Inside the WNBA’s inaugural game between Liberty, Sparks in 1997

As the sun rose on the longest day of 1997, Val Ackerman felt flooded with excitement and nerves. It was the Summer Solstice — Saturday, June 21 — and the inaugural game of the new women’s pro basketball league, the WNBA, was tipping off that day at the Great Western Forum in Inglewood, California.

“Some of it is a blur,” Ackerman, the first president of the WNBA, told ESPN last week. “I’m sure we got there really early.”

The New York Liberty and Los Angeles Sparks, two of the new league’s eight teams, were meeting. Sparks center Lisa Leslie and Liberty center Rebecca Lobo, two of the first three players who had signed with the WNBA, were squaring off in the frontcourt.

Leslie won the opening tip over New York’s Kym Hampton, Los Angeles’ Penny Toler scored the first basket, and the Liberty won 67-57 as history was made.

Nowadays, the WNBA features the best players in the world and is experiencing exponential growth in viewership, attendance and media deals. The league has added three expansion teams in the past two seasons, with three more on the way by 2030. But in 1997, nothing was guaranteed. Nerves and exhaustion factored into what is admittedly remembered as a sloppy debut on court.

Ackerman, Leslie and Lobo brought different perspectives and experiences into that first WNBA game. As the league celebrates its 30th season this year — and ahead of the two teams meeting again Sunday (8 p.m. ET, ESPN) in Los Angeles on the anniversary — we look back with them at that historic day.

Leslie: ‘Better basketball had to be played’

Leslie is as “L.A.” as it gets: born in Compton, California, went to high school in Inglewood, graduated from USC. When her collegiate career ended in 1994, there was no pro basketball opportunity for women in the United States, and she had little interest in playing overseas. But in 1995, the USA Basketball tour to prepare for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics started, and Leslie was a prominent part of Team USA. She led the Americans with 29 points in winning the gold medal game in August 1996.

Though Leslie, Lobo and Sheryl Swoopes had committed to the WNBA, the other U.S. Olympic team members had signed with the new American Basketball League, which began its first season in the fall of 1996 (but folded early in its third season in 1998).

By the time the WNBA launched in June 1997, Leslie had been away from competitive basketball for nearly a year. She was a few weeks from turning 25 and had been focused on modeling and acting. She didn’t have many expectations for the WNBA, which would play in the summer months.

“The idea of really becoming a professional basketball player in our country — I don’t think I really got the understanding of it, even though I signed on to do it,” Leslie told ESPN. “I will never lie about my first season in the WNBA. I was not ready.”

For many months leading up to the inaugural game, being in the WNBA for Leslie, Lobo and Swoopes meant doing photo shoots and appearances to promote the league, as no other players were yet involved. But that changed pretty suddenly.

“There’s a draft, teams, we have practice, we’re on TV. Like, June 21 — everything came so quickly, I wasn’t prepared basketball-wise,” Leslie said. “I had not been lifting weights. I was trying to model and fit into dresses. I just remember thinking like, ‘This is going to be a real s— show for me.'”

The morning of the game, Leslie arrived at the Forum early for more photo shoots and interviews.

“If anybody would’ve known how much stuff we did on the day of that game … I feel like I was running on fumes,” Leslie said. “I was exhausted before we started.”

Leslie, who went on to win two WNBA championships, three league MVP awards and four Olympic gold medals as one of the greatest players in women’s basketball history, doesn’t grade herself or the Sparks well on that first game. She finished with 16 points on 6-of-17 shooting and 14 rebounds in the loss.

“We loved it. We loved every moment. We gave it our all,” Leslie said. “But we realized we had to get better. Better basketball had to be played.

“I could not conceptually understand the magnitude of what the WNBA was literally until the first day.”

Ackerman: ‘It really had all come to life’

Ackerman, who played collegiately at Virginia, had worked for the NBA since 1988 and was appointed to USA Basketball’s Board of Directors in 1989. Conversations with NBA commissioner David Stern about the potential of a women’s league happened regularly but often informally. He would walk by her office, ask a question, nod and move on.

The idea was brewing for a long time, and when the NBA sponsored USA Basketball’s pre-Olympic tour for the women in 1995-96, it was like “a laboratory to test the interest in the women’s game,” Ackerman said.

The ABL would have its first season finished before the WNBA began and had signed many top players. But Ackerman stayed focused on the WNBA, believing it had a better long-term strategic plan and resources.

“Between [the Atlanta Olympics] and that opening day, it was a sprint,” Ackerman said. “It was 10 months, but that was a very short period of time with an ever-growing to-do list. It all had to come together: the teams, the arenas, the schedule, television contracts, the ball, the uniforms, the players, the coaches, the referees — all of these things that had never been done before had to be done for the first time.”

“There isn’t a Season 30 without a Day 1. And this was the Day 1.”

Rebecca Lobo

Not everything went smoothly. Recording artist Jeffrey Osborne was supposed to sing the national anthem but got stuck in traffic and didn’t arrive in time.

“We had to use this scratchy recording of the anthem,” Ackerman said. “I also remember I had gotten a specific outfit for the day. I hired a personal shopper who chose it for me. I thought since I was going to be on TV now, I had to meet the moment.”

And as for the game?

“I remember the fans being so excited and passionate. Some people were even crying,” Ackerman said.

“I remember that it was a really sloppily played game.”

That wasn’t surprising. The teams were new and still learning about each other. New York shot 43.3% from the field, and the Sparks 30.9; the teams combined for 44 turnovers.

With 14,284 fans in attendance, including celebrities such as Lakers legend Magic Johnson and actor/director Penny Marshall, the environment was bigger than most of the players were expecting.

“The players were just understandably very nervous,” said Ackerman, who served as WNBA president through the 2004 season. “I remember [Sparks guard] Penny Toler making the first shot in WNBA history. And the game got a really big television rating because there had been so much anticipation for it with the promotion from the NBA and NBC.

“When the game was over, there was a mix of relief, exhaustion and excitement. It was like it really had all come to life. But then you knew you couldn’t really dwell on it, you just had to keep going. It was the first season, and we had a lot to do to get through the year.”

Lobo: ‘Gratitude’ for being part of Day 1

For Lobo, the whirlwind had been spinning since her senior season at UConn, when the Huskies had gone 35-0 and won the 1995 NCAA championship. She had become one of the most recognized women athletes in the country. The USA Basketball tour, the Atlanta Olympics and the WNBA promotional schedule had kept her busy, and at 23, she was eager to start her pro basketball career.

“I think our teams were as ready as you could be,” Lobo told ESPN. “None of these players had really played together before. You’d been training for two, three weeks maybe. And then, there’s all this hype.”

Lobo, who is a women’s basketball analyst for ESPN, grew up in Massachusetts as a Celtics fan, watching all the rivalry matchups with the Lakers. Riding the Liberty’s team bus from the airport to the hotel in Los Angeles, she saw a billboard alongside the highway with pictures of herself and Leslie, along with the “We Got Next” slogan advertising the upcoming game.

It all hit her: She would be playing in the same Great Western Forum that the Celtics and Lakers had played in. She wasn’t watching anymore. She was part of the show and already loved the rest of the cast.

Liberty players such as Hampton, Sue Wicks and Teresa Weatherspoon were older and had played overseas. Though Lobo, at times, felt isolated on Team USA because she was the youngest, she always felt embraced by the Liberty’s vets.

Before the first game, the Liberty were going over their defensive assignments, and coach Nancy Darsch told Lobo she would be guarding Leslie.

“Kym Hampton said, ‘Coach, let me take Lisa so that Rebecca can focus more on offense and doesn’t have to worry about it on defense,'” Lobo remembered. “And I was just like, ‘OK, Kym!’ With her long arms and all her experience overseas. Those were the kind of teammates that I had. It was so fun. Such a great group.”

Lobo finished with 16 points and six rebounds for the victorious Liberty. Two serious knee injuries cut short her WNBA career to just five full seasons, but Lobo was there when it all started.

“I think of that sometimes with this incredible gratitude and a different sort of perspective that you can only have with time,” Lobo said. “There isn’t a Season 30 without a Day 1. And this was the Day 1.”

ESPN’s Olivia Powers and Laura Ramirez contributed to this report.