Already looking at an extended 2008 season due to the Summer Olympics, the WNBA and its players’ association agreed to a new collective bargaining agreement on Monday, allowing the league to begin preparations for its 12th season.

Negotiations for the CBA that expired after last season stretched into April 2003, less than a month before the season was to begin. But with an expansion team that has no players and a busy free-agency period ahead, the deal ensures that neither will be a rushed process.

Players’ union executive director Pam Wheeler was quoted by the Associated Press as saying the priority was “trying to get a deal done so the expansion draft can take place and other orders of business can be taken care of for the WNBA to run properly and be successful.”

The next piece to fall into place is the expansion draft for the WNBA’s newest member, the Atlanta Dream, which will be held Wed., Feb. 6. The current 13 teams are allowed to protect six players, and will have to submit their list of protected players this week.

Free agency should begin in earnest following the expansion draft. Under the old and new CBA, players are restricted free agents after their fourth year in the league and receive unrestricted status after six years.

Many WNBA veterans elected not to sign contracts beyond the 2007 season in hopes that a new CBA would allow them to sign more lucrative contracts. As it had under the previous CBA, league’s maximum salary will continue to escalate annually by $2,000. For the 2008 season, “the maximum annual salary will increase from $93,000 to $95,000,” the AP reported. Veteran and rookie minimums will also receive a $1,000-$2,000 bump.

According to multiple reports, the players have been near unanimity in their approval of the deal, which also provides such perks as single hotel-room accommodations for veterans of five years or more. All players previously had roommates on the road.

What does this mean for the Detroit Shock? Director of player personnel and head coach Bill Laimbeer will try to protect as much of his core as possible in hopes of winning a third WNBA championship in six years. But two players that would whet Atlanta’s appetite are guard Ivory Latta and center Kara Braxton, who both have ties to the Southeast. Latta, a former collegiate player of the year at North Carolina, became a Detroit fan favorite in a limited role last season. Braxton, the starting center for the East in last summer’s All-Star Game, attended the University of Georgia in Atlanta’s backyard of Athens.

All-Star Game MVP Cheryl Ford, All-WNBA First Team guard Deanna Nolan, WNBA Sixth Woman of the Year forward Plenette Pierson, and Katie Smith, the first U.S. woman to reach the 6,000-point milestone, are the most likely players to be protected, but the other two positions are less clear-cut. Understanding that Latta and/or Braxton would be of interest to Atlanta will require Laimbeer to make some tough decisions.

Teams can begin to re-stock on April 9 with the collegiate draft. The Shock have the 11th overall selection – the same place where Laimbeer nabbed Latta last spring. WNBA training camps open 11 days later on April 20, with the regular season tipping off May 17. Due to a three-week break for the Summer Games in Beijing, the regular season will not end until Sept. 14. The last day of the 2007 season, playoffs included, was Sept. 16.