The Women's National Basketball Association


by Nigel Kerry - Date: 2007-02-21 - Word Count: 326 Share This!

The Women's National Basketball Association or WNBA first started in 1996. This is the first women's league that has been endorsed by the NBA. WNBA held its first season in 1997 in June. This was after the USA Women's Basketball team won the gold medal in the 1996 Olympics.

WNBA is divided into Eastern and Western Conferences which is similar to the NBA. The playoffs result in the finals between the advancing team from each conference. WNBA plays in the summer, between the NBA seasons. They use many of the same venues as their NBA teams. A regular season is made up of 34 games and during the middle of July each year, games come to a halt for the WNBA All Star game. This is time when star players from Eastern Conference play against the star players from Western Conference. Fans are allowed to vote right through to season to select the star player they want to see in the WNBA All Star game.

The playoffs is made up of series in which the top four teams from each Conference play. Usually the team with the best record will play the team with the fourth best record and the second and third best teams play each other in the first round. The winner of each series play each other in the second round which best of three. The winner from the second round then advances to championship finals which best of five.

In 1997 when WNBA started, it has just 8 teams and this number gradually increased. By 2000 the league was collectively owned by the NBA and in 2002 NBA sold individual franchises either to their NBA counterparts in the same city or to a third party owner. This sale caused two teams to relocate and the Cleveland Rockers folded at the end of 2003 season.

In 2005, many changes were made to the governing rules of the WNBA so that it would be similar to the NBA.


Related Tags: basketball, national basketball, womens basketball, basketball association

About the writer: Nigel Kerry is an American free lance writer born in Los Angeles, California. Kerry writes Sportsbook reviews, sport book articles and articles with respect to Sports Betting.

Your Article Search Directory : Find in Articles

© The article above is copyrighted by it's author. You're allowed to distribute this work according to the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs license.
 

Recent articles in this category:



Most viewed articles in this category: