WNBA pats itself on the back, but there is still heavy lifting to do

Hand this to the WNBA, they are quick to point out the league achievements. An e-mail on Wednesday detailed a bunch of them:

WNBA attendance increased for the fifth consecutive year

Bravo, but the increase was 1.25 percent. Hardly dramatic. ... Leading the upward charge was the Chicago Sky, up 29 percent -- just think if the Sky had a playoff team, it didn't. Next was the Washington Mystics, up 11.7 percent. The Mystics also missed the playoffs.

The trend of non-playoff teams thriving at the gate slows down there. The third-ranked team in increased attendance was the Lynx, up 10.8 percent. That's a nice jump but much more impressive was the actual number of fans at games. People who bought tickets were showing up, cheering, buying concessions, jamming the aisles. Imagine that. Used to be the Lynx announced the crowd at 7,000 and and that seemed like a count of legs, not heads. No more.

TV viewership on ESPN2 reached its highest level since 2005

ESPN2 broadcasts averaged 270,000 viewers, up 5 percent. A modest boost.

The WNBA all-star game was watched by 46 percent more fans than the last all-star game in 2009. Super, but that's just one game.

Unique visits to wnba.com grew by 13 percent. I'm become addicted to the site. Can't help it. There's a lot of stuff on that Internet, to paraphrase an eminent colleague.

LiveAccess on wnba.com -- a way to see games on your computer, grew 55 percent. Simple astounding to me.

Why so? The quality of those Internet broadcasts ranged from very good to unwatchable. They were free, so the cost was right for the terrible ones. More than a few times, LiveAccess kept crashing, or the broadcast seemed more like a slide show that a TV-quality stream of images.

WNBA's YouTube channel was up 35 percent in video views.

WNBA's Facebook page saw an 11 percent jump in fans. Don't do Facebook. No comment.

League merchandise sales on WNBAStore.com were up by 12 percent. What does that mean? Give me some dollar figures, please.

Lynx merchandise was the hottest seller, led by rookie Maya Moore. More fans want Lynx stuff with Maya's name on it than anybody' else's on any team. Again, what does that mean? Dollar figures please.

Am I being too harsh on the WNBA folks? Don't mean to be. The women's pro game is getting better, especially at Target Center this year. The Lynx are fun to watch almost every game.

But there is still a lot of room for growth in the WNBA. The fan base is way too small here and elsewhere. A sellout in the Target Center shouldn't be a filled lower bowl. The Lynx could easily have two, three players on the U.S. team in the 2012 Olympics. Yet the Lynx and the WNBA still flies under the radar of many die-hard sports fans.

Sure, you can't compare the Lynx's season to the season the Twins are having or the seasons the Wild or Timberwolves had in 2010-11. Or to the seasons the Vikings or Gophers will have in football based on early results.

LYNX CHAT

Join me for Lynx and WNBA playoffs talk at high noon on Friday at www.startribune.com. If it goes well -- and the Lynx keep winning, of course -- this could be the first of several weekly live chats.

Gotta show my bosses big numbers: lots of questions, lots of people clicking on.

There is a lot to talk about, of course. Been preparing hard. Watched a rerun of NBA-TV's playoffs preview at 1 a.m. Wednesday morning -- sometimes analysis makes more sense in the wee hours of the day. Also was on an hour-long conference call with ESPN analysts, three WNBA coaches and four players, including Lindsay Whalen, on Tuesday afternoon.