New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Ackerman on Hall selection, WNBA, UConn’s ‘profound’ impact
Val Ackerman’s basketball life took her from the University of Virginia to the NBA offices, from leading the WNBA in its infancy to heading the current incarnation of the Big East.
The next stop: Springfield, site of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
Ackerman received word last week that she is part of the Class of 2021. She was in Springfield for the announcement Sunday, surrounded by present and future Hall of Famers and reflecting on 33 years in the business.
By Monday, she was still floating.
“The enormity of it is just starting to hit me,” Ackerman said. “I’m incredibly honored.”
Ackerman will be inducted in a class that includes Celtics greats Paul Pierce and Bill Russell — going in as a coach — along with Chris Webber, Ben Wallace, Villanova coach Jay Wright, and former WNBA star Lauren Jackson.
She’ll be inducted as a contributor, a fitting honor for the WNBA’s first president as the league celebrates its 25th season. No one was more pivotal in developing and nurturing the young league than Ackerman, who joined the NBA’s legal department in 1988 after working at Wall Street law firm for a few years.
In the early 1990s, the NBA began considering a women’s professional league. Ackerman, the exVirginia player with deep ties to the women’s game, help shape the decision.
“I knew the game,” Ackerman said. “I had credibility among the women’s basketball community, which was important. Men’s and women’s basketball are two different cultures. Some of us overlap, not a lot. But I think to have someone in the NBA who knew the women’s game and the people, because I was really connected.
“To the women’s basketball community, to have someone who understood their journey, being on the inside of the NBA was probably very helpful.”
The NBA created the WNBA in 1996, riding the wave of the Atlanta Olympics. The league appointed Ackerman as commissioner, a position she held until 2005. She was president when the league shifted a franchise from Orlando to Connecticut, capitalizing on the state’s passion for basketball.
Ackerman, who also led USA Basketball for three years after leaving the WNBA, became Big East commissioner in 2013.
Seven years later, UConn moved back to the Big East and Ackerman got reacquainted with a school she followed closely a few decades earlier.
“I can’t say enough about how important the success of UConn in the early ’90s was, for making (the WNBA) happen,” Ackerman said. “We were monitoring everything. We were keeping up with women’s college basketball, the women’s Final Four, ESPN interest, girls’ high school basketball was cresting.
“But that rivalry with Pat (Summitt) and Geno (Auriemma), the anticipation around their game every year, and the numbers they were starting to attract viewership-wise, the crowds … it really was one of the key factors in convincing (Commissioner David Stern) and the NBA and others who were working on this that the timing looked really good. The success of UConn was certainly a key factor in sort of transitioning women’s basketball to the modern age.”
Ackerman said the growth of Auriemma’s program can’t be understated when telling the story of the WNBA.
“It’s profound,” she said. “The fact that he’s been able to keep this going. And next year looks as good as ever with Paige (Bueckers) coming back. And by the way, no early entry into the WNBA. We didn’t allow it when the players’ unionized and we had our first bargaining session in ’99, we were not ready to take college kids and the union didn’t fight for it. That has remained the rule in the WNBA, no early entry.
“So, if you’re UConn and you get a great player like Paige Bueckers, she’s not leaving after a year like the one-and-done guys are on the men’s side. So it really does lock in good players ... For the most part, they’re locked in and then when you add to that, Azzi Fudd and others, it contributes to the dynasty effect.”