Up In The Air

IN AN EMPTY MADISON SQUARE GARDEN, TERESA Weatherspoon runs the New York Liberty through a drill they call ""C.'' ""Let's go, black,'' she yells to her teammates, divided for the scrimmage into black or white jerseys. The white squad passes crisply, once, twice, before Weatherspoon throws her muscled body at a momentarily unguarded ball. She has been hobbled by a thigh injury, but glares through the pain, as uncompromising as the tiger tattooed across her back. ""When I play you on defense,'' she says, ""I love when you look me in the eye. I'm attacking. I think about being the aggressor at all times.'' ""Spoon,'' as she is known, smacks palms with her teammates, and chests and hips, too--tough love that echoes through the empty arena. She pulls the protective pad from her thigh and, limping, runs the drill one more time. ""I like to get a hit on me.''

To the 17,499 girls--and boys and women and men--who will fill the Garden on game day, Weatherspoon is a new model of jock hero, for a new type of league. As fan Jessica Jalubowski, age 6, put it, to the consternation of her mother, ""Teresa kicks ass!'' And this new league, the Women's National Basketball Association, which rumbles to its first championship game this week, is a critical test for women's pro sports. Twenty-five years after Title IX of the Civil Rights Act required schools to provide equal opportunities for female athletes, the women's sports market--both those who play and those who like to watch--has never been bigger. But while women have thrived in pro golf and tennis, they have yet to break through in team sports (page 63). Three attempts at basketball leagues have flopped in the last two decades, including one brief inspiration that featured clingy unitards and lower baskets.

Jammed into the nexus of prime-time sports and gender politics, the WNBA offers an untested combination of old and new, a game of naked female aggression played below the rim. Val Ackerman, the league's upbeat president, is keenly aware of past failures: she had to play her pro ball in France. Along with the lower-profile American Basketball League, which debuted last fall, the WNBA seeks to break that streak. ""We've never had this level of exposure before, or the track records of all the NBA organizations behind us,'' she says. Last Friday, the WNBA sold its 1 millionth ticket. ""I don't see any liabilities. I see a growth factor,'' says the sports buyer for a major ad agency in New York. ""But whether the novelty wears off in the second year, nobody knows.''

Commercially, the league is less a revolution than a brand extension. Wholly owned and run by the 29 teams of the NBA, it is something to busy the NBA's formidable marketing and merchandising machine while the men are on summer vacation. Before a ball hit the court, the WNBA had TV deals with NBC, ESPN and Lifetime, and a handful of national sponsors, including the starmakers at Nike. ""We have taken a page from the NBA 101 book,'' says Rick Welts, chief marketing officer for both the NBA and its sister league. ""I don't know about you, but I wasn't a huge fan of women's basketball until we started getting to know the players' stories.'' From the outset, the league bet not on its play, but on three hypeable images: Houston Comet forward Sheryl Swoopes, inconveniently on maternity leave; New York Liberty's Rebecca Lobo, an academic All-American and college hero (never mind that her pro play has seemed overmatched), and glamorous Los Angeles Sparks center Lisa Leslie walking the fashion runways as well as running the court.

The quality of play has so far lagged behind. When the league's promos peppered NBA broadcasts with the playground challenge, ""We got next,'' they did not have the game to back it up. Early play was sloppy, in part because the teams were new, and many players had trouble adjusting to the league's slightly smaller, oatmeal-and-orange ball. Teams had only three weeks of preseason, and many players seem sluggish from the travel schedule. And the women, who stand six feet tall on average, will never play with the balletic athleticism of the men: when the defenses clamp down, they cannot soar to overcome. In an early season low, Lisa Leslie leapt for a dunk and came down on her backside. Some in the audience erupted in laughter.

But as the season has progressed, the better teams have tightened. And the athletes themselves are a revelation: chiseled, committed, hard core--no closer to the mortals who walk the streets than are their brothers in the NBA. Basketball remains a struggle to dominate one's opponent; it is a thrill to watch such powerful women kick behind. As Weatherspoon says, ""I was born with this intensity. My family saw just how important basketball was to me because of it.'' As with the men's game, the competition can get trash-talkingly personal. Says Houston guard Fran Harris, ""We realize there are little eyes on us. But there's times when it definitely turns into that street ball, "Not in my house,' fist-pumping, in-your-face kind of thing.''