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The 1997 WNBA Season was the Women's National Basketball Association's inaugural season. It started off with 8 franchises: Charlotte Sting , Cleveland Rockers , Houston Comets , Los Angeles Sparks , New York Liberty , Phoenix Mercury , Sacramento Monarchs , and the Utah Starzz .
The Houston Comets became the first WNBA champions, riding the unstoppable Cynthia Cooper and a suffocating defense to a 65–51 victory over the New York Liberty.. Cooper, the fledgling league's leading scorer who was named Most Valuable Player earlier in the week, scored 14 of her 25 points in the pivotal second half, when the Comets had a 10–0 burst and held the Liberty scoreless for ...
On the heels of a much-publicized gold medal run by the 1996 USA Basketball Women's National Team at the 1996 Summer Olympic Games, the WNBA began its first season on June 21, 1997. The first WNBA game featured the New York Liberty facing the Los Angeles Sparks in Los Angeles. The Liberty defeated the Sparks 67-57.
"First of all, we wanted to perform well," Weatherspoon remembers about that historic contest on June 21, 1997. "There was a game plan; we had to go out and win a basketball game.
The number of WNBA teams has varied since the league's original eight in 1997 due to expansions and later contractions; the first expansion teams were added in 1998 and were followed by two more rounds of additions that brought the total to 16 teams in 2000. Following the change in NBA ownership in 2002, the WNBA lost two teams.
On the same token however, Nielsen ratings for NBC broadcasts of WNBA games slipped [36] from 2 million households reached in 1997—the WNBA's inaugural season—to 1.5 million in 1999. [37] The average rating for the first 9 of the 10 [38] WNBA games NBC carried in the 2001 season [39] was only 1.1, compared to a 2.0 rating its first season. [40]
The 1997 WNBA season was the first season for the Houston Comets. The Comets won the inaugural WNBA Finals. ... Cynthia Cooper: Led WNBA, Points per game, 22.2 [2]
It was the third most viewed WNBA event ever and the largest audience for the league since its first two nationally televised games in 1997. Last year's game, which was also on prime time TV, drew ...