Headquartered in Lake Wylie, South Carolina—a suburb of Charlotte, North Carolina—and owned by Howard Hanson, the league planned to start with eight teams, primarily in the Southeastern United States.
It struggled to sign marquee players because of concerns about its amateur status and consequent effects on Olympic eligibility, and ticket sales were slow.
[5] Cheryl Miller was selected first overall, but Miller—who became aware of the NWBA only by reading newspaper reports[6]—refused to play in the new league because she could make more from commercial endorsement deals than the $18,000 maximum salary.
[8] Kim Boatman of The Knoxville News-Sentinel criticized the draft as evincing unfamiliarity with women's college basketball, noting that many talented players were ignored and that the Southeastern Conference was underrepresented.
[9] Later that month, the league held tryouts in Charlotte; Orange County, California; Hartford, Connecticut; and Tulsa, Oklahoma, to search for players.
The center's commissioners worried that the Aces would face poor ticket sales in light of competition from Iowa Hawkeyes women's basketball in nearby Iowa City and high school sports; its manager pointed out that the arena was booked for key February and March dates by such events as the Home Show and Country Art Fair.
[12] By mid-June, the league was analyzing moving the team out of Cedar Rapids, though Bruce Mason—a former assistant coach at Drake University who had been involved with the WBL's Iowa Coronets—doubted that arrangements could be made there.
[23] To cut expenses, the league office moved to smaller quarters in Pineville, North Carolina, another Charlotte suburb.
Bernadette McGlade, the head women's basketball coach at Georgia Tech, derided the concept as "like something from grammar school, making money for a class trip"; Howard Hanson later said it was a mistake not to seek corporate support first.
Its office telephone had been disconnected, and the Veterans Memorial Auditorium—which demanded money up front because the defunct Coronets still owed the arena—began booking other events on dates scheduled for the team's home games.
[27] The league sent a bus to Knoxville to pick up the Tigercats; by the time it got there, it was running on empty, forcing coach Gina DiCicco to pay for gas.
As a result, at an October 25 meeting in Atlanta, the league postponed the start of the season from November 1 to December 5; Kramer stated he was trying to raise the money, while teams were not informed of his withdrawal for 30 days, preventing them from securing other funding sources.
[25] With the postponement, Dave Wolter, head coach of the California Stars, told The Observer that the team had ceased practicing and he had resigned, with his lone paycheck bouncing;[29] Gina DiCicco announced that all local operations of the Tennessee Tigercats had folded, and half of her ten-player squad had departed.