Although professional athletics remains largely a male preserve, women and women's leagues have begun to assert themselves in recent years. The recent failure of one of two women's basketball leagues prompted this reflection on the sport from Charles Jones. An accompanying article describes the game from a player's point of view. Jones is on the staff of YO! (Youth Outlook), a newspaper by and about Bay Area youth produced by Pacific News Service.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Women's basketball suffered a major setback when the ABL (American Basketball League) declared bankruptcy and went out of business. Despite the fact that the ABL was the only women's pro basketball game in town, the almost-three-year-old league continually lost more money than it made.

This is a tragic loss not only for the San Francisco Bay Area (the San Jose Lasers were our most successful b-ball team, and the San Jose Arena was slated to be the location for the ABL's '98-'99 All Star game), but for basketball in general. Once again, American basketball talent is being monopolized and controlled by the NBA, and fans of the affiliated WNBA can now expect to be subjected to the world of free agency, contract disputes, endorsements, and players who refer to themselves in the third person.

I don't think either women's league was better than the other, and neither had the commercial success we've come to expect in men's pro sports (that is, aside from WNBA Barbie), but the ABL did give us a winner to root for, and a local team to which college and high school hopefuls could aspire.

It makes me sad to see the world of women's basketball shrinking at a time when it should be moving to the forefront of professional sports. It's not just that the male contingient, the NBA, is all but defunct at the moment, thanks to a contract disagreement. It's the women's intensity level that makes their play so remarkable, the pure passion for the game that sent many of the players to Italy to play ball before America opened its mind and wallet to a women's game.

Also, money isn't as great an issue in women's basketball as it is in men's sports. True, the game is young, and the WNBA players are in the process of trying to form a union, but they express themselves on and off the court with dedication and respect. You don't -- and, in my opinion, won't --see star women players like Theresa Weatherspoon, Jennifer Gillom and Jennifer Azzi holding out for $20 million (a year!) contracts. From what I've seen, women's professional hoops players deserve the utmost respect and praise, and are, for the most part, the role models we expect our sports stars to be.

As far as actual game play goes, the women bring every bit as much camaraderie and passion to the game as their male counterparts. They also possess a young, new-to-the-pro-game hunger that makes them push that much harder to be not just accepted but respected in the male-dominated world of professional sports.

I've conversated with several other men on the subject of women's pro basketball. None of them said they watch it, but most had plenty of ignorant opinions on why women's basketball is a ""weak" sport. "They can't even dunk, man!" was the most common.

Besides the fact that the statement is untrue, dunking is soooo important that they dropped it from the NBA's All-Star competitions. Players like Michael Jordan and Dominique Wilkins got popular because of their dunking ability, but non-dunkers like Magic Johnson and Larry Bird were just as exciting. And if women could dunk with the ferocity and frequency of men, would dunking still hold so much prestige? Hell no! That's when the discrimination really gets thick.

"Hey man, did you see that alley-oop, three-sixty slam Tim Duncan made last night?"

"Aw man, that ain't nothin'! Lisa Leslie can do that."

Just the other day, my three-year-old stepdaughter said to her mother, "Mama, I want to play basketball."

"Girls don't play basketball," her mother joked.

"Yes! I watch the game with Charles, mama. The girls play and they win mama! They win."