Is It About Basketball or About Women?

Through the ABL season and now into the WNBA season, women's basketball is more about women than about basketball, whether "they" are as good, whether "they" get injured too much, whether anyone will watch "them" play, whether "their" leagues will survive.

But STOP. Most of these questions can actually be asked of any new league, whether women are in it or not. For example, these questions were asked of the USFL when it began. As I remember it: A new league was started with the same rules as the NFL, the same equipment, and the same hype that it will be great entertainment. Just like the NFL, but distinct. Separate but equal, if you will.

As we know now, Separate but equal does not work, no matter how much we try to convince ourselves that it should or that it deserves a chance.

This will make covering women's basketball difficult. Though women's basketball at a college level is a good game because it looks like textbook basketball -- passing and shooting as they are classically trained -- it seems that the inherent self-importance of women's pro basketball forces it to live up to the glitz -- the style -- of the NBA. There is no way that it can.

Those were the underlying thoughts behind my joke several months ago that the women's game should be played outdoors and in tighter uniforms. That joke may have been taken too seriously by some, but the point was that women's pro basketball had to be different in its style or in its rules. It cannot just be the men's game with different people filling the uniforms. Take the focus away from the players and create a focus on the game, a fundamentally different premise than the NBA marketing effort, which has been to focus on the players and not the game. But unique players stand out on their own. The women's pro game, as it stands, does not.

That being said, I plan to look at the WNBA quite a bit. I plan to look at the individuals without comparing the game to either the men's game or to women's college basketball. With boxscores more readily available, I can evaluate the better players without falling into the inherent bias that the WNBA introduces through its advertising. But just by doing this, I give the league some status of importance that it has yet to earn. It is up to other sites (for example, WNBA.com and The Mining Company's Women's Hoops site) to promote the sport. I will look at it out of my own basketball interest.

Game 1: New York Liberty at the Los Angeles Sparks

This kick-off game probably was not what the league's backers wanted. It was sloppy. A dunk attempt was weakly missed. The stars really did not shine. The home team lost.

Both Lisa Leslie and Rebecca Lobo led their respective teams in scoring, but both came out missing shots and Leslie never did get on track. Lobo, after missing her first several shots, actually did play a leading role in the victory.

Here I present some of the numbers for the game that you cannot find anywhere else on the web. They are my original creations that I have used in scouting and coaching. They tell an important story, but one that will only become clear asthe season progresses. To get a basic explanation of any of the terms, click on the buttons.

The above values show, among other things, that every single member of the New York Liberty starting lineup played better offensively than their LA Sparks counterpart. This is, in my experience, very unusual. It can happen in a blowout, which this game was, but it is still rare during these games.

Below are the corresponding defensive numbers.

To conclude without much analysis, I find it interesting that the Sparks player that played the best was Mwadi Mabika, one of the younger players and one that, according to the telecast, was Africa's best player. Her offense was among the best (offensive rating of 91.4) as was her defense (defensive rating of 73.4). One game means very little, but we know so little about so many of the WNBA player's games -- we know all about the personal lives of Lobo and Leslie -- that it is tempting to jump on the first little evidence of a basketball star.