Last Sunday, the Valkyries easily beat the New York Liberty by a score of 76-67, while also celebrating the WNBA’s 30th anniversary. It’s 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."
The longevity of the WNBA is certainly historic, but Leslie’s 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.
If you really want to look 30 years back into the history of women's basketball, you’ll find that at the time, the WNBA existed - but in name only. In the summer of 1996, another pro women’s league had just completed its first season: the American Basketball League, or ABL.
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’s league. And they were confident in their vision.
"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 — corporate connections.
"A lot of people just don’t know the ABL exists because we’re not on television," said Cribbs in 2000.
So when NBA commissioner David Stern announced his own women’s league in April of 1996, the ABL was in trouble. "It’s really tough when a competitor has the kind of resources and is able to influence decision-making," explained Cribbs.
In December of 1998, the ABL went bankrupt, and the WNBA declined to merge. But many of the league’s best players became stars in the W. And to this day, the ABL’s impact can’t be overlooked.
"We wouldn’t 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 — let’s just try this, let’s see what this is gonna look like."
Thirty years ago, that’s exactly what the women of the ABL did.
