Planning Ahead

If, like the BasketCases, you try to plan your summer vacation so that you don't miss any Mystics games, you are now free to move about the country (in early July or early August), as the WNBA released its 2010 schedule yesterday.

A shout out goes to the Mystics front office, which e-blasted Washington's schedule to fans even before the league posted the WNBA schedule on its web site. However, if you haven't already received the schedule from the Mystics, you can find it here. And a link to the full league schedule is here.

In order to accommodate the FIBA World Championship, being held from Sept. 23 - Oct. 10, the WNBA season will be starting very early next summer -- May 15, to be precise. The Mystics will open on the road that day, in Indy, and will play their first home game on Friday, May 21, against New York. That's the good news.

The bad news comes courtesy of the Hartford Courant, which is reporting that the WNBA salary cap has dropped, another indication (along with the 11-player rosters and a limit of one assistant coach per team) that the league may be in a pretty precarious financial condition (underscored by the recent collapse of the Monarchs). Like all belt-tightenings, the WNBA's cost-cutting moves are unpleasant and unfortunate; all we can do is hope that these moves will enable the league to survive during this period of economic crisis.