Game Recognizes Game: Expect... Setbacks

We all can agree the worth of the dollar isn't what it use to be. But apparently, neither is the value of gold.

Translation? The Detroit Shock, winners of three of the last seven WNBA titles, confirmed this week the team will immediately be relocating to Tulsa, Oklahoma based solely on financial considerations. Thus almost overnight, one of the league's most decorated and respected franchises is no more. No more, at least in the original sense of its being.

And with that, a league that is struggling for eyeballs and attention about as badly as the parents of Falcon "Ballon Boy" Heene goes from a market with a populace of more than a million residents to one with about 385,000---or roughly the average number of empty seats on any given night of a Shock game at The Palace of Auburn Hills.

Clearly, that's not a good look for the WNBA, particularly when you add to the mix the fact that the four-time league champ Houston Comets also folded just a year before essentially the same reasons. With that, the two teams that have combined to win seven of the league's first 12 banners are now forever sidelined.

Yeah, the WNBA might have next, but for how long?