Forty-five years ago this April, the Women's Professional Basketball League played its final game. It lasted only three seasons, folded with little fanfare, and has been largely erased from the public memory. Yet the WBL, which ran from 1978 to 1981, created the first-ever professional women's basketball league in America and set the stage for everything that followed, including the WNBA.
The league started with eight teams in cities like Chicago, Houston, and Des Moines. Players traveled coast-to-coast through November to April seasons on buses built with plush seats, full carpet, and TVs. Among the rosters were 17 future Hall of Famers and nine Olympians. Nancy Lieberman, the point guard known as "Lady Magic," won Rookie of the Year in 1980-81. Ann Meyers became a three-time All-Star. Molly Bolin Kazmer, a shooting guard for the Iowa Cornets, averaged 32.8 points per game in her second season and shared co-MVP honors with Meyers.
The story of how Lieberman ended up in Dallas tells you everything about the scrappy, improvised nature of the operation. Nancy Nichols, the Diamonds' general manager, wanted to draft the American point guard. Coach Greg Williams preferred the 6-foot-5-inch Danish star Inge Nissen. The night before the 1980 draft in New York, Nichols took matters into her own hands. She wrote Lieberman's name on a piece of paper, used coat hangers to dangle it out her window to Williams's room one floor below, and called him to look outside for "signs from above." The next morning, with the team owner running late, the staff made their move. When the owner arrived just in time, he announced the Diamonds were drafting Nancy Lieberman. "I just put my head down," Nichols recalls with a laugh, "and was like, oh my gosh."
Kazmer became the league's first-ever signed player, inking a deal with the Iowa Cornets on June 30, 1978, in the Iowa governor's office. She would play all three seasons the league existed, setting scoring records and dropping 50-plus points multiple times. In one high school game on her 16th birthday, she scored 63 points.
The conditions were rough. Nichols remembers the Dallas Diamonds drawing 700 people on a good night in their first season, though by year three crowds swelled to 3,500. Kazmer recalls an emergency water landing after takeoff from New York when the plane's landing gear malfunctioned. She also remembers a "biblical flood" in Houston that forced the team to wade waist-deep through a parking lot before Game 2 of the WBL finals.
Yet players speak of the experience with deep affection. "I can't describe what it's like to be a pro without a league," Kazmer says. "We knew that we were pioneers, that we were the first, that we were making it happen. We took that responsibility very seriously."
The league had powerful allies. For the Diamonds' first home game, Nichols convinced her friend Martina Navratilova to toss the ceremonial jump ball. Navratilova agreed immediately. "I always try to do the right thing by supporting women in any endeavor," she says. The Dallas Cowboys, then America's Team, showed up with players taking courtside seats. Billie Jean King threw the ceremonial jump ball before a Chicago Hustle game in 1979 and became a major supporter. "The women of the WBL were the trailblazers of women's professional basketball," King says. "Without the WBL, there may not have been a WNBA."
The expansion was too aggressive. By the 1980-81 season, the league was hemorrhaging money. Teams came and went. "We knew the league was really struggling," Nichols says. "It probably expanded too much." The Nebraska Wranglers defeated the Dallas Diamonds 3-2 to win the 1981 championship in the league's final game on April 20.
After the WBL folded, other leagues emerged, including the WABA and WBA. The ABL started in 1996 and ran for a few years before the WNBA launched in 1997. Today women's basketball thrives with household names and multiple professional leagues, including the newly created Unrivaled.
But the pioneers have been largely forgotten. Nichols describes the WBL as having "faded into the background of sports history." Liz Galloway McQuitter, known as "The Bandit" for her defense, and others are working through the Legends of the Ball organization to preserve the league's memory. A documentary is in the works. Kazmer has recently been attending WNBA and Unrivaled events to share her story. "It's been a real uphill battle," Nichols says. "How do you know how far you came if you don't know where it started?" Kazmer asks.
Author James Rodriguez: "The WBL deserves more than a footnote, and it's past time these pioneers got their due."
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