2 weeks ago
Fran Harris remembers a late-night meal successful Sacramento. Her Houston Comets squad had conscionable dispatched nan lowly Monarchs by 10 points. To celebrate, she and a fewer teammates, including Cynthia Cooper, Tammy Jackson and Kim Perrot, decided to drawback a bite. Cooper had scored 44 successful nan 25 July 1997 contest, and her talents dazzled moreover her meal companions.
“I said to Cynthia, ‘I conscionable cannot judge really awesome you’re playing – and I cognize really awesome you are!’” Harris tells nan Guardian. “And she goes, ‘I know!’ She was just, like, Yeah, I’m nan motherfucker! I was like, ‘You perfectly are!’”
But Cooper, an eventual two-time WNBA MVP and four-time champion, was not expected to beryllium nan league’s apical player. She’d played successful Europe for a number of seasons aft winning assemblage championships astatine USC successful nan mid-1980s. But erstwhile nan WNBA began successful nan summertime of 1997, she was already 34.
In fact, her full Houston Comets team, who would triumph nan league’s first title – arsenic good arsenic nan adjacent 3 – were predicted to decorativeness past by galore up of nan inaugural campaign. (They could get a chance to adhd to their tally: connected Wednesday nan WNBA confirmed a franchise will return to Houston successful 2027, 19 years aft nan original Comets folded.)
“They were very unimpressed pinch our roster for immoderate reason,” says Harris, now a tv expert for nan WNBA’s Dallas Wings. “When we publication that, we were like, ‘This crap is funny! That is hilarious.”
The Comets were an older squad erstwhile nan convention began. But property tin thief erstwhile it comes to winning trophies. And though nan Comets weren’t only comprised of vets – they boasted nan first-ever No 1 draught pick, Tina Thompson, and 26-year-old prima Sheryl Swoopes, who joined later successful nan play aft giving commencement to her son, Jordan – nan estimation was difficult to shake.
“People conscionable thought our squad was excessively aged to compete,” says Yolanda Moore, who was caller retired of assemblage astatine nan time, and a mother of two. “They thought nan title would beryllium betwixt New York and LA.”
When nan WNBA began, master women’s hoops was successful a precarious state. The WBL, nan first pro women’s convention successful nan US, started astir 20 years prior. But it folded wrong 3 years. After that, respective much leagues popped up, including nan ABL, which launched successful 1996. That year, nan US boasted an all-time Olympic team, and nan convention wanted to capitalize connected nan enthusiasm astir their golden medal.
But things didn’t spell to scheme for nan ABL. Harris, who had won a NCAA title successful 1986 pinch Texas, had heard astir nan ABL and was interested, but a erstwhile teammate moving arsenic a assemblage coach warned her against joining, pinch nan NBA getting fresh to motorboat nan WNBA.
Harris took note. The ABL, without big-money backing, folded aft 2 seasons.
Tryouts for nan Comets’ inaugural play kicked disconnected connected Mother’s Day weekend. “It was conscionable endurance of nan fittest,” says Moore. “It was a free-for-all. We did your basal three-man-wave – that benignant of stuff. But really we were conscionable put into teams and played basketball. And astatine nan extremity of each session, they would make cuts.”
The Comets’ first coach was Van Chancellor. A seasoned of nan assemblage ranks, he’d been Moore’s coach astatine Mississippi. Still, he told her that she had a “snowball’s chance successful hell” to make nan Comets, she says. Moore, who graduated pinch a grade successful journalism, initially wanted to beryllium “Robin Roberts Jr”. When she heard astir nan WNBA, though, she had to jump for it.
It was nary easy path. She’d fixed commencement to her 2nd kid that January and group speech her sneakers for 8 weeks. She’d had a analyzable pregnancy, involving surgery. “It was really tough,” she says. But someway she began moving retired again successful March. “Then I went to nan tryout successful May,” she says.
She besides didn’t perceive to her coach’s antagonistic attitude. Moore’s perseverance landed her a spot connected nan Comets’ believe team, and later 1 connected nan main roster.
Harris, who besides had to navigate challenges to make nan Comets, remembers nan squad being particularly accommodating to nan roster erstwhile it was set. They helped nan players get apartments and everything other they needed to settee into a caller city. The Comets were portion of nan Houston Rockets statement and shared accommodation pinch their NBA sibling.
“They were coming disconnected their world championships [in 1994 and 1995] pinch Clyde Drexler and Hakeem Olajuwon,” Harris says. “We trained astatine nan aforesaid spot wherever nan Rockets trained successful Westwood. We were for illustration ships passing done nan days pinch those guys.”
“They came to our games,” Moore says of Rockets players. “We didn’t consciousness for illustration nan step-kids.”
Comets players besides shared rooms pinch teammates connected nan roadworthy during that first season. Harris bunked pinch Tammy Jackson. (“We were for illustration family,” Harris says.) Moore roomed pinch Thompson. (“She had her ain routines, truthful I sewage to spot that up adjacent and personal!” Moore says pinch a laugh.)
Thinking backmost connected nan year, Harris vividly remembers nan Comets’ first regular-season game. It was connected nan roadworthy successful Cleveland pinch an charismatic attendance of 11,455. “It was sold out,” she says. “I was like: ‘Woah!’ The crowd for that infinitesimal was a large deal.”
In a way, Harris says, that full first twelvemonth was for illustration a dream. The WNBA marked nan first clip longtime women’s hoops stars could play against 1 different professionally successful nan US. “We had each played against each different successful college,” Harris says. “Now, present we were playing against each different successful a pro league. It was incredibly surreal.”
That nan players were fixed nan chance to show their skills successful nan WNBA was an honor, says Moore. But it was besides thing that demanded a large effort. The players wanted to triumph games, but they besides wanted nan convention to proceed into nan future.
“Not only were we trying to beryllium ourselves successful nan league,” says Moore, a chair subordinate successful her first play earlier blossoming into a apical backup center, “but we were women trying to beryllium ourselves to this sport, that we deserved to person this space. We were proving that this was our time.”
And nary 1 embodied that for illustration Cooper.
“You would spell to practice,” Moore continues, “and she’s already there. She’s already been location for, like, 2 hours, moving out. She would beryllium drenched successful sweat, having to alteration apparel conscionable to get ready for practice.”
Moore says that Cooper’s ascent – she was nan WNBA’s first MVP and first back-to-back MVP – astatine times fought pinch Swoopes’s fame. “Our squad was truthful competitive,” she says. In galore ways, Swoopes was nan look of nan WNBA. She was nan league’s first signee. She had her ain signature Nike shoe, unheard of for a woman’s hooper astatine nan time. Swoopes missed nan first six weeks aft giving birth, but she worked her measurement successful for nan last 9 games of nan regular season.
Cooper’s emergence and Swoopes’s precocious commencement created immoderate hostility wrong nan Comets. “It wasn’t thing that was hidden,” Moore says. “Everybody knew it was competition. It was, This is my team, nary this is my team, nary this is my team!”
Moore remembers squad officials calling meetings because Cooper had been nan starring scorer successful a fixed crippled but Swoopes sewage nan limelight successful nan adjacent day’s newspaper. “There was immoderate pettiness and a batch of ego erstwhile it came to that,” Moore says. “Understandably so, because they some had earned nan correct to beryllium successful that space.”
Those spats were thing compared pinch nan measurement nan Comets ran done nan convention successful 1997. (The trio of Cooper, Swoopes and Thompson would later beryllium known arsenic nan WNBA’s original “Big Three”.) Picked by galore to decorativeness successful nan basement, Houston vanished first successful nan Eastern Conference pinch a grounds of 18-10. Then came nan playoffs.
“I retrieve nan fatigue,” Harris says. “It was a condensed season. Even though you mightiness deliberation you shouldn’t beryllium that tired, you’re packing a batch of games into 100 days. And not for a batch of money! I deliberation my net for nan first twelvemonth was $15,000.”
The WNBA playoffs were particularly short that opening campaign. The Comets took advantage and hit nan Charlotte Sting 1-0 and past nan New York Liberty successful nan Finals 1-0.
“To make history and beryllium nan first squad to triumph nan WNBA title successful 1997 was perfectly incredible,” Harris says. “Of course, we were connected a high. Then Princess Diana dies.”
The Comets hit nan Liberty successful Houston connected 30 August 1997, and Diana was pronounced dormant nan adjacent time aft a car mishap successful Paris that near millions successful shock. “We were torn up astir that,” Moore says.
“We went from winning nan title – nan news went from elation to, like, What? To deflation,” Harris agrees.
Life and basketball, of course, must spell on. Shortly aft nan victory, Houston threw a parade for their victorious Comets. It was everything Moore and her compatriots could person hoped for.
“As a woman, arsenic a Black woman,” Moore says, “pursuing your dreams, pursuing your goals, contempt nan obstacles, contempt nan challenges – to beryllium embraced and celebrated, it conscionable seemed for illustration nan full metropolis unopen down and showed up for us.”
That wasn’t nan lawsuit everywhere.
“It wasn’t for illustration that successful Orlando wherever I went [in 1999],” Moore says. “But successful Houston, it was like, We want you here! What do you need?”
Indeed, Houston was simply nan correct spot for nan WNBA’s first champions to rise.
“That metropolis embraced each azygous subordinate from nan first man to nan 12th,” Moore says. “They were happy for america to beryllium there. They wanted america there. To triumph that first title for them – baby, that metropolis was electric!”
