There was a time when The Board had another name, a time when it was the place to be seen for fans of women's basketball. Better known than the official league board, more frequented than ESPN's message board, faster than press releases and wnba.com, fans of all stripes flocked there to mix and mingle with front office personnel, former players, and the occasional coach.

There's nothing mainstream about The Board these days. It's changed its name a few times, and the people who still post there have taken to just calling it The Board, because there's no other. It's not linked to or from anywhere; it gains new members by word of mouth, and membership is approved by its reclusive administrator somewhere in the hills of Tennessee. Only logged-in members can even see that any activity exists.

But in some ways it is as it ever was: the place to go for the real news in women's basketball, where the layers of lies and the secrecy of silence are peeled away to reveal the bitter truth. The cult of personality has no place here. Milestones are noted mockingly: every point by San Antonio or New York credited to Becky Hammon, every rebound Seattle pulls down added to Lauren Jackson's totals, every assist by the Lynx given to Lindsay Whalen, every steal by the Comets given to Sheryl Swoopes, every Spark block credited to Lisa Leslie. Sacramento and Detroit are the WNBA teams of choice among these fans, the fans who know.

They remember the way things were, and despise the way things are. The longest thread on the WNBA board is the birthday thread, constantly updated: such-and-such date would have been So-And-So's umpteenth birthday. Names are spoken there that have been lost in blinding white light: Candace, Swin, Shameka, Érika, Matee, Eshaya, Armintie, Sandora, and more, so many more. The Board has its own server for old pictures from before the changes began, kept as reminders of the lies sold on television.

The college forum is less active than it once was, and the thread chronicling which schools have heard the siren call of perfection grows longer every day. The old rivalries have been buried here, and the new ones afford no space for their partisans, not when so many of them are now based on which schools use the technology and which ones don't. A good number of BCS fans whose schools have gone down the garden path now claim mid-majors with pride: Husky Hardcores give their loyalty to Sacred Heart and Fairfield, the Cagers Club claims St. Francis as their own, and the few Rebounders who remain are pledged to George Washington or Howard. Draft profiles are presented in obituary style, and with the rise of clones in college, some followers of the high school game have started doing the same for college recruits.

The people in the know still flock to The Board. MoFO and SFO provide reports from Sacramento and Detroit, including rumors of trade requests; these are usually accompanied with a side of bitter sarcasm regarding too much time spent in controlled arenas. SunDevil84 keeps fans posted on when and where Tari Phillips will be opposing a game. F/CPA knows how the money flows. bling-bling, a shared screenname to judge from the writing style, has the freshest gossip from Phoenix. TeeEmEff keeps tabs on league alumnae who have a knack for getting into legal trouble and uses the tagline "Chamique Holdsclaw's bail buddy". dantheman posts riddles that, when solved, reveal the schedule for the barnstorming league headquartered in Cleveland. cesto libre files reports from the pure basketball that remains in Spain and other European countries. seminolewind travels the country and has a vendetta against Chicago and Connecticut. Honest game reports- at least at arenas that haven't been filled with subliminal mind-fuck- are filed there by fans, and occasionally commentators, who know and love the game.

Somehow, despite being permanently disconnected from most of the WNBA and a growing segment of the NCAA, The Board still knows all.