There's one thing about American sports fans -- they're used to quality.
Not only can they see the highlights every night on SportsCenter, they can also see many of the games. The flood of televised NCAA games and the upcoming Olympic Games are going to make it very clear just how good women's basketball can be -- which makes me wonder why the American Basketball League is designed to be nothing more than a fairly good minor league.
Now, minor leagues are fine, and they draw really well in baseball, but the real missing link in women's basketball isn't an American pro league, but a premier league, a league that everyone knows is the best around. The NBA is pretty obvious in that regard, so is the NHL. Obviously, baseball and football are at their best in the United States, but they too share a similar rule, or lack of one, with the NBA and NHL.
In all those leagues, in all those premier leagues, there is no limitation on who can play. If you're good enough, you get a uniform. If you're not, you get a ticket home.
But the ABL doesn't want to be the best league around. Instead, it's committed to being an American league, and will only allow one international player per team. The WNBA hasn't made a decision, but here's hoping one or both decide to open the doors so that quality, rather than chauvinism, is the hallmark of the game.
First, I don't think it would make much difference in the rosters if American women's leagues were wide open. Sure, some team might have three international players, but given the salary structure, I don't anticipate a torrent of overseas talent overwhelming local stars. In fact, I think American players would dominate the rosters anyway, especially if the pro league becomes established and girls can see there's a place for them in professional basketball.
Second, fans want to see quality basketball, not people with American passports. It would be one thing if franchises were to be regionally based and draw only from regional talent, but how much more difficult will it be for a fan in the San Francisco Bay Area to root for a French player than one from New York?
Finally, the goal of any professional athletic league should be to present the highest quality product to discerning fans and artificially limiting the level of talent with jingoistic rules guarantees only that the games won't be as good as they could be.
Let's take soccer as an example. Right now, every major national league limits the number of non-foreigners on each roster, and as a result, each league is only as good as the talent pool in its country. And, as a result, attendance is level or declining in many European countries. The World Cup, which allows everyone to play, is the biggest sporting event on the planet -- and I claim it is, in great part, due to the fact that every great player is involved.
The same can be said of the NHL and the NBA, which are far and away the two most successful leagues in their sports. The opportunity is there for an American women's professional basketball league to be the best in the world, the standard by which all others are measured -- yet one of the two main contenders is already committed to artificially diluting the quality of play and denying fans the chance to see the game at its best.
There are no guarantees that either the ABL or the WNBA will survive, but my guess is that neither will make it if they don't offer the best basketball possible. And it's pretty obvious you can't offer the best basketball if you don't have the best players.
