Dream Season Ticket Holder Event at Georgia Tech

Holdsclaw and Orender at tonight's game. From @chold1 on Twitter.

There was a STH event at tonight's Georgia Tech-Oregon game. A lot of WNBA connections there. Paul Westhead was coaching the Oregon Ducks - you might remember him as the coach of the 2007 WNBA Champion Phoenix Mercury if you don't follow men's basketball.

Also at the event were WNBA President Donna Orender, the new Dream owner Kathy Betty, and Chamique Holdsclaw. Since I've had the chance to meet both President Orender and The Claw, I wanted to track down Betty - but she was always where I wasn't. Dang.

Betty gave a speech at halftime. The first advice I'd give the owner is to hold the microphone closer to your mouth - coliseum acoustics don't pick up soft-spoken sound that well.

As you can guess, I was at the game. I'm exhausted. This will probably be the last blog post tonight.

Orender Bails...IN

According to Mechelle Voepel at ESPN2, Donna Orender has declined the opportunity to move on to the LPGA:

"I believe in the promise of what everyone thought this league could be when it started 13 seasons ago, and it's going to continue to grow," Orender said Sunday. "The impact basketball has on young girls and the society at large is incredible. I've invested a lot of time in this, and have worked with really great people. I want to keep being part of that growth."

In addition, some information is provided about possible future changes in how the best-of-three rounds will be organized.

Orender Interviews for LPGA Position

From Golf Digest:

So who fits the bill as golf insiders with business experience? The two names getting the most juice are Donna Orender (shown on the left alongside Amy Mickelson last week at the Samsung World Championship), president of the WNBA and a former VP with the PGA Tour who was involved in TV negotiations there, and Pete Bevacqua, the Chief Business Officer of the USGA who has helped direct a streamlining of the operation at golf's governing body. According to sources, both have been interviewed by Spencer Stuart and both have some important supporters backing their candidacies. Both also have roots in golf and strong business experience.

So Orender has actually interviewed with the LPGA. Does this mean that she wants out of her job, or that she just wants an even better job?

The post I wrote early this year might have some importance if Orender leaves her post as WNBA president. See the bottom paragraphs.

(Maybe Gary Cavalli should be placed on speed dial?)

The Five Rules for League Survival

In 1981, William "Bill" Haarlow, retired vice president of AT&T, proposed to restructure the then-still-surviving Women's Professional Basketball League (WBL). In 1981, the league was in trouble and he proposed to become the new commissioner of the WBL. In his proposal, he stated five rules which he thought the WBL had failed to follow - rules which impeded its chances for survival.

The rules are all direct quotes from Haarlow and come from "Mad Seasons: The Story of the First Women's Professional Basketball League".

1. A commitment to strong centralized league leadership is required. League leaders must not be intimidated from bold action. There must be a clearly defined #1 executive or executive committee who has power and room to maneuver and the leadership must provide realistic and continual reappraisal of long term growth objectives and strategy.

2. Markets must be selected based on potential. There must be a determination of the criteria that is most likely to influence the league's appeal and the economics of a franchise, i. e. size and growth of market, degree of saturation by other sports, target audience, operating cost, and previous experience with an attitude toward other leagues or teams. The league must avoid expanding into new markets at the expense of the talent pool.

3. There must be a commitment of balanced ownership resources. The league must balance the urgency to close a franchise sale against the commitment by new owners of capital to team and market development. Women's basketball has to confront building primary demand which is a costly marketing proposition that requires knowledgeable and well-funded programs. There should be a five-year building plan and owners with the same perspective and building power should be attracted.

4. The league must build and sustain the support as a dynamic entertainment medium. There must be an evaluation of alternative formats and rules to make the sport appealing to the widest range of potential patrons and viewers. For a new sport, the live experience is critical to building viewership for ultimate video revenue.

5. Non-gate sources of revenue should be built. A commitment must be made to professional league headquarters marketing services, video strategy and negotiation, licensing and advertiser-sponsor development. This function must be undertaken gradually as the sport develops and grows.


His proposal to become commissioner was rejected. Marhsall Geller, the owner of the San Francisco Pioneers, thought that a new commissioner was a cosmetic solution to a league whose very survival was almost day-to-day. Geller might have been right. In September 1981, Dallas Diamonds president Dave Almstead made the public statement that the league was finished. The league still had some life in it, but he was essentially right - the 1980-81 season was the final season of the WBL.

However, Haarlow's rules were not bad rules. Has the WNBA managed to avoid the pitfalls identified by Haarlow? Let's look at the reign of WNBA president Donna Orender in particular. Orender became WNBA president in 2005.

Is Orender a strong president with freedom to move around? I believe that the answer is "yes". If there are owner/president clashes, I've not heard of them so far. (With one exception, stated later.) Granted, the open secret of the WNBA is that NBA Commissioner David Stern provides finanical support, and one would assume, guidance. However, Orender and Stern appear to be on the same page. No one has accused David Stern of being hemmed in by owners who are too independent and contentious, and the problem doesn't seem to exist in the WNBA.

How have markets been assigned? In only two instances in Orender's career has she been in charge of opening up new territory for the WNBA: the Chicago Sky in 2006 and the Atlanta Dream in 2008.

Chicago was the third-largest media market in the United States and the largest American inland market. Chicago, however, had a slight problem with saturation from other sports. The Cubs, White Sox, Bears and Bulls were all big in Chicago, and it would be hard for a WNBA franchise to draw attention away from "big name" sports. However, Chicago had hosted an American Basketball League franchise - the Condors - which appeared to be fairly solvent in the brief number of games it played in the 1998-99 season. Clearly, there was some interest in women's college basketball in Chicago.

As for Atlanta, Atlanta was a major cable programming center and was the 7th (or 8th) largest media market in the United States. Atlanta, too, once had an ABL franchise - the Atlanta Glory - but that franchise folded at the end of the 1997-98 season. The University of Georgia had a great women's basketball team, but even that team was smothered by the popularity of University of Georgia men's sports - even successful pro teams like the Atlanta Braves had trouble filling seats sometimes, but never the Bulldogs. One person stated that Georgia sports was "(Bulldogs) football, spring football, football recruiting, and the Gymdogs". (The U of G gymnastics team.) In terms of professional sports, however, loyalties to pro teams were much weaker in Atlanta than they were in Chicago.

Looking at either city, one could hardly claim that Orender has chosen poor locations for the expansion of the WNBA. Over-expansion has not been an issue, with the size of the league staying between 13 and 14 teams during her term.

In terms of ownership, there have been several changes including the Storm, Sparks, and Comets. If any mistakes were made in Orender's management of the WNBA, granting Hilton Koch the ownership of the Houston Comets would have to be the most prominent. Koch was already claiming finanical problems in his first year, and my understanding is that Koch and the league clashed over financing. His tenure proved to be such a financial disaster that the Comets were forced to fold. Koch's tenure was the last major ownership change in the WNBA - William Davidson of the Shock passed away but his family now own the franchise - and time will tell if Orender can not only find owners, but find owners with both the money and the patience to build a league and make the five-year investment mentioned by Haarlow.

In terms of the live experience, clearly, the league has done the best that it can. Arenas are professional and clean, and there are lots of in-game entertainments, activities and diversions. As for rule changes that might make the game more exciting, the WNBA is loathe to experiment. Rules, such as say, forbidding the coach to stop game action with a timeout (in international play, timeouts must be reported to the scorers table and only come into effect with a stoppage of play), have simply not been considered.

Why the WNBA has not experimented with rule changes that might make the game more exciting is uncertain. It could be that the WNBA is already wary enough from the bashing of the sports media, some of whom act more like sexist louts than the Gatekeepers of the Fourth Estate. Significant rules changes might inadvertantly support the argument from ignorance that the WNBA is not "real basketball". Furthermore, fans might want the WNBA to mirror the NBA's rules or international rules as clearly as possible - even thought this might adversely affect the quality of the game - in the belief that adherence to conventional rules give the WNBA gravitas.

As for sponsorship and alternative forms of revenue, the WNBA has made galloping strides in 2009 - partly out of necessity. In order to find a source of revenue, the WNBA has sold the naming rights to jerseys in Phoenix and Los Angeles, and a third team might follow. The WNBA has embraced social media and now broadcasts over 95 percent of their games on the internet. Increased web hits correlate with the potential of attracting advertisers.

My conclusion is that if one is looking at Haarlow's guidelines, one can argue that President Orender and the WNBA are doing things right. If the WNBA falters like the WBL faltered, it will not be because of poor management.

Orender Being Talked Up as LPGA Commissioner - Interns' Feelings Hurt by Donna

With Carolyn Bivens, the commissioner of the LPGA, supposedly out the door all sort of names real and imagined have been suggested to fill the spot by Larry Bohannan of the Desert Sun. Among those is our own WNBA President Donna Orender.

Orender spent 17 years with the PGA and was their Senior Vice President of Strategic Development. If she were to leave, despite the fact that some fans don't think Orender is honest, it would be a serious blow to the league. The talk would be that Orender was jumping a sinking ship.

Meanwhile, it looks like someone's been editing the Wikipedia entry on Donna Orender at Wikipedia:

In the summer of 2008, during marketing meetings for the new WNBA advertising campaign-- featuring the "Expect Great" motto-- Orender was purportedly seen yelling and degrading several interns who helped work on the project. Other attendees noted her "outright rudeness" during the presentation and bursts of irrationality.

Ouch. The IP address - 24.3.244.95 - comes out of Comcast Cable in New Jersey. What, did someone get their feelings hurt by Donna? Hey, toughen up interns.

Major Announcement on the Way From WNBA Commish?

This is from Phoenix Stan's Bright Side of the Sun blog. The article is about Nicole Ohlde, but there's a little kernel of information at the bottom.


"Almost forgot...word is that there will be another "major announcement" involving the WNBA commish this time coming out of the Connecticut Sun."

Very interrrrresting. If it's announced on a Friday, it will probably be bad news - if on a Monday, probably good news.

The LifeLock Mercury?

With WNBA fans going nuts trying to figure out the major announcement coming from both NBA Commissioner David Stern and WNBA President Donna Orender on Monday at 9 am regarding the Phoenix Mercury, longtime WNBA fan pilight has discovered a major clue.

First, note that the Phoenix site is on "lock down". Look at the locking device which you can see at the website:



It sort of looks like a little person with a head and legs, doesn't it. Now, look at the following unnamed corporate logo:



BINGO. We have a match. (*)


So which corporation does the person-lock logo belong to? It belongs to a company callled LifeLock. LifeLock has a sort of bumpy history, but they're in their fourth year of existence. They are based in Tempe, Arizona.

Bleacher Report has already posted the LifeLock connection.

My conclusion: LifeLock is going to be involved with the Phoenix Mercury in a "game changing" way, one so big that it's beyond the ordinary story of a corporate entity acquiring a company. My most recent guess is that the Phoenix Mercury will either:

a) be the first WNBA team to have its name changed to that of the sponsor, to be officially known as the LifeLock Phoenix Mercury or some variation thereof, or
b) be the first WNBA team to wear the sponsor's logo on its journey, or
c) possibly both.

My guess is "c". This is something that is done in Europe all the time - all of the teams there are sponsored by corporations, and wearing corporate logos on the jersey is simply a given. The name of the team usually reflects the corporate name.

Undoubtedly, David Stern is there to give his official and public blessing to this project, as a way of telling potential sponsors, "I, David Stern, approve of this direction." ("And, if you want to sponsor an NBA team, please bring a truckful of money with you. Gracias.")

If this happens, the Pleasant Dreams blog will give its blessing as well. If Lifelock is going to help out the Mercury, I'm going to help out Lifelock. I'll call the team the "Lifelock Mercury" or somesuch. Corporate sponsors who want to sponsor the Pleasant Dreams blog know where to write.



(*) Either that, or the graphic designer for the Mercury's lockdown page is horribly lazy and is just grabbing logos and recycling them. In which case she might be looking for a new job soon. According to other sources, the Suns/Mercury web design team is very competent, so I only give a 1 % chance of this being the explanation.

Shay Doron to the Sparks?

So that's how you spell Donna Orender in Hebrew.

The Washington Jewish Week talks to WNBA President Donna Orender as to whether Shay Doron will return to the WNBA:

The decision about 2009 will be coming soon, but Orender made her thoughts known in a recent video that's on Doron's Web site: "It's her choice. I know there's a team that spoken to me about her for this coming year. I'm not sure that's her priorty. I want to say she's an incredibly accomplished athlete, a great basketball player."

The video is right here, by the way.

Rumors are that the Los Angeles Sparks are the team that's interested, and Doron would fit well with them. She never really got a chance to play or show much of anything in New York, but her style of play would go nicely with the Los Angeles team.

Something tells me that she would be welcome back in New York at the very least.

Dog Bites Orender

An amusing note from the Hartford Courant writeup of the Sun's loss to the Silver Stars yesterday:

WNBA president Donna Orender was at the game. She visited the Sun locker room after but may have wished she hadn't when [Asjha] Jones' puggle puppy nipped her.

Sources from the Connecticut Sun believe that the dog will be okay.

2008/28 - Sun 98, Dream 72

It was time for the Dream to come back to Philips Arena. God knows, I'd waited long enough. Hearing that I-85 would be blocked by road construction, I schemed to find an alternate route to the Arena. And of course, with every new shortcut, there are...glitches. Glitches that must have literally taken me ten miles out of my way, glitches that would have made me better off taking I-85 south as I had originally planned.

It was a bitter sweet homecoming. Of course, we'd play the best team in the East and of course, we'd get flattened. Here are my thoughts regarding the game:

1) I had been told that the Atlanta Dream would be wearing pink jerseys. The pink jerseys were to be in honor of breast cancer survival. The Dream players would wear pink T-shirts in warmups, but I never saw any pink jerseys - and if those jerseys were pink, I need to get my eyes examined. That pink looked suspiciously like "home team white".

2) The sellout crowd was serenaded by the Shades of Pink Breast Cancer Survivors Mass Choir who sang the National Anthem. Breast cancer survivors would be honored several times tonight.

3) We were also treated to "Olympic Gold Medalist" Mike Thibault (as he was announced). I mean, okay, I'm sure he worked for that gold medal, but I think that Anne Donovan and an all-star team of players had more to do with gold than Thibault did.

4) There would be no Nikki Teasley. We would later learn that Teasley is still five-ten pounds above her playing weight. As it turned out, she wouldn't play the next game, either. It might be a chimeric hope to see Nikki Teasley in a Dream uniform during the 2008 season.

5) TIPOFF. Once again, we had another lineup. Bales, Castro Marques, De Souza, Latta and Lennox. This lineup seemed to work pretty nicely -- at first, anyway. Izi and Erika connected for inside shots so smoothly that I actually hoped that we would win this one. We led! Six to two!

6) Then, reality sat in. Asjha Jones began to turn on the power and the Sun scored the next fifteen points. From 6-2 to 17-6. And once again, it would be Coach Meadors calling the first timeout.

7) Both sides looked like they wanted to make an impression in that first quarter. The basketball was pretty damn good.

However, there were a few glitches here and there. Latta was fouled early on, and she made such a big deal that Ivory will be playing Ophelia in a Broadway revival of "Hamlet". Sun token cute girl Erin Phillips turned and collided with Sandrine Gruda.

The following table is included.



8) At the end of one, we were down 26-21. We looked really good. And then...Kasha Terry was unleashed.

A low rumble was heard from miles away. This was Atlanta Dream Message Board poster "jaye" swearing up a storm. Kasha did what Kasha does best, namely pick up personal fouls with no benefit incurred. Forty-two seconds in, she had two personal fouls.

I swear, we have to get rid of Kasha Terry in the off-season.

9) Everyone gave it their all in the first quarter, and both sides got tired. The referees lept in. Olympic Gold Medalist Mike Thibault earned a gold-medal technical arguing over a Barbara Turner offensive foul.

10) With an inexplicable Full Media Time Out, a microphone was given to a breast cancer survivor. She tended to ramble on a bit, but hey, if you have breast cancer you have to right to say whatever the hell you want to in a microphone.

11) Why didn't Latta start the second quarter? I'd like to know the answer to that one.

12) Atlanta was a tuna can, and the Sun were an electric can opener. They opened us up pretty good. They extended the lead to a 52-31 lead and there was a real danger of a blowout. The problem was that no matter how well we were shooting, the Sun was shooting better. We were shooting 43 percent but the Sun were shooting almost sixty. This game could in no way, shape or form be called a "defensive struggle".

13) By halftime, Tamika Whitmore had 16 points. Lindsay Whalen didn't have any points but she had four assists. The Sun was shooting 59.5 percent. Problem: We had sent the Sun to the free throw line 11 times. Furtermore, the Sun had 15 assists at halftime to our four.

13a) Assists by Izi Castro Marques at halftime: four.
Assists by rest of Dream: zero.

14) R & B sensation Jarvis performed at halftime. He sang "Pretty Girl" at a decibel level so high it deafened Canadian geese at 40,000 feet.

15) The breast cancer survivors were announced individually during halftime. I thought that was a class act on account of the Dream.

16) NOW I figured out where the pink jersey went. WNBA President Donna Orender got it!

Interesting trivia. I didn't know that Donna Orender actually played pro basketball herself.



This is when Donna (Geils) Orender played for the New Jersey Gems of the Women's Pro Basketball League. She was one of twenty players to play all three seasons of the WPBL. She was a guard.

Bill Bolen, president of the Atlanta Dream, presented her with the jersey. I suspect that this plan was to sign Orender to a contract. Hey, the Shock signed Lady Magic, and how much worse off could we be with Donna O? We'd get every refs call you could think of. Unfortunately, Donna turned him down.

17) The person in the audience we should have signed was this guy.



Yeah. Dr. J. He was there. The crowd went nuts. (Can you imagine Alison Bales, Kit Feenstra, Erika De Souza, Tamera Young and Julius Erving on the court?)

18) The third quarter was the Asjha Jones show. It's pronounced "ASIA". I know it's pronounced Asia because the announcer pronounced her name shot after shot after shot. The Dream would score 16 points in the third quarter, whereas Asjha "ASIA" Jones would score 12 points against us all by herself.

19) Finally, with no one else to turn to, Coach Meadors put in Katie Feenstra. Feenstra kept the crowd from losing interest in the bottom of the third quarter all by herself. She looked pretty good out there. (She'd score 13 points in this game, second only to Betty Lennox in points tonight.)

20) Kristin Haynie was called for a foul, and Coach Meadors exchanged a few words with one of the refs. I thought she was going to rack up a technical, fer sure.

21) That didn't happen, but Meadors must have rubbed a raw nerve. As the fourth started off, Tamika Whitmore was called for a technical foul. She must have called the ref something pretty nasty, because I didn't even hear them exchange words. She must have called the ref the magic baseball word, the one that begins with "m", ends with "r", is twelve letters long and ends with an instant ejection.

22) Ivory Latta was named Favorite Dream Player during a promotion where those in attendance could text the name of their favorite players. Latta and a lucky fan won a Pink Blackberry Curve.

23) I assume WNBA fans lean to the left in general. One of the breast cancer survivors was wearing an Obama T-shirt. I've seen all kinds of Obama wear, but I haven't seen a sign of a McCain logo. Tell The Maverick to show up at a Dream game. It would probably get him a few votes; WNBA fans are very forgiving.

24) SCARY MOMENT: Lindsay Whalen went down to the floor in the fourth quarter and stayed there. As they dragged her back to the bench, a fan stood up behind the Connecticut bench. She was wearing a Whalen jersey and a colored Afro wig. After the game, I bumped into the woman and asked if anything was wrong. "I hope not," was her answer. (It turned out Whalen suffered an ankle sprain.)

25) Near the end of the game, with 1:16 left and the score 97-72 Sun, Kasha Terry was substituted for Jennifer Lacy.

With 1:08 left, Terry picked up her fourth foul. (I heard someone swearing off in the distance.)

(* * *)

Okay, what do we say? It seemed that no matter what we did, the Sun could do more of it and better. Let's look at the boxscore:

Shooting percentage: We broke 40 percent. Usually, we win or have a good shot at winning when we break forty percent. The problem was that the Sun was shooting 54 percent.
Offensive rebounds: Looking good. Both teams had nine rebounds. We solved our offensive rebounding problems, at least for this game.
Turnovers: Fifteen on both sides. Dead even.
Free throw trips: We sent the Sun to the free throw line 31 times. The Sun only sent us 10 times. That was one of the keys to the Sun victory.

Flow of game: The Sun were dominant during every quarter, except the last one. And the Dream only outscored the Sun by one point in the fourth.

Shooting efficiency:

Lennox: Not great. 19 points on 25 shots. This is where the box score can mislead you. Lennox actually had a sub-par game.
Feenstra: 13 points on 10 points. It was a great game for Kit, and she had six rebounds.
De Souza: 11 points on 9 shots. Six rebounds. Also a great game for Erika.
Lacy: 8 points, 7 shots. Good game for Jen.
Latta: 7 points on 10 attempts. Only made one of five 3-point attempts. Lousy game for Latta.

Southern Belle Milk Carton of the Game: The Sun reserves. Jamie Carey, Barbara Turner and Tamika Raymond combined for seven points in 51 minutes and 52 seconds.
Honorable Mention: Kasha Terry. Only 2:45 played, no shots taken, one rebound, and four personal fouls.

(* * *)

Our players generally had good games (well, Haynie only scored two points in 22 minutes, so there are exceptions.) Would the Indiana Fever the following night prove a different story? Find out...when I get around to writing it!