The United States was always going to have a great pro basketball league, but it didn’t have to be the WNBA, or at least WNBA history didn’t have to unfold exactly as it did. When the WNBA began play in the late 1990s, there already existed another (and many said better) women’s pro basketball association in the US: the American Basketball League. The ABL lacked major corporate backing and huge sponsorship deals, but it had a superior pool of talent, relatively high salaries, and superior benefits for its players.
Perhaps because of its backing from the NBA, the W was always going to outlast the ABL, but that wasn’t a sure thing at the outset, and it might not have played out so swiftly if not for the decision of one superstar. Nikki McCray was the first ever ABL MVP and the top scorer for the ABL’s first ever league champion. In the summer of 1997, immediately following that excellent first season, McCray became a free agent and faced the choice of staying with the sure thing in the ABL or accepting an offer to jump to the WNBA. And, well, you can probably guess how that went.
Nikki McCray’s decision to switch leagues was the first in a monumental line of dominoes. It was a big deal.
