NO female athlete has ever suited up in an official National Basketball Association (NBA) game but that does not mean no woman has played in a men’s pro basketball league in the past.
The historic distinction belongs to Nancy Lieberman-Cline, who is the first woman ever to see action in men’s pro league when she inked a one-year, $100,000 guaranteed contract with the Springfield (Massachusetts) Fame of the United States Basketball League in May 1986 and made her debut on June 10, 1986.
Lieberman, a 5-foot-10 point guard out of Old Dominion University, was the backcourt partner of NBA player contract signee Ann Meyers during the 1979 Pan American Games in Puerto Rico and 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, Canada.
Nicknamed “Lady Magic” due to her outstanding playmaking skills that reminded hoop fans of all-time Los Angeles Lakers great Earvin (Magic) Johnson during the 1980s, the then-28-year-old Lieberman averaged 1.7 points, 1.3 assists and 11 minutes in 21 games with the Fame in 1986.
The following summer, Lieberman again suited up in the USBL, hooking up with the Long Island Knights. She joined the Washington Generals, the regular foils of the comical Harlem Globetrotters, in late 1987.
One of Lieberman’s teammates with the Generals was Tim Cline, whom she married in 1988, taking the surname Lieberman-Cline until the couple’s divorce on March 15, 2001.
Significantly, before Lieberman broke the gender barrier with her appearance with Springfield in 1986, another momentous development in women’s basketball history came on October 7, 1985 when the Harlem Globetrotters signed Lynette Woodard, the captain of the U.S. gold medal-winning team in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics and the women’s career scoring leader in U.S. NCAA Division I history from the University of Kansas.
A 6-foot guard, the then-26-year-old Woodard debuted with the Trotters on October 17, 1985 when they opened their 60th season in Brisbane, Australia. Woodard, though, left the team after just two seasons due to a contract dispute.
Lieberman, a three-time All-American and two-time national college player of the year (as the recipient of the Wade Trophy) at ODU (1976-80), was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1996.
With the establishment of the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) in 1997, the Brooklyn-born Lieberman latched on with the Phoenix Mercury.
She played 25 games with the team, averaging 2.6 points and 1.6 assists off the bench, to become the oldest player in WNBA history at age 39.
Woodard, at age 38, was the second-oldest. She appeared in 28 games with the Cleveland Rockers that same season, norming 7.8 scores each time out, after coming out of a three-year retirement following a four-year stint (1990-93) in a Japanese league.
Woodward played a second WNBA season with the Detroit Shock in 1998. Ironically, Lieberman was hired as the Shock’s head coach and general manager at the time. Woodward, too, was enshrined in the Hall of Fame in 2004.
Lieberman coached at Detroit for three seasons but left after accusations, by unnamed players, of a sexual affair with rookie point guard Anna DeForge. Back in the 1980s, Lieberman had been a housemate of openly lesbian tennis star Martina Navratilova.
Lieberman rewrote WNBA history on July 24, 2008 when, at 50 years old, she inked a seven-day contract to play for the Shock. That erased her own previous record as the oldest player in league history.
Lieberman suited up just once, collecting a pair of assists in the Shock’s 79-61 loss to the Houston Comets. In November 2010, Lieberman broke another gender barrier when she became the head coach of the Texas Legends in the NBA Development League, marking the first time ever that a woman was to coach a men’s pro basketball team.
Lieberman is currently the assistant general manager of the Legends, an affiliate of the Dallas Mavericks. In the upcoming 2013-14 NBA season, she will also work with Fox Sports Oklahoma as an analyst on the Oklahoma City Thunder pre- and post-game shows.