On the 159th episode of Listen In With KNN on Fox Sports 1340AM, host Kelsey Nicole Nelson welcomed Mark Bethea, who is the founder and president of the Women’s National D-League to the show.
The New York City native started out his career working at Madison Square Garden with the New York Knicks where he was a consultant for a few years. His job was to make sure that things went smoothly from the administration to the entertainment in the arena. Then, Bethea went on to work for the Knicks’ development team called the Westchester Knicks for five years. But his number one passion was women’s basketball and created the Women’s National D-League in 2017.
“While working with the Westchester Knicks, I came across the idea that I wanted to actually give the ladies the same opportunities. It’s their ability to show the world what they want to offer. I just decided that I wanted to bring the best of the best and that’s when we started putting the teams together,” Bethea said. “From that point on, we’ve just been bringing ladies together and we were ready to go.”
The Women’s National D-League’s mission is to support the advancement of women’s basketball. Bethea and the league started to bring in coaches and told them about the program and the expectations of the players. Then, they recruited the top players in the states that they have teams at. Additionally, the league has literacy and finance programs to help some of the players to invest in themselves.
“What we really try to do is to try to make sure that we have an atmosphere and a platform where they can excel at. Not only do we look to them to play basketball but we also know that basketball is not going to be around forever. So if they don’t get to the WNBA, they can continue to still play basketball here in the U.S.A. and with the option to go to the WNBA,” he said.
The D-League has affiliations in New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Minnesota and North Carolina. Bethea said that there were some people who wanted to build a Women’s D-League in their state and city.
“Some of these states already have WNBA teams and my goal is to create these teams in these different states and be able to have them compete. We want to be a source for them to come out for possible prospects of picking up new drafts instead of sending these ladies overseas. The ultimate goal was to bring it together so that they can have that,” he said.
The Women’s D-League is looking to put more teams in different states and to have a season from November to March.
“Some of these ladies are fresh out of college and they want to continue to play. We want to be able to create that platform and be able to look for longevity as a tunnel to the WNBA. My job is to open up a door and creating a path,” Bethea said. “I look for the expansion of the Women’s National D-League.”
The next step of the league is to gain the WNBA’s attention. Their goal is to get them to understand that they’re stronger together because they have the first options to pick some of the ladies coming out from the top schools in the country.
“We want to be able to help build their fans just as we built our fans because it’s like a transition. You get to see possible WNBA players playing in a development league. When people are able to see this, you get your audience to pick. We want to be able to bring the top ladies out of their state and let them compete,” said Bethea.
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