THE CLIMATE PLEDGE ARENA BEFORE THE GAME. ERIC SHELBY/PSU VANGUARD
THE WNBA NEEDS TO EXPAND IMMEDIATELY PREDICTED CHOICES FOR THE LEAGUE ERIC SHELBY The Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) needs to expand immediately. There’s no better time than now to do so, as its ratings are up by 51% and investors are willing to invest $75 million in the league. There are currently 12 active teams in the league, and there have never been more than 16 teams in one season because of teams folding and relocating. The WNBA’s most notable team was the four-time champion Houston Comets, a founding team in the WNBA’s inaugural season of 1997. They won the first four WNBA championships and folded in 2008, eight years after their championship run ended. The league has not expanded since the Atlanta Dream was es-
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SPORTS
tablished that same year. Of the eight WNBA teams that started off the inaugural season, only four are still active. One of those four teams, the Las Vegas Aces, have rebranded from the Utah Starzz to the San Antonio Silver Stars before becoming the team we know today. During its inaugural season, the WNBA’s rival was the American Basketball League (ABL)—which, at the time, did better than the WNBA because of the ABL’s access to star players coming out of the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. The ABL was able to recruit multiple gold medalists from the USA team, such as Portland native Katy Steding. The ABL folded in 1999, and the WNBA expanded its teams with the Seattle
Storm and Indiana Fever. The league also expanded when former players of the ABL joined the WNBA’s teams. Now, the WNBA has had a dormant 12 teams in the league since 2010, including the relocations of the Tulsa Shock to Dallas, rebranded as the Dallas Wings, and the San Antonio Stars relocating to Las Vegas, becoming the Las Vegas Aces. Since there are 12 teams in the league, each team has 12 roster spots—and of those 12 spots, five are starters. 12 teams and 12 spots on each team means that there are only 144 spots in the whole league, coming out of a WNBA draft with options from 353 NCAA Division I schools. 42% of the players drafted since the league started in 1997
PSU Vanguard • MAY 25, 2022 • psuvanguard.com
