The revitalization of the future of the WNBA started with a seemingly off-the-cuff remark by NBA commissioner Adam Silver in September that he thought the league would have caught on more by now.
“Everyone who loves the game of basketball acknowledges how great the team play is on the floor,” he added to USA TODAY Sports’ Howard Megdal in November. “Anybody who watched the WNBA Finals came to the same conclusion. If we can get fans of the game of basketball to sample this product, they will come back. This is great basketball. There is no dispute. And in the early days of the WNBA, we had detractors who claimed that the quality of the basketball was not sufficient to sustain a league. No one is saying that anymore. It’s entirely a business issue.”
And now, as the league hits the 20th season mark, it seems like Silver has turned the attention of the NBA’s front office even more towards working with its women’s league with the mandate to make sure it succeeds. As I wrote last year after WNBA commissioner Laurel Ritchie stepped down, the league has a huge opportunity this year with a landmark season, Diana Taurasi coming back from her season off, more big-time endorsements than ever and some of the most marketable stars in the league’s history. The announcement that every playoff game will air on ESPN is also long overdue — after all, how can you expect fans to really be invested if its difficult to watch the biggest games of the season?
But most importantly what seems to be happening is Silver and the NBA’s executives (most visibly NBA deputy commissioner and chief operating officer Mark Tatum) are taking a big and public stake in making the WNBA as a must-see event during the summer. Advertising the league during big-time NBA events like the All-Star game is a huge first step. Having one of the NBA’s biggest stars in Kevin Durant endorse the league in interviews can go a long way in helping make it OK for people other than women and families to support the league.
“It’s amazing. It’s incredible,” Durant told USA TODAY Sports this week. “A lot of people don’t respect the game. And I think it’s unfair. Those women can play the game of basketball. If you love the game the way I love it, it doesn’t matter who is shooting the basketball.”
It is, after all, good basketball. The play of the WNBA has significantly improved as the game has continued to grow — thanks in large part to the WNBA — over the past two decades.
But for women’s sports the importance of the WNBA succeeding goes beyond the league itself. The WNBA is the most high-profile and well-funded women’s sports league in the United States. If it can push itself back into a growth league, boost its television ratings and make it so that its stars get enough endorsements and league-wide pay raises so they don’t have to play an additional season overseas for money (which is where they currently make about 10 times what they make in the WNBA) it will go beyond basketball.
It will help in answering that question of how to make women’s sports profitable and worth investing in and could translate into a better professional women’s soccer league, softball league and even a football league where women can play without having to shed most of their clothes. Doing that trickles down to women and little girls everywhere who want to play sports and still are searching for role models that their friends know and like too.
It doesn’t take a miracle maker to make the WNBA popular and more successful than it has been in its first two decades. But it does take some help — and Silver offering it is the best birthday present it could ask for.
