THE WOMEN'S NATIONAL BASKETBALL LEAGUE IS
CRANKING. CATCH THESE SUPERSTARS WHILE YOU CAN.

THE WNBL IS AS OLD AS Lauren Jackson, and that's the perfect metaphor for the growth of women's basketball in this country. In that 22 years, thanks largely to this competition, Australia's best female basketballers have cohered into a new force on the international scene, that culminated in a silver medal at the last Olympics. Who knows what's around the corner?

But the world can wait until tomorrow. In the meantime, take a look in our own backyard. This intense national competition of only 16 weeks' duration has been the stage for some of the fiercest rivalries in Australian sport - the Adelaide Lightning and the Sydney Flames; the cross-town contests between the AIS and Canberra and Bulleen-Melbourne and Dandenong. Because of the season's duration, the competition, like our interstate cricket competition, is all the more fiercely-contested. Every point counts, every mistake is magnified tenfold.

The addition in the last two years of the Townsville Fire, with their tough, unwelcoming home-town venue and their fanatical fans, has added that extra incendiary element to the competition. It's great entertainment, and the ABC has been on board since 1989, televising world-class action at 5pm every Saturday afternoon.

Australia's beloved Opals have grown out of the WNBL, and, when you think of where Aussie women's basketball was around the time of the Moscow Olympics - the year the WNBL was born - their progress has been remarkable. Women's basketball was, despite the talent we had boasted over the years - barely on the radar internationally. Today, the Opals compete for Olympic medals as the heavyweights from Yugoslavia, the USSR and the USA look on incredulously.

The tenacious, take-no-prisoners game of Michelle Timms typified Australia during the 1990s, much the same as Shane Heal's did for the men, when the aim for both the men and women was to get in their opponents' faces and stay there. The sublime talent of Lauren Jackson represents a new step in our evolution (see our profile of her on page 44).

Australians can go along to an WNBL match, and for the price of a pizza and coke, watch Australia's own female equivalent of Jordan or O'Neal show her stuff against the best young talent in the country such as Shelley Hammonds and Laura Summerton, or our veterans such as Rachael Sporn, Gina Stevens or Lucille Bailie. Or they can turn on the TV any Saturday and see these superb athletes going around.

The charm of the WNBL, is its lack of overt commercialisation (though they probably wouldn't mind if the volume got turned up a tad), and its inverse high-passion, high-intensity appeal.

Australian women's basketball just might amaze you. Give it a watch, and you just might find yourself enthralled by the action it provides. Not to mention the fact that you'll see one of this country's genuine superstars, Lauren jackon, going around.