WNBA

CTL-E-7070 · Organization · other · 1996–present

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-07942 · provenance: build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-7070.

The Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) is the premier professional women's basketball league in the United States. On April 24, 1996, the NBA Board of Governors approved the league's creation, and women's basketball announced itself with the slogan "We Got Next," fronted by Rebecca Lobo, Lisa Leslie, and Sheryl Swoopes on the heels of the 1996 U.S. Olympic team's gold-medal run. Val Ackerman served as the league's first president, Swoopes became its first signed player on October 23, 1996, and eight inaugural franchises were announced that month: the Charlotte Sting, Cleveland Rockers, Houston Comets, and New York Liberty in the East, and the Los Angeles Sparks, Phoenix Mercury, Sacramento Monarchs, and Utah Starzz in the West. Play began on June 21, 1997, with the New York Liberty visiting the Los Angeles Sparks; that August the Houston Comets — built around the league's first MVP, Cynthia Cooper — defeated New York 65–51 to become the first WNBA champions, the first of four consecutive Houston titles. Tina Thompson, taken by Houston in the inaugural draft, was the league's first No. 1 draft pick. The league has since grown through expansion, contraction, and relocation into the modern twelve-team competition whose regular season runs from May into the fall.

The record

• Also known as: Women's National Basketball Association

Notes

NOT in the Afro American Encyclopedia of Sports roster v2 — roster-addition proposal (league, Basketball) for the AAES intake; no SPE id invented. TYPING: Organization / subtype 'other'. Curator's Judgment (DRAFT): The league record is deliberately scoped to the founding era in this build — the 1996–97 launch is the documentary spine ('We Got Next,' the original eight, the Comets' first title) — and later growth is summarized in a single closing line rather than narrated season by season. PHOTO: the WNBA logo file on Commons was NOT cleared — the mark is trademarked league property and the brief's rule is that logos land HELD, not forced; the cleared asset instead depicts league play (Mystics vs. Wings, 2021), the standard depiction for a league record.

Referenced by

• Chicago Sky — member of → this record

Sources

• WNBA. "WNBA History Timeline." wnba.com. Accessed 2026-11-03. (primary source · build store)
• Wikipedia. "Women's National Basketball Association." Accessed 2026-11-03. (build store)
• Mitchell, Ryan. "History of WNBA." hoopsbasket.com, May 17, 2021. Accessed 2026-11-03. (build store)

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Record CTL-E-7070 · Combined Graph record U-07942 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 3 sources · 1 mapped relationship.
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Researched and maintained by the CultureTechLens research program · CultureTechLens Combined Graph, Release 2026-11-04. Corrections are public: the corrections log.

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