Hoops and Dreams

CARRIE LYELL SHOOTS SOME HOOPS WITH PLAYERS PAST AND PRESENT TO CELEBRATE 20 YEARS OF MOVING THE BALL FORWARD IN THE US WOMEN’S NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION

The year is 1997, and on a cloudy June evening, New York Liberty and Los Angeles Sparks are anxiously preparing to tip off inside the Great Western Forum in Inglewood, California, in the first ever game of the WNBA.

“We were nervous as hell,” says Teresa “T-Spoon” Weatherspoon, New York Liberty’s Director of Player Development and one of the players on the court that night.

Teresa’s reminiscing about that first game all those years ago at the same time as helping me work on my jump shot, despite carrying a knee injury. “Keep that elbow in. That’s it… You got it!” she says with a big grin, so encouraging that I start to think I could make it as a basketball player. “Did you win?” I ask. She flashes me another smile. “We went in that building and got ‘em.”

The Liberty’s 67-57 win against the Sparks that night set in motion a progressive league that has continued to lead the way for women’s sports, and is this year celebrating 20 years of “moving the ball forward”. But its future was never certain.“Everybody said that this was not going to last for five years,” Teresa says, throwing another ball my way. “They said, ‘you won’t get 5,000 people in the stands, no way possible’. Radio stations, TV stations saying, ‘This is not going to work, this is a summer league, they can’t fight with the NBA’.”

It wasn’t the first time Teresa had been told no. “When I was an eighth grader, I was told I would never be great at playing this game of basketball.” But that was only motivation for the tenacious Texan, who in a playing career spanning more than 20 years won countless awards and honours, and scored possibly the most memorable basket in WNBA history. Look it up on YouTube; it’s incredible.