• ESPN.com, Friday, April 22, 2011 12:15 PM

NBA commish David Stern said Laurel Richie will be the new president of the WNBA. She was most recently senior VP and CMO of the Girl Scouts of the USA. She has also been with Leo Burnett Worldwide and Ogilvy and Mather overseeing accounts like AmEx and Pepperidge Farms.

ESPN columnist Mechelle Voepel says the league missed a nice opportunity by making the announcement two weeks after the women's Final Four and a week after the WNBA draft. She points out that Donna Orender said she would leave as president December 3, with the league saying it would start looking for a replacement immediately.

"In early March, with still no world on the new president, NBA deputy commissioner Adam Silver told me the person needed to be someone with a strong background in marketing and business," Voepel writes. "At that point, it had been three months since the search ostensibly began," she adds. "So it was pretty clear then that the idea of maximizing the exposure of the new WNBA president was not a consideration for the NBA, let alone a priority."

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