- 2 months ago
What is happening? A league MVP bails on the league to join a different league that's struggling? Why? What? Who? Huh?
Nikki McCray switching leagues was a big deal.
Nikki McCray switching leagues was a big deal.
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00:00Congratulations to Nikki McCray, 1997 MVP of the American Basketball League, and to her
00:06team, the Columbus Quest, champions of this first-ever ABL season.
00:11Women's basketball is beginning to boom in the United States, and the ABL is clearly
00:16this country's foremost professional league.
00:18Oh.
00:19Oh.
00:20Well.
00:21Okay.
00:22Even with some strong competition from the WNBA, the ABL still holds the talent advantage.
00:27They've got superstar players like Nikki McCrae—oh, well, Nikki McCray's decision
00:34to join the WNBA was a big deal.
00:38So, the American Basketball League wasn't the first women's pro basketball league in
00:44the U.S., but it was the first and foremost to strike while the iron was particularly hot.
00:50In 1996, the Olympics would come to Atlanta.
00:53United States women's basketball stacked its roster to all but guarantee a gold medal
00:58on their home court.
00:59Basically, all the best American players, many of whom had been playing pro ball overseas,
01:05returned stateside to train in 1995 and then to, indeed, dominate and win gold in 1996.
01:11While all those elite Americans were in one place, some enterprising business people approached
01:18them with an appealing proposition.
01:20Stay here.
01:21Don't go back overseas.
01:23Join our new professional league in the U.S.
01:26The American Basketball League promised high salaries, excellent benefits, a pretty equitable
01:33business structure, and, well, some marketing choices that would later prove counterproductive,
01:38but it was an enticing deal.
01:40The ABL got verbal commitments from a majority of the U.S. team, and not a moment too soon.
01:46In April of 1996, the National Basketball Association announced it would start its own
01:52women's basketball league the following year.
01:54ABL officials rushed to get formal signatures from all the Team USA players and, indeed, began its
02:01inaugural 96-97 season with a talent pool headlined by a majority of the American gold medalists.
02:09One of those stars was Nikki McCray, a streaky scorer and scrappy defender at guard.
02:15McCray had played a terrific career for Pat Summitt at Tennessee before winning gold in Atlanta.
02:21The 24-year-old McCray was allocated to the Columbus Quest, one of eight founding ABL franchises,
02:27and not one expected to win big off the bat. But the Quest surprised everyone by dominating the
02:34regular season, then battling their way to the 1997 title. McCray, a top three scorer in the league and
02:41its first-ever MVP, was a huge reason why. Entering the spring of 97, Nikki was on top of the world,
02:49league MVP, champion, beloved by fans, an exciting and marketable player, and, like basically everyone in
02:56the league, a free agent. McCray's salary that first year was around $150,000. The exact reported
03:04figure varies. Whatever the case, she requested a huge raise for year two, and the ABL countered by
03:10offering a slightly less huge raise. It sounds like a straightforward negotiation, but it wasn't because
03:18of the WNBA. While everyone was negotiating, the WNBA began play. That alone highlights a key
03:25difference between the new leagues. The ABL ran its season in wintertime, during the men's basketball
03:31season, in smaller venues and some smaller markets. The WNBA was a summer league from the beginning,
03:38and began with all of its teams playing in the same arenas as their NBA affiliates.
03:43Also important, while the WNBA allowed players to participate in other leagues during its offseason,
03:49the ABL had an exclusivity clause in all its player contracts. That's a key, key difference,
03:55and perhaps a critical mistake by the ABL. But anyway, the leagues and their workforces did not
04:01overlap. Fans watched the ABL play its inaugural season in 96-97, then watched the WNBA play its
04:09inaugural 97 season with a wholly distinct group of players. And what did they see in that summer of 97?
04:17Well, they saw a lot of it. Thanks to its NBA backing, the WNBA had way more broadcast deals
04:24and way more televised action. They also had built-in access to marketing and corporate sponsors.
04:30They just had less talent. The WNBA employed a tier of undeniable superstars, for sure. But below that,
04:37the rosters got pretty thin. Fans, experts, and by the way, TV executives noticed a significant drop-off
04:44and quality of play from the ABL to the WNBA in that first year. Relevant here is that WNBA salaries
04:51were a fraction of ABL salaries. And that's even before you account for the superior benefits in the
04:57ABL. Entering September of 97, the WNBA was the league feeling the heat while the ABL was working
05:04on catching up publicity-wise. Only a handful of incumbent ABL players remained unsigned for the
05:10next season. But one of them was the MVP of the whole league. Yeah, Nikki McCray's ABL exclusivity
05:18clause had expired on July 31st. On August 2nd, the WNBA offered her a contract, one of the
05:25personal services deals they reserved for their superstar faces of the league. Way more than an
05:30ordinary WNBA player, but still well below what the ABL would pay her. For over a month, McCray mulled
05:37her options. The ABL offered continuity from her incredibly successful first season, and they
05:43offered more salary. The WNBA offered exposure. Bigger crowds, bigger broadcast audiences, plus
05:50more relationships with sponsors and the freedom to play elsewhere in the offseason. The attention and
05:55the access to other incomes might pay off long-term. McCray's decision would represent a bet on the
06:02future of women's pro basketball in the US, on the viability of one league versus the other. Of course,
06:08whichever league she chose would become more viable simply by dint of employing Nikki McCray. In mid-September,
06:15weeks before the Quest season would tip off, she announced her decision. Nikki McCray chose to switch
06:21horses. She signed a WNBA contract and eventually got assigned to the expansion Washington Mystics for
06:28the summer 98 season. It was a big deal. That's why we're talking about it. But exactly why and for
06:35whom it was a big deal would bear out over time. Was it a big deal for the Columbus Quest? Coach Brian
06:41Agler said losing an MVP was a challenge, no duh, but correctly assessed that his team was quite talented
06:48even without her. The Quest, we now know, were absolutely stacked with or without Nikki McCray.
06:54They had future Hall of Famer Katie Smith when she was young, multiple future WNBA All-Stars,
07:00and Agler himself would go on to become one of the best coaches ever. The Quest repeated as ABL
07:05champions in 1998. So, surprisingly not that big a deal for the Quest. What about McCray herself? At the
07:13moment of the decision, McCray expressed that it was a tough call, but she ultimately went with the
07:18WNBA because of the exposure. This was not explicitly a basketball choice, but it also
07:23wasn't a pure salary play. Her agent made it very clear that at least in the short term, McCray would
07:28be taking a pay cut. The benefits would come elsewhere. Within a year, McCray had her own signature
07:36sneaker with Fila. The WNBA made her the star of this commercial for the 98 season. The whole thing was
07:43built around Nikki's face and Nikki's game. This is the exposure McCray was talking about. On the court,
07:48Nikki McCray remained a star, although not an MVP like she was in the ABL. She played nine WNBA seasons,
07:56none nearly as glorious as that 97 championship run with the Quest. The Mystics, like any expansion team,
08:02were very bad at the outset, and McCray only experienced small tastes of playoff basketball later
08:08in her playing career. So switching leagues was absolutely a big deal decision for Nikki.
08:14Whether it was a good or bad one depends on how you're measuring and the hypothetical alternative,
08:20but either way, keep in mind that McCray's career in basketball lasted well beyond her playing days.
08:26McCray, who changed her name to Nikki McCray-Penson after marriage, went on to have a long and excellent
08:32coaching career, including a long stint on Dawn Staley's staff at South Carolina. While working at South
08:37Carolina, McCray-Penson was diagnosed with breast cancer. She continued to coach through treatment
08:43and remission, and in 2017, she took her first head coaching job at Old Dominion. She likely would
08:49have led them to their first NCAA tournament in over a decade if COVID didn't wreck the 2020 postseason.
08:55Mississippi State hired McCray-Penson away to coach their women's team in 2020,
09:00but a recurrence of health problems forced her to step away.
09:04In 2023, while serving as an assistant coach at Rutgers, Nikki McCray-Penson died from a
09:10recurrence of cancer and pneumonia. She was 51 years old, and she left a legacy all across basketball.
09:16An award-winning college player, a gold medalist, a champion and all-star as a professional player,
09:22and a coach who managed to accomplish quite a bit before her career was cut short.
09:27Here, hers was a shining individual success story representing a new era of women's basketball in
09:34the United States, but not the ABL. In terms of what was and what could have been, Nikki McCray's
09:42decision in 1997 was a big deal, most of all for the league she departed. Part of the immediate response
09:50to McCray's defection, I'm talking like the next day, was not about her future or the Quest future,
09:55it was, uh-oh, this could spell doom for the whole ABL.
10:00Even the people who weren't saying that were still kind of saying it.
10:04When Quest player Valerie Still suggested the jump to the WNBA was a get-rich-quick scheme that might send
10:10the wrong message to other players, and when she criticized her ex-teammate's loyalty, she was
10:16invoking a threat to the ABL itself. An ABL executive declared open season and suggested his league might
10:23be able to get revenge. This wasn't an outlandish suggestion. In 97, before the McCray decision,
10:30most of the great young players, like elite prospects like Kate Starbird and Kara Walters,
10:36and overseas pros like Yolanda Griffith, chose to join the league anew for its second season rather
10:41than go with the WNBA. On the very same day McCray left Columbus, local rich guy Joe Lacob became the
10:48ABL's first franchise owner-operator with the San Jose Lasers. He expected to make money on women's
10:54sports. The ABL entered its second season concerned about exposure, but without having surrendered any
11:01more players than McCray's caliber, and not for lack of trying. When the ABL tried to drum up attention
11:07by staging a dunk contest in early 1998, the WNBA immediately instigated a bidding war for the winner
11:14of said dunk contest, Sylvia Crawley. The league had to pony up a record-setting raise to make sure
11:19Crawley stayed. The WNBA would offer competitive salaries if it meant taking a bite out of the ABL.
11:26In the spring of 98, rising prospects were suddenly way likelier to sign with the WNBA than the ABL,
11:33a significant one-year shift from the prior class. That included most of the best college seniors and
11:39the best player from overseas, superstar center Margot Dedek, even though her sister had been in the ABL.
11:46WNBA salaries remained lower, but players were starting to feel the gravity of the built-in
11:51exposure and the corporate relationships, like that league might have more longevity. Players who
11:58had experienced both leagues appreciated the above. McCray was the happiest she had ever been.
12:03Cindy Brown, the next most notable name to switch leagues, preferred the WNBA for the respect, the
12:10style, and the access she received. You can tell that stuff was meaningful because agents were actually
12:16beginning to steer their clients away from the higher salaries in the ABL. The exposure and the
12:22lack of exclusivity mattered. Then, Don Staley left. That was the next McCray-sized blow. The all-star
12:30point guard and the face of the Philadelphia rage preferred the shorter season of the WNBA.
12:36ABL executives sounded worried, for sure, but entering season three, they still had plenty of talent,
12:41and they still had hope that the leagues could coexist or at least maybe merge. Media members
12:48tended to envision the latter outcome. But the ABL could not push it that far. They ran out of money.
12:55In the middle of the league's third season, days before Christmas, with very little warning,
12:59ABL players found out the league was folding and they were unemployed. Many of them would go on to become
13:06WNBA players, some of them greats like McCray. That league's talent pool became much deeper basically
13:12overnight. Other players saw their careers, at least in the US, end that one sudden day in December 98,
13:19because with the demise of the ABL, there were simply fewer, worse-paying roster spots than there
13:24had been before. When people said the talent followed the money, they didn't mean WNBA's salary,
13:30they meant the money behind the league. The NBA, the TV rights, the brand partnerships. The league
13:36was just too big and too well-connected, to the point that ABL officials briefly considered suing.
13:42Perhaps the ABL was doomed the moment the WNBA came into existence. Decades later, the WNBA had
13:50survived rocky periods to remain the biggest and most successful women's pro basketball league in
13:55American history. Still adding teams, still attracting investment like, hey, Joe Lacob,
14:01and still employing the best players on earth. And still, it's important to add, paying the best
14:07players on earth well below what the ABL was offering 30 years prior, not even counting for
14:13inflation. The ABL probably could not have lasted as is. But one wonders how the WNBA might be different
14:21if its rival league had lasted longer. What if the ABL had dropped its exclusivity clause or
14:27shortened its season? What if the WNBA kept having to bid against the ABL for talent? What if they had
14:34to merge with the ABL as a whole rather than wait out its destruction and pick through the wreckage?
14:40One player didn't cause the ABL's doom, but Nikki McCray's decision to defect, why she did it,
14:47when she did it, and how, at least helped shape or accelerate that doom? The logic behind McCray's
14:54choice proved correct in many ways, and it became the popular logic before long. Nikki McCray's decision
15:01was the first domino to fall. It was a really big deal for women's basketball.
15:17Thanks for watching this episode of Big Deal. If you want more secret bases, including more on this
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