The Women's National Basketball Association

Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) is the organization for the professional basketball association of women. Women’s National Basketball Association, commonly called as WNBA, was started in the year 1996 as the first women association to be authorized by the NBA. NBA is the male counterpart of WNBA. The first season started in the month of June of 1997 and it was followed by a gold medal victory at Summer Olympics of 1996 by the USA Women’s Basketball team. From then, women are contending high for medals!

After the much celebrated gold medal victory at the 1996 Summer Olympic Games, WNBA started its season in June 21, 1997. The first season was started by WNBA with only eight teams. However, the number doubled by the 2000 season. In the year 1998, two teams were added followed by joining of 4 more teams in 2000. NBA owned the association at that time. After the completion of 2002 season, NBA sold the individual franchises of WNBA resulting in the relocation of the two teams and the Cleveland Rockers folded by the end of the 2003 season. The franchises were sold to either the NBA equals from the same city or to a third party.

In the year 2005, February, Chicago was awarded the first expansion team in years, changing the name to Chicago Sky. In off-season of the same year, several amendments in the rules of WNBA were made making it similar to the NBA.

In the year 2006, WNBA became the first professional sports association for women that existed for ten successive seasons. On the tenth anniversary, WNBA came out with the All-Decade team that included ten WNBA players who contributed in on-court and off-court activities the most during the existence of the women’s association. Right from its inception, WNBA has got only success stories to tell.