American Basketball League
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5
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3
EPISODES
3
PODCASTS
Search complete. 5 mentions across 3 episodes found for "American Basketball League".
Sep 30, 2026
Tony KornheiserHOST
The Comets, of course, yes, are due to be revived by the relocation of the Connecticut Sun.
Tony KornheiserHOST
Now, what may be throwing you and Nigel off is that there was a Connecticut team, the Hartford-based New England Blizzard, which was a charter member of the American Basketball League, which started playing before the WNBA in 1996, before folding in 1998.
Tony KornheiserHOST
That team did draft Rebecca Lobo, but she never signed with them, opting to join the New York Liberty when the WNBA began play the following year.
Tony KornheiserHOST
Incidentally, the Blizzard did have former UConn star, uh, Jennifer Rizzotti, or Rizzotti, who is now the president of the Connecticut Sun and is moving with the team to Houston, where she also played in 1999 and 2000.
Tamron SpruillGUEST
It was very commonplace for women to have to go through kind of like a modeling course and makeup lessons and all of these things to amplify that side instead of just letting them play ball.
Tamron SpruillGUEST
And the WNBA came out of the 96 Olympics, and Bay Area founders Gary Cavalli and a team of others also wanted to start a league, the ABL, American Basketball League.
Tamron SpruillGUEST
And they were so intentional about that name because they did not want to put women in the title.
Tamron SpruillGUEST
They wanted to create a league where there was a traditional schedule similar to the NBA and that the women were paid more.
Alexis MadrigalHOST
I could maybe join the votaries after that.
Alexis MadrigalHOST
Let's talk a little bit about the coach, Natalie Nakase.
Alexis MadrigalHOST
Maya, you wrote a substantial piece on sort of Japanese American basketball leagues going all the way back to sort of internment and kind of showing that sort of continuity up to coach Nakase.
Maya Goldberg-SaferGUEST
Yeah, I can talk about that.
Georgia Munro-CookGUEST
And then again, with the fandom, I think they have created this space of kind of like safety and a different form of fandom compared to the more traditional forms of male sport fandom.
Alison TyraHOST
So just coming back to the history of the league and its growth, because you did kind of touch on that in a few different ways, but I'm curious, why did it survive when the American Basketball League didn't? So this was a league that started basically at the same time, in 1996, but it had died out within a couple of years.
Alison TyraHOST
And so I'm not sure if that's because the WNBA has this NBA backing, or if there were other factors going on.
Alison TyraHOST
But how did it sort of start and evolve?