In the end, the WNBA players walked out of negotiations with David Stern the way those in the NBA had done five years ago: Beaten and bowed, mumbling over the NBA commissioner's hard-line stance that threatened to shut down a season the players couldn't afford to lose.

As little leverage as those cash-strapped men had in 1998, this was decidedly different: This wouldn't have just been the end of the WNBA season, but maybe the end of the league.

Grudgingly, the WNBA rank and file accepted the league's proposal that its own union leadership told them to turn down. The league was still silent late Friday night, but the players confessed to breaking down and doing the inevitable: Seeing it the commissioner's way, like they were destined to do.

Somehow, the ball players sounded surprised to find out this was a business, that this wasn't Geno and Coach G, milk and cookies with room, books and tuition. Stern is pumping millions of dollars into this losing proposition, and truthfully, these players shouldn't have been fighting him for more, but thanking him that he hadn't pulled the plug long ago.

This should've been a short negotiation meeting between the WNBA and its union, ending fast with the players reaching across the table, shaking hands and thanking the executives for the fact that still they have a well-paying, well-publicized four-month summer job. Thanking them for the fact that they're not schlepping off to distant out-posts of the world to play pro basketball.

"The players have other options," San Antonio's Adrienne Goodson told the Associated Press the other day. "We can play overseas."

Who's stopping them? Actually, women's players did it for a long time -- and some still do in the winter months -- but nobody believed for a minute that this union was willing to throw everything away for an extra few thousand dollars. Least of all Stern, who understood during the NBA's lockout year that his players would come crawling across the negotiating table -- even if union management told them to stay back. Just like the WNBA did late Friday.

They should've done this a long time ago, and spared themselves the embarrassment of a labor war that they couldn't possibly win. If the NBA players ended up crushed by the commissioner, what chance did the WNBA have with him? As it turned out, none. Ultimately, it comes down to this: As much as Title IX and the explosion of women's college basketball is a reason for the league's existence, none of it mattered unless Stern hadn't been so determined that this league wouldn't fail under his watch.

The NBA promotes the WNBA relentlessly. It gets national television. Its gets pro arenas. Its gets credibility. Still, the league is struggling. Television ratings are terrible, attendance is down and top college coaches still don't see the WNBA as a destination. The talent is better than ever, but it still hasn't translated into mainstream sporting America.

And now, the WNBA is bleeding money, franchises are folding and they've stooped to the ridiculous lows of selling a franchise to a Connecticut casino. Now, Mom, Dad and the kids get to walk into the Mohegan Sun to watch those old UConn Huskies, learning a reality where the casino is a perfectly plausible family outing. And who says sports still doesn't teach life lessons?

Here's a little advice for the union five years down the road, when this contract is up again: Tell Martha Burk to get lost when she starts stumping on your behalf.

"We know the dollars cannot be equal, but 15 percent of revenue for the women as opposed to 60 for the men is way, way out of whack," Burk recently said. "They could do some structural changes over time that would greatly improve the situation of the women without breaking the league."

Get lost. Does she want to buy one of these franchises and go broke with it? Please. The union should've been savvy enough to get her out of the debate this week after her debacle in Augusta, Ga., where she lost so much credibility with her fight against The Masters and Augusta National Golf Club.

The WNBA wouldn't be alive without Stern insisting that it didn't die. If there was going to be women's professional basketball in the United States, he wanted it with the NBA logo. If they wanted to fight him on a collective-bargaining agreement, they were going to lose. And the union did, getting the five-year contract the league wanted, with the nominal raises that it was willing to give.

So far, the WNBA has been a modest success, earning modest growth starting its seventh season. Stern just authorized a $12 million subsidy to pump into the venture, with the shuffling of teams to new markets designed to stimulate its stagnancy. It's a long, hard road to basketball glory. For now, the WNBA players had no leverage. For now, they have to take what David Stern gives them. And what the commissioner gives them is a professional basketball league.

Adrian Wojnarowski is a columnist for The Record (N.J.) and a regular contributor to ESPN.com. He can be reached at ESPNWoj@aol.com.