Columnist Dean Juipe: Strike talk isn’t limited to baseball

Dean Juipe

Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2002 | 9:11 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4084.

The money is good, the season doesn't occupy the entire calendar, and yet the players are thinking of going on strike.

If they do, there are those who believe their sport will never recover, or, at best, that the self-inflicted wound will have numerous and negative repercussions.

Sound familiar? Well, it isn't only baseball players who are approaching a possible strike deadline next month.

So are the young ladies in the Women's National Basketball Association.

A colleague and friend said, "Good, I hope they do strike. Then they can shut down the entire league and be done with it."

And she's a woman. And a basketball fan.

Strike talk irritates fans, in part because it requires taking sides and choosing which greedy entity is the lesser of evils. It also grates on traditionalists who realize that a strike comes complete with irreparable damages.

In the case of the five-year old WNBA, a labor stoppage of any type could prove to be fatal.

Yet that harsh reality hasn't kept the WNBA players' association from pushing for better pay and working conditions, and threatening to walk out if they are not appeased. The players' working agreement with the league expires Sept. 15, which will conveniently be after the season but arguably in plenty of time to spell the league's eventual demise.

Funded by the NBA, the WNBA has doubled in size since coming into existence and running the poorly supported American Basketball League out of business. While it's generally known that the league inflates its attendance counts, on paper an average game attracts 8,700 fans.

"Lots of those are kids who are running around, not watching the game, and their mothers, who use the games as a babysitting service," says the resident WNBA critic. Her point: Real basketball fans get their kicks elsewhere.

But I like what little I've seen of the WNBA. It plays a compact, 32-game summertime season with players who are versatile and team oriented and come across as unfailingly polite.

They're paid, on average, from $46,000 to $57,000 with a high of $80,000 to Houston's Sheryl Swoopes. They're also required to make free appearances on behalf of their team and its sponsors, which they seem to do without a second thought.

The quality of play is decent, so much so that UNLV's career scoring leader, Linda Frohlich, has scored only one field goal in her rookie season with New York. Any league that can hold her to one basket has something going for it.

But the players would like a few more bucks, as well as improved travel conditions. They'd like to go on charters, as their NBA brethren do, or at least be seated in first class when flying with the general public.

Do they have grounds for complaint? Possibly.

But should they push the issue(s)? I wouldn't think so.

Women's pro basketball is just nicely under way and can ill afford a setback such as a work stoppage if it's to prosper and develop in the foreseeable future. The WNBA has its niche and its share of attentive fans.

It doesn't need to be branded as just another league with unappreciative players and miserly owners. It can't afford to take that risk.