David Stern launches game-changing WNBA in 1997

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With the NBA booming in the 1990s and women's sports in the headlines following the 1996 Olympics, Commissioner David Stern felt it was time to start a professional women's basketball league.

For it to be successful, Stern connected it to the NBA — starting with the name.

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"It was very deliberate decision to call it the WNBA to bring the core brand into the league name," said former league President Val Ackerman, who was part of the group that helped found the WNBA. "It was a risk that, if things didn’t work out, it could have been a hit, but it was also a way to tell the world that the NBA was very much a part of it."

It worked. While the fight for gender equity continues around the sports world as the NBA celebrates its 75 anniversary season, 26 years after it was launched the WNBA is one of the longest running professional women’s sports leagues.

Stern wasn't the only one looking to capitalize on women's sports.

Another women's professional basketball league — the ABL — also was starting at that time. But with Stern's determination to show the world the WNBA was a "major league effort like the NBA," the ABL was no match off the court.

FILE - Los Angeles Sparks' Lisa Leslie, left, and the New York Liberty's Rebecca Lobo battle for rebound position during the first half of a WNBA basketball game in Inglewood, Calif. The NBA recognized the popularity of the women's game with the league's Board of Governors approving plans to start a new pro basketball league in the summer of 1997. (AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian, File)

"It sounds big now and it was big then," Ackerman said. " Given all that was going on with the NBA at that time. Frankly,