Up In The Air

The challenge, for the WNBA, is not only to channel this aggression, but to sell it. Sports marketer Bill Doyle contends that especially for younger fans, pro basketball has blossomed as ""less of a sport, more of a lifestyle and an urban attitude [that is] pervasive throughout the culture.'' The women's league, he says, is set to tap this culture. ""When we've done research among young basketball fans, the gender issue isn't a big deal. They accept that [women players] can be just as aggressive as the men. They're like, "Sheryl Swoopes, in your face'.''

So far the returns are good. Attendance, at roughly 9,000 a game, is double the league's conservative expectations. In Phoenix, crowds for Mercury home games top 13,000. NBC's ratings for the season opener surpassed all other sports in its time slot, and have averaged 1.4 million households per game, very good for the dog days of summer. A slight majority of viewers, interestingly, is male, NBA fans who can't get enough roundball action. Courtside regulars like Rosie O'Donnell, Gregory Hines, Tyra Banks and Penny Marshall have added celebrity cachet.

But the high-octave electricity at the games has come from the young girls--and grown women, too--who have finally found conquerors they can relate to. ""Because it's an all-women league, we're rooting for the league to succeed,'' says Reina Platt, 31, who never went to a basketball game before the Liberty arrived. ""We're seeing role models that we've never seen in other sports.'' She grew up idolizing Chris Evert-Lloyd and played organized tennis. Had the WNBA been around 20 years ago? ""I probably would've played basketball.'' With ticket prices averaging about $15--less than half the NBA average--and profanity in check, the arenas are friendly to families. Last week, Layne Feldman, 9, scoured every souvenir stand at Madison Square Garden for a Rebecca Lobo jersey, only to find they'd all sold out. ""I like her because she was a good student,'' Layne says. ""And she represents women, but she's aggressive, too.''

The league also has another, less trumpeted core constituency. Though TV broadcasts pan moms with their kids, plenty of women come on their own. Says Sarah Pettit, editor of Out magazine, ""Next to the "Ellen' episode, this is the biggest news in the lesbian community all year long. If there's one thing lesbians are talking about, it's who's on the bench and who's on the floor.'' Issues of sexual orientation have long been taboo in women's sports. The author and ex-jock Mariah Burton Nelson says she was released from her team in the old World Basketball League after marching in a 1979 gay-pride rally. ""Homophobia of women's sports leagues has gotten a lot subtler over the years. Now we see action shots of strong, sweaty women,'' but, she says, they are balanced by images of femininity, to comfort some fans or advertisers. ""There's still an implication that all these women are heterosexual.'' The WNBA, for its part, does not acknowledge any gay following. ""I'm not aware of that,'' says Welts. ""We don't take attendance that way. The league does not discriminate.''

What the league does is market images. When Swoopes learned last winter that she was pregnant--an unplanned gift, she told NEWSWEEK--she worried about what it would mean to her commercial benefactors. ""I just thought all my sponsors, they're not going to want me anymore.'' Instead, her pregnancy has proved a bonanza. ""We embrace maternity,'' says Welts. With each shot of 2-month-old Jordan on the sideline with stay-at-home father Eric Jackson, the league reinforces its image as a family venture, the good apple in the increasingly rotting barrel of professional sports.

In this sense, it is the anti-NBA. While the men's league suffers the foolishness and egos of young millionaires just out of high school, the WNBA requires players to complete their college eligibility or be 21. And you couldn't melt butter with their off-court platitudes. ""I think most women players stayed in school for the entire four years, so they're somewhat more savvy on what to say and how to say it,'' says an executive with both leagues. ""They're also eager to cooperate and do things to make this league successful. That's often not the case in the NBA.''