Carla McGhee, a member of the U.S. National Team and a veteran of four years of international basketball, has a simple question: `How come we can't have one league?'
By `we,' McGhee means the community of American female basketball players, and by `how come' she means the nascent war between the American Basketball League and the Women's National Basketball Association.
The answer to her uncomplicated query is equally simple: Money. More than a few people see a coming boom in women's basketball, and they want to join the ride. Some have been fighting the good fight for years; others are latecomers looking for an edge. At this point, it's hard to tease out the motives of the growing cast of characters, but it looks like at least one league will still be up and running by the fall of 1997. The question is, which one?
First out of the chute will be the ABL, which has been laying the groundwork for almost a year. That groundwork, though, doesn't contain many of the nuts and bolts that basketball fans are most curious about. How long will the games be? Unknown. There will be a shot clock, but the exact time is undecided. The shape of the lane? TBA. The length of the game? TBA. Distance for a three-pointer? TBA. No, they haven't changed the name of the league to TBA, but specific answers are as rare as a Dawn Staley dunk.
Much of that is understandable. The first order of business is, well, business, and that's what Gary Cavalli, Steve Hams, Anne Cribbs and Bobby Johnson have been worried about. They've got $4 million to start the show, they have a plan that keeps all the players and all the teams under direct control of the league, and they have mid-sized arenas in eight cities lined up. TV contract? TBA. Names of coaches and general managers? TBA. Names of the players? Well, the ABL has that under control -- and that's where the WNBA is in trouble.
The big guns on the women's national team, like Carla McGhee, have almost all signed with the ABL, as has a second tier of 36 players. The rest of the league will be filled out by a draft -- which will only involve those players with a $200 fee and the money to get to Atlanta from May 28 to June 2. The founding players (those on the National Team) and six others will be placed on teams for the good of the league, which translates to regional attraction and competitive balance. Presumably, operators of the San Jose club will then try to draft as many Stanford players as possible, while the Hartford team will try to land Rebecca Lobo (as yet unsigned to the ABL) and other Northeastern stars.
College players will be drafted as well, but the ABL will not take a player whose college class hasn't graduated -- even if she didn't go to college. This might be an anti-trust violation, as might the idea of a league where all the contracts are owned by one legal entity, but that's not something the ABL organizers are worrying about quite yet. They just want to put together their 40-game season (which will start in mid-October and end just before the beginning of the NCAA playoffs), sign as many players as they can, figure out the rules and hope the American women win the gold.
In New York, the NBA is playing catchup. Two days before the NBA Board of Governors announced its decision to start the WNBA, I was told there was nothing cooking -- and suddenly the pie was baked.
The NBA plan is antithetical to the ABL's. First, it would run in the summer, in the same large buildings as present NBA franchises. Each team would be affiliated with, if not directly connected to, an existing NBA team. Most of the other details are, what a surprise, TBA.
Obviously, there aren't enough players to stock two leagues. Obviously, there isn't enough fan interest either. So, as McGhee said so cogently, how come we can't have just one league?
Clearly, because the NBA and ABL both think there's money to be made, and they want to make it. The ABL's financial package looks good on the drawing board, but so do the plans of every business that goes belly up. The NBA powers have decided that there's a chance the ABL won't make it, and if it doesn't, the WNBA will be there to pick up the pieces. If the ABL is a rousing success, the WNBA will very likely fade into an uncertain future, like the United Baseball League or the Midwestern-based Women's Basketball League did, never to be heard from again.
In the meantime, watch for the two leagues to circle each other like hungry dogs with a bone in between them. That bone is the profit they both see in women's basketball, which will come as much from TV deals and merchandise as from the games themselves. The NBA obviously has an edge in those two categories, but the ABL has the talent -- and a head start.
In the end, McGhee's question will be answered positively. There will be just one women's professional basketball league in America. If the ABL can replace its many TBAs with concrete answers by mid-October, and then make it through a rough first season, the ABL will survive. But if it falters, the wolf nipping at its heels is the WNBA -- which would be more than happy to snap up the bone, and the profit, if the frontrunner stumbles down the stretch.
