List of WNBA seasons
Wikimedia list article
The Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) is a professional women's basketball league in the United States with 15 teams as of 2026. The league was founded in 1996 by the men's National Basketball Association (NBA) as a wholly owned subsidiary and began play in the 1997 season with eight teams. WNBA shares the same court dimensions, hoop height, and shot clock length as the NBA, but has had shorter quarters of ten minutes each since 2006 and uses a smaller ball to match with international FIBA standards. Full NBA ownership of the league ended in 2002 and new independent ownership groups began investing in franchises; the WNBA has seven teams with independent ownership and eight that are under the same ownership as an NBA team and share the same home arena.
The league's 15 teams are organized into the Eastern and Western conferences. The number of WNBA teams has varied since the league's original eight in 1997 due to expansions and later contractions; the first expansion teams were added in 1998 and were followed by two more rounds of additions that brought the total to 16 teams in 2000. Following the change in NBA ownership in 2002, the WNBA lost two teams. The league lost two more teams by 2006 but expanded to remain at 13 teams. The number of teams has remained at 12 between the folding of the Houston Comets in 2008 and the debut of the Golden State Valkyries in 2025. Two more expansion teams began play in 2026, including the league's first in Canada, and is set to be followed by three more expansions by 2030 to bring the league to 18 teams.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “List of WNBA seasons” is wikimedia list article. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through List, WNBA and seasons, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “wikimedia list article” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6603678. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2026, 1996, 1997 and 2006.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “List of WNBA seasons”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow List of WNBA seasons primary sources, List of WNBA seasons archive and List research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “List of WNBA seasons”?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “List of WNBA seasons” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.