2001 WNBA Finals

Result

Finals MVP: Lisa Leslie

Los Angeles's first WNBA title, ending Houston's four-year run. The Charlotte Sting, an original 1997 franchise, folded after the 2006 season and has no connection to any later Charlotte-market WNBA effort.

Games

Finals context

With Houston's dynasty finally spent — Cynthia Cooper had retired and the Comets missed the Finals for the first time in league history — the 2001 championship opened the door for a new champion, and the Los Angeles Sparks, who had gone 28-4 in the regular season, seized it decisively over the fourth-seeded Charlotte Sting. Game 1 in Los Angeles on August 30 went to the Sparks in front of 16,132 fans, with Lisa Leslie leading the way; Los Angeles then closed out the sweep in Game 2 on September 1 to claim the franchise's first title. Leslie, the Sparks' dominant center and one of the faces of the sport following her star turn on the U.S. Olympic team, was named Finals MVP, punctuating a regular season in which she had established herself as the league's premier post player. Charlotte, appearing in its first and, as it turned out, only Finals, could not match Los Angeles's talent gap; the Sting's run to the championship round as a fourth seed was itself a mild surprise, but the gulf in regular-season records (28-4 versus 18-14) proved decisive once the series began. The Sparks' championship marked the end of the WNBA's first true dynasty and the beginning of a new one, with coach Michael Cooper building around Leslie, DeLisha Milton, and a deep supporting cast that would return to the Finals the following year and win again. It also represented a significant changing of the guard for the league more broadly: Houston's sweep of the first four championships had raised real questions about whether the young league could produce competitive balance, and Los Angeles breaking through gave the WNBA its second champion in five seasons and offered proof that Houston's run had been a product of a specific, aging roster rather than a permanent competitive imbalance. For the Charlotte Sting, an original 1997 expansion-era franchise, this Finals appearance stood as the high-water mark of the team's history. The Sting never returned to a championship series and folded after the 2006 season when the league contracted the franchise, meaning this loss to Los Angeles is the only Finals appearance in the club's history and has no connection to any later WNBA expansion effort associated with the Charlotte market. Leslie's Finals MVP was the first of two she would win in as many years, and her rise as both a dominant on-court force and one of the most visible ambassadors for the sport helped the Sparks establish Los Angeles as the league's new flagship contender heading into the following season's title defense.

Sources

• Wikipedia — 2001 WNBA Championship
• Basketball-Reference.com — WNBA Playoffs