The Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) is a professional women's basketball league in the United States with 15 teams as of 2026. The league was founded in 1996 by the men's National Basketball Association (NBA) as a wholly owned subsidiary and began play in the 1997 season with eight teams. WNBA shares the same court dimensions, hoop height, and shot clock length as the NBA, but has had shorter quarters of ten minutes each since 2006 and uses a smaller ball to match with international FIBA standards. Full NBA ownership of the league ended in 2002 and new independent ownership groups began investing in franchises; the WNBA has seven teams with independent ownership and eight that are under the same ownership as an NBA team and share the same home arena.