What is bothersome though, is the implication that if women are going to be taken seriously, they need to prove that they could hold their own against men. It's tiresome, it's sexist, it's old—the notion that women's activities hold value only if they are accepted in the eyes of men. And in competitive sports, that value seemingly has to arise from the ability to play against, and emerge victorious over, men. Then they will respect us. And not until.

And what is the likelihood of this occurring? Not great. There are differences in physiology that makes men, on the whole, stronger and larger. This is an irrefutable fact. Does it make men superior? Well, if you measure that superiority by the potential to score more points in a game of women against men, then the answer would probably have to be yes. Are there women who can see the floor, handle the ball, understand the game and make the right moves as well as men can? Undoubtedly. Is it possible that there are as yet unmeasured areas in which men excel in basketball skills. It's quite possible. But does it matter? Probably not.

Still, there are actually some good reasons to compare the games of men and women. Among them is the fact that in competition, comparison is the name of the game. Women's basketball is a relatively young sport. There is not enough history to have produced a yardstick against which to measure performance. As in swimming in the last twenty years, women's skills in the sport have improved, and continue to improve, at a tremendous rate. In swimming today, women's race times have reached the levels of men's times in the '60s and '70s. The question may be not "How good are the women?" but "How good will they become?" What are the limits? We have begun to find that there are limits, as the rate of change in the world records in swimming and track show. We haven't come close to those limits yet in women's basketball.

In men's basketball, arguably, the game hasn't changed that much in the last 20 years. If you want to measure against a fairly stable standard, men's basketball provides one—which is what men tend to want, and women sometimes buy into.

And from there comes the speculation that no matter how good women are, just put them on the court with men, and we'll find out the real truth—that women would be nothing if only they had to play against some real competition.