WNBA in dire need of more attention getters
Taurasi draws deserved salute, but league isn’t exactly thriving
Talk began early in the WNBA season. Diana Taurasi would break the league’s alltime scoring record.
And so it happened Sunday night in Los Angeles in front of just more than 9,000 fans.
The game was terrible —Taurasi’s team, the Phoenix Mercury, lost 90-59 to the defending champion Los Angeles Sparks.
But the milestone is significant for Taurasi, a fan favorite since her playing days at Connecticut in the early 2000s, and good for the league, which needs star power to continue existing.
The accomplishment made most sports broadcasts late Sunday. Social media was abuzz, congratulating Taurasi on the record. Former NBA great Kobe Bryant was on hand to cheer her on, then in interviews made reference to her as the “White Mamba.”
Taurasi has 7,494 career points in 13 seasons. That number passes the 7,488 of former Houston Comets great Tina Thompson, who had been the WNBA’s all-time scoring leader since 2010 and retired in 2013.
Thompson wasn’t able to set her record with the Comets, who won the first four WNBA titles from 1997-2000. The most decorated team in the league’s 20-year history disbanded in 2008.
No one in Houston came forward to save the Comets. The league moved on without them. Thompson — an original part of the “Big Three” with Sheryl Swoopes and Cynthia Cooper — broke the scoring record while playing for
the Los Angeles Sparks.
Every time there’s any kind of breakthrough, record or big moment in the WNBA, it’s impossible not to think of the Comets. History’s great teams will always stand out.
Look at the NBA Finals this year. How many times was there a discussion of who would win if Michael Jordan’s 1995-96 Chicago Bulls played the 2016-17 Golden State Warriors of Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant?
Gone in a flash
The difference is that Chicago can still get excited about the Bulls and hope they return to glory. Houston can’t do that with the Comets. Their ending was abrupt. No goodbyes, no celebrations.
Taurasi’s record is notable. It’s good that it made headlines and was celebrated.
But it’s hard to imagine that in 10 or 20 years we’ll be talking about a new scoring record, a new WNBA star.
The league has grown in its two decades, but not significantly.
This season, it tried to expand viewership and interest by streaming games on Twitter. FanDuel also set up fantasy WNBA. The league reported that page views were up for its website last year, and new sponsors such as Pepsi and Nike signed on in the last couple of years. The last game of the WNBA Finals last season had more than 500,000 viewers.
But people aren’t going to games.
Unfilled seats
According to Sports Business Journal, average attendance in 2015 dropped to an all-time low of 7,318, although it did rebound slightly in 2016.
Maybe Taurasi’s record will help spur interest. But that’s hard to imagine as a Houston sports follower who watched what happened to the Comets.
They were a team that sold out games. They had loads of support from the community and fans. Right out of the gate in 1997, they were the picture of what the WNBA hopes for.
Just over a decade later, they were gone.
There was never a fight to keep the Comets. Not from the city or league. It’s still hard for diehard fans to understand how things changed so quickly.
Because this city has seen the rise and fall of a WNBA team, it has a different perspective of the league.
“I still feel like if this city couldn’t keep a team, the WNBA probably isn’t going to last,” said Chelsea King, a Comets season ticket holder for four seasons. “Or at least it will never really be very big. I haven’t seen the league grow much at all since the Comets left. So you have to wonder if it ever will.”
Local stars abound
There are reasons for Houstonians to be interested. Last year’s WNBA Most Valuable Player, Nneka Ogwumike, is from Cypress. Brittney Griner is from Aldine. Kelsey Bone is from Missouri City.
“It’s cool that there are these great women from Houston,” King said. “But I think most of us are still upset at how everything happened. It’s hard for us to find another team to support.”
King said she saw mention of Taurasi’s scoring record on Facebook on Monday morning. She had no idea that Thompson, whose jersey she wore to games at Toyota Center, held the record.
“It’s too bad we didn’t get to celebrate that for Tina here in Houston, where she scored so many of those points,” King said. Too bad, indeed. Taurasi will go down as one of the greatest to play the game. She also has helped change the game.
Hopefully, for the sake of the WNBA and its fans, she can also help grow the game.