2002 WNBA Season Tips Off May 25

NEW YORK, Jan. 31, 2002 -- The WNBA will tip off its sixth season over Memorial Day weekend with a double dose of nationally televised action on NBC. On Saturday, May 25, the defending champion Los Angeles Sparks will host east coast rival New York Liberty at the STAPLES Center, to be carried nationally on NBC at 3 p.m. EDT. On Memorial Day, Monday, May 27, the Sparks will travel to Houston to face the Comets at the Compaq Center for their first meeting since the 2001 playoffs. The matchup will air on NBC at 3 p.m. EDT.

2002 SCHEDULES

Master schedule - week-by-week Team-by-team schedules National TV schedule NBC | ESPN | ESPN2

The Memorial Weekend games will be the first of 10 regular season broadcasts on NBC during the 2002 season. In addition, 12 regular season contests will be telecast on ESPN, and ESPN2 will continue with its second season of WNBA coverage with 10 games. All 2002 WNBA Playoff games will be televised nationally on either NBC, ESPN or ESPN2.

The first ESPN telecast will feature a rematch of last season's WNBA Championship between the Los Angeles Sparks and host Charlotte Sting on Saturday, June 1 at 8 p.m. EDT. ESPN will also carry the 2002 WNBA All-Star Game, to be played Monday, July 15 at the MCI Center in Washington, D.C., beginning at 7:30 p.m. EDT. ESPN2 will telecast its first game on Sunday, June 2 as the Portland Fire host the Seattle Storm at the Rose Garden at 3 p.m. EDT.

Lifetime Television will present its second season of Players' Journal, the weekly half-hour magazine show highlighting the on and off-court lives of the WNBA's players and coaches. Additional WNBA network programming will include NBC specials and NBA Inside Stuff on NBC, two 30-minute in-season specials on ESPN, and WNBA Action, an in-season, weekly highlight show on ESPN2.

The 2002 regular season ends on Tuesday, August 13, with the playoffs scheduled to begin on Thursday, August 15.

The WNBA concluded the 2001 season by crowning a new champion -- the Los Angeles Sparks -- and recording the 10 millionth fan to attend a game since the league's inception. More than 2.5 million fans attended WNBA games last season, the most ever, and for the fifth straight season, WNBA regular season attendance averaged over 9,000 fans. Traffic to WNBA.com increased by 46 percent during the regular season and the site attracted over 1,000,000 visits -- a record -- during the postseason. In 2001, the league's combined local, national and international television coverage reached nearly 60 million fans in 23 different languages and 167 countries.