LOS ANGELES -  During her last official media availability as a player for the Los Angeles Sparks, I asked Lisa Leslie if she was happy with the send off given her by the WNBA in her final season.

Sheryl Swoopes of the Houston Comets drives on Kristen Mann of the Minnesota Lynx on June 5th, 2006 at the Toyota Center in Houston, Texas  Photo by Donald Barnat

It's pretty much impossible to get a critical comment from a WNBA player on the subject of how the league operates at any level, and although Leslie's gotten herself in hot water with some off-the-cuff remarks on various topics, when it comes to discussing the WNBA itself, Lisa's strictly from the old school. She knows who has buttered her bread, and on matters pertaining to the league she enjoyed so much professional success with, Leslie's as safe and reliable in her comments as she would be reading clichés from a WNBA Powerpoint presentation.

I'll paraphrase.

The fans were really great in every city and I was glad to be able to play competitive basketball for them to the very end.

That, of course, falls somewhere between a yawn and a snore.

The truth is, even if Lisa had been a walking talking WNBA PR train wreck her entire career she could not have had anything bad to say about how the league, at least on the surface, handled her retirement, her final season and maybe, most importantly to Leslie herself, the careful management and promotion of her legacy as one of the WNBA's founding and premier stars.

For the years she graced the hardwood of professional basketball in America, Lisa Leslie WAS the WNBA. She was the "Face of the WNBA." Almost singlehandedly and by the sheer force of her unique talent set, her own personal will, as well as the magnetism of her charisma, she carried the league on her back from its paltry beginnings to the place it now occupies on the American sports landscape.

Was it just me, or is that the way you heard it, too?

I may be exaggerating the spin somewhat (we’ll see about that in a second) but there can’t be many reading this who would honestly say that at some point last season the line between reality and hyperbole did not start to blur.

Let’s take a look back at a New York Times piece dated August 22, 2009: Our Last Year of Lisa, entitled, Lisa Leslie, the Face of the W.N.B.A, Prepares for Life After Basketball:

“I don’t think there’s an athlete on the court today or in this league or in youth leagues all around this country who don’t owe a debt of gratitude to Lisa Leslie, or don’t look up to her as an iconic figure in women’s basketball,” Donna Orender, president of the W.N.B.A., said at the All-Star Game last month. “She has been one of the great competitors, the most fierce competitor.”

Sue Bird, Seattle’s All-Star point guard, regards Leslie as the face of the game.

“You walk in an airport with Lisa Leslie and it’s impossible,” Bird said. “When people look at her, they see women’s basketball. They see the W.N.B.A.”

First of all, let me say that I certainly believe that the vast majority of the many accolades bestowed upon Lisa Leslie during her final season were well-deserved. It almost doesn’t bear repeating that she was one of women’s basketball’s greatest players ever. Considering factors like longevity, the many records with which she left the game, remaining relatively injury-free, as well as bowing out while still a fearsome force in the WNBA paint, one can certainly make the case that Leslie leaves behind the WNBA’s single most successful career.

But the truth is, as much as she or the WNBA may have willed it to be so, Leslie was never the league’s most popular star, and it wasn't even close. With the exception of two seasons in her 13-year career, it would have been (and was) a stretch to call her the league’s “marquee player.”

But the league once did have a marquee name. She was literally the WNBA's first player. Her signing with the league, in the words of its first president Val Ackerman, provided the WNBA with “legitimacy.” She possessed four WNBA championship rings before Leslie had even one. During the last three of those championship years, and in four of the five seasons that followed, she implanted into the consciousness of women’s basketball fans everywhere a highlight reel of swooping athleticism and accomplishment, and those fans responded with an adoration for her that was singular and documented.

From a 2005 WNBA press release:

NEW YORK, JUNE 30 – Houston Comets star forward Sheryl Swoopes is the leading vote-getter in the WNBA’s 2005 All-Star balloting, the fifth time in her career that she has earned this distinction. Swoopes, who is one of the WNBA’s nine original players, has been the top vote-getter in five of the league’s six All-Star games (1999, 2000, 2002 and 2003).

Swoopes finished with 109,000 votes in 2005. Leslie finished with little more than half that, 59,500, putting her at tenth place in the voting. In the league's annual fan popularity contest just five years ago, the "Face of the WNBA," failed to beat out players like Swin Cash, Dawn Staley, and Ruth Riley.

Although I said it myself, it’s actually an understatement to say that Leslie was never the league’s most popular player.

But somewhere out there is the WNBA’s most popular player ever. Somewhere out there is one of the game’s greatest legends.

We don't know where Sheryl Swoopes is exactly. We don't know if she wants to play in the WNBA this year or next year, or ever again. We don't know whether she's wanted, being courted, by what teams to fill what needs, or not at all. Is Swoopes in shape to play ball? Is she healthy? Does the league even want her back?  There is a disconnect, a breakdown, it seems, between the WNBA, Sheryl Swoopes, and both of their futures. That breakdown must be repaired.

The WNBA spun gold out of Lisa Leslie's retirement. It was promoted successfully and it got the attention of the greater sports world, which for the most part doesn't otherwise care about women's basketball. Lisa’s brilliant career combined with a great and well-executed promotion plan made her final season a banner event in the history of the WNBA and both the great center, and her legacy, deserved every moment, if not every last word of it. It was a win for all parties, including fans of women’s basketball. Everyone basked in Leslie’s glow and was collectively lifted up by the coverage and recognition marking the end of a great athlete’s professional career.

But the WNBA is missing another tremendous opportunity to do it all over again. That they would fail to bring Swoopes home, so to speak, and honor her career in a way that is fitting is bad form and it should be unacceptable given her contributions to the game of women's basketball. That they would fail to properly exploit the celebration of that great career and its accomplishments to their own benefit, as they did so well with Lisa Leslie, is just bad business. 

In the league’s defense, Swoopes must desire and decide to either continue playing basketball or to end her career. But either way, whatever she decides to do, she must do it hand-in-hand with the WNBA. And the league that she helped make great should be actively working to facilitate a resolution to her playing days that capitalizes on the greatness, the legend, and the singular popularity of the WNBA’s very first player.

Tags: Becky Hammon, Doc Rivers, Donna Orender, Lindsay Whalen, Michelle Snow, Sophia Young