As Teresa Weatherspoon charts a new future for the Chicago Sky, she brings a connection to the WNBA’s beginning
When the WNBA played its inaugural game at the Forum in Inglewood, Calif., on June 21, 1997, excitement was high and people around the league were anxious.
With a crowd of 14,284 on hand to watch the New York Liberty take on the hometown Los Angeles Sparks, the Forum had to open the upper deck to accommodate the demand.
“I remember I threw up the first ball. It was the first game, so everyone was very nervous,” said Val Ackerman, the WNBA’s founding president and now commissioner of the Big East Conference. “It wasn’t a particularly well-played game. It was low-scoring. The players were jittery. The teams were playing together for the first time, so there was no real chemistry in any one team because they were all newly united as teammates.
“It was a crowning moment for the league because we got it done. We had this year of preparation. It was kind of exhausting getting to that point.”
The Liberty won that game 67-57. The WNBA had arrived. And with it, the league introduced Cynthia Cooper, Lisa Leslie, Rebecca Lobo, Sheryl Swoopes, Tina Thompson and Teresa Weatherspoon.
Twenty-six years after stepping on the court in LA for the Liberty, Weatherspoon found herself experiencing another first day. She had just been officially introduced as the seventh head coach of the Chicago Sky, and we were sitting
