikki McCray (knee), and Charlotte’s Dawn Staley (knee) are among the banged-up on the national team, which recently ended its six-month training camp.

But Mystics coach Nancy Darsch sees player participation on the national team as a positive.

“They’re playing with and against the best players in the world rather than having eight months off,” Darsch said.

Houston remains the team to beat, even though Sacramento boasts MVP and defensive player of the year Yolanda Griffith, Utah features Natalie Williams and Los Angeles has Leslie.

“You look at all the championship teams and they had three stars,” said Miami Sol coach Ron Rothstein, a 17-year veteran of the NBA.