Inside the WNBA’s inaugural game between Liberty, Sparks in 1997
As the solar rose on the longest day of 1997, Val Ackerman felt flooded with pleasure and nerves. It was the Summer Solstice — Saturday, June 21 — and the inaugural game of the new girls’s professional basketball league, the WNBA, was tipping off that day at the Great Western Forum in Inglewood, California.
“Some of it is a blur,” Ackerman, the first president of the WNBA, advised ESPN final week. “I’m sure we got there really early.”
The New York Liberty and Los Angeles Sparkstwo of the new league’s eight groups, had been assembly. Sparks middle Lisa Leslie and Liberty middle Rebecca Lobo, two of the first three gamers who had signed with the WNBA, had been squaring off in the frontcourt.
Leslie received the opening tip over New York’s Kim HamptonLos Angeles’ Penny Toler scored the first basketand the Liberty received 67-57 as historical past was made.
Nowadays, the WNBA options the greatest gamers in the world and is experiencing exponential progress in viewership, attendance and media offers. The league has added three growth groups in the previous two seasons, with three extra on the manner by 2030. But in 1997, nothing was assured. Nerves and exhaustion factored into what’s admittedly remembered as a sloppy debut on courtroom.
Ackerman, Leslie and Lobo introduced completely different views and experiences into that first WNBA game. As the league celebrates its thirtieth season this yr — and forward of the two groups assembly once more Sunday (8 pm ET, ESPN) in Los Angeles on the anniversary — we glance again with them at that historic day.
Leslie: ‘Better basketball needed to be performed’
Leslie is as “LA” as she will get: born in Compton, California, went to highschool in Inglewood, graduated from USC. When her collegiate profession ended in 1994, there was no professional basketball alternative for girls in the United States, and she or he had little curiosity in enjoying abroad. But in 1995, the USA Basketball tour to organize for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics started, and Leslie was a outstanding a part of Team USA. She led the Americans with 29 factors in profitable the gold medal game in August 1996.
Although Leslie, Lobo and Sheryl Swoopes had dedicated to the WNBA, the different US Olympic workforce members had signed with the new American Basketball League, which started its first season in the fall of 1996 (however folded early in its third season in 1998).
By the time the WNBA launched in June 1997, Leslie had been away from aggressive basketball for practically a yr. She was just a few weeks since turning 25 and had been targeted on modeling and appearing. She did not have many expectations for the WNBA, which might play in the summer time months.
“The idea of really becoming a professional basketball player in our country — I don’t think I really got the understanding of it, even though I signed on to do it,” Leslie advised ESPN. “I will never lie about my first season in the WNBA. I was not ready.”
For many months main as much as the inaugural game, being in the WNBA for Leslie, Lobo and Swoopes meant doing picture shoots and appearances to advertise the league, as no different gamers had been but concerned. But that modified fairly abruptly.
“There’s a draft, teams, we have practice, we’re on TV. Like, June 21 — everything came so quickly, I wasn’t prepared basketball-wise,” Leslie stated. “I had not been lifting weights. I was trying to model and fit into dresses. I just remember thinking like, ‘This is going to be a real s— show for me.'”
The morning of the game, Leslie arrived at the Forum early for extra picture shoots and interviews.
“If anybody would’ve known how much stuff we did on the day of that game… I feel like I was running on fumes,” Leslie stated. “I was exhausted before we started.”
Leslie, who went on to win two WNBA championships, three league MVP awards and 4 Olympic gold medals as one in every of the best gamers in girls’s basketball historical past, would not grade herself or the Sparks properly on that first game. She completed with 16 factors on 6-of-17 taking pictures and 14 rebounds in the loss.
“We loved it. We loved every moment. We gave it our all,” Leslie stated. “But we realized we had to get better. Better basketball had to be played.
“I could not conceptually perceive the magnitude of what the WNBA was actually till the first day.”
Ackerman: ‘It really had all come to life’
Ackerman, who played collegiately at Virginia, had worked for the NBA since 1988 and was appointed to USA Basketball’s Board of Directors in 1989. Conversations with NBA commissioner David Stern about the potential of a women’s league happened regularly but often informally. He would walk through her office, ask a question, nod and move on.
The idea was brewing for a long time, and when the NBA sponsored USA Basketball’s pre-Olympic tour for the women in 1995-96, it was like “a laboratory to check the curiosity in the girls’s game,” Ackerman said.
The ABL would have its first season finished before the WNBA began and had signed many top players. But Ackerman stayed focused on the WNBA, believing it had a better long-term strategic plan and resources.
“Between [the Atlanta Olympics] and that opening day, it was a dash,” Ackerman said. “It was 10 months, however that was a really quick time period with an ever-growing to-do checklist. It all needed to come collectively: the groups, the arenas, the schedule, tv contracts, the ball, the uniforms, the gamers, the coaches, the referees — all of these items that had by no means been finished earlier than needed to be finished for the first time.”
“There isn’t a Season 30 without a Day 1. And this was the Day 1.”
Rebecca Lobo
Not the whole lot went easily. Recording artist Jeffrey Osborne was alleged to sing the nationwide anthem however bought caught in visitors and did not arrive in time.
“We had to use this scratchy recording of the anthem,” Ackerman stated. “I also remember I had gotten a specific outfit for the day. I hired a personal shopper who chose it for me. I thought since I was going to be on TV now, I had to meet the moment.”
And so for the game?
“I remember the fans being so excited and passionate. Some people were even crying,” Ackerman stated.
“I remember that it was a really sloppily played game.”
That wasn’t stunning. The groups had been new and nonetheless studying about one another. New York shot 43.3% from the area, and the Sparks 30.9; the groups mixed for 44 turnovers.
With 14,284 followers in attendance, together with celebrities resembling Lakers legend Magic Johnson and actor/director Penny Marshall, the setting was greater than most of the gamers had been anticipating.
“The players were just understandably very nervous,” stated Ackerman, who served as WNBA president via the 2004 season. “I remember [Sparks guard] Penny Toler making the first shot in WNBA history. And the game got a really big television rating because there had been so much anticipation for it with the promotion from the NBA and NBC.
“When the game was over, there was a mixture of reduction, exhaustion and pleasure. It was prefer it actually had all come to life. But then you definitely knew you could not actually dwell on it, you simply needed to hold going. It was the first season, and we had so much to do to get via the yr.”
Lobo: ‘Gratitude’ for being part of Day 1
For Lobo, the whirlwind had been spinning since his senior season at UConn, when the Huskies had gone 35-0 and won the 1995 NCAA championship. She had become one of the most recognized women athletes in the country. The USA Basketball tour, the Atlanta Olympics and the WNBA promotional schedule had kept her busy, and at 23, she was eager to start her pro basketball career.
“I believe our groups had been as prepared as you could possibly be,” Lobo told ESPN. “None of those gamers had actually performed collectively earlier than. You’d been coaching for 2, three weeks possibly. And then, there’s all this hype.”
Lobo, who’s a girls’s basketball analyst for ESPN, grew up in Massachusetts as a Celtics fan, watching all the rivalry matchups with the Lakers. Riding the Liberty’s workforce bus from the airport to the lodge in Los Angeles, she noticed a billboard alongside the freeway with photos of herself and Leslie, together with the “We Got Next” slogan promoting the upcoming game.
It all hit her: She can be enjoying in the identical Great Western Forum that the Celtics and Lakers had performed in. She wasn’t watching anymore. She was a part of the present and already beloved the remainder of the solid.
Liberty gamers resembling Hampton, Sue Wicks and Teresa Weatherspoon had been older and had performed abroad. Although Lobo, at instances, felt remoted on Team USA as a result of she was the youngest, she at all times felt embraced by the Liberty’s vets.
Before the first game, the Liberty had been going over their defensive assignments, and coach Nancy Darsch advised Lobo she can be guarding Leslie.
“Kym Hampton said, ‘Coach, let me take Lisa so that Rebecca can focus more on offense and doesn’t have to worry about it on defense,'” Lobo recalled. “And I was just like, ‘OK, Kym!’ With her long arms and all her overseas experience. Those were the kind of teammates that I had. It was so fun. Such a great group.”
Lobo completed with 16 factors and 6 rebounds for the victorious Liberty. Two critical knee accidents lower quick her WNBA profession to only 5 full seasons, however Lobo was there when it began.
“I think of that sometimes with this incredible gratitude and a different sort of perspective that you can only have with time,” Lobo stated. “There isn’t a Season 30 without a Day 1. And this was the Day 1.”
ESPN’s Olivia Powers and Laura Ramirez contributed to this report.
