The attention is coming and so the WNBA is changing.
Remember our favorite basketball league where the players moonlighted as part-time politicos, coronavirus vaccine boosters, and good and faithful soldiers on the front lines of our social and cultural battlefields? The progressive women of the W, they could show all the other professional leagues what true advocacy looks like. But things are shifting, changing as fast as the casuals and crazies are catching up on Caitlin Clark’s bandwagon.
In the past, when the WNBA reached mass audiences, it sparkled as an emblem for women’s empowerment. And allies in orange hoodies wore the bun-haired logo woman as a sign of their support for something greater than sport. But now, with interest in the league – and its most famous player – lighting cultural wildfires, and the new media rights deal that will soon pump in $200 million annually (and $2.2 billion over the span of 11 years), the WNBA is no longer just a moral cause. It’s a megabucks sports league.
The money isn’t just coming; the money is here. And money always changes things. The league full of do-gooders is growing up, becoming as ruthless as the rest. This week, a third WNBA team fired its coach. Tanisha Wright had led the Atlanta Dream to back-to-back postseason appearances, but she’s now looking for work, along with Curt Miller (after two seasons with the Los Angeles Sparks) and Teresa Weatherspoon (she lasted only one season with the Chicago Sky). New money might be the reason.
Behind Clark’s emergence, arenas are selling out and televised regular-season games are averaging millions of viewers. For years the league was trending in the right direction, but she clearly is the reason behind this season’s star turn. But anyone casting Clark, who won the WNBA Rookie of the Year award, as the league’s solo rock star with the other 143 women playing tambourine in the background is missing the point. Leagues need rivalries. Rivalries make for good storylines. Clark needs rivals. And her rivals need fans. And those haters will keep tuning in, shattering ratings records or snatching up tickets.
For franchise owners, it’s no longer enough to simply have a team as a tax write-off. If team governors want to catch this spotlight, then it seems they’re willing to chase after a winning product and exhibit the same impatience as their wealthy peers in other leagues.
Also, the mainstream is coming – well, actually, the mainstream is already occupying the WNBA. And with more popularity comes more fans and more media, even some that the league’s O.G. gatekeepers would rather lock out.
The W’s players once helped oust a U.S. senator. Now they’re waging war against a credentialed journalist.
Last week, the players union released a scorched-earth statement in response to an interaction between USA Today columnist Christine Brennan and Connecticut Sun player DiJonai Carrington. Brennan asked Carrington if she had intended to hit Clark in the eye during a playoff game, and though Carrington explained that she didn’t even realize she had done so at the time, Brennan followed up by asking if she had laughed about the incident with a teammate.
Brennan claimed the line of questioning was “journalism 101.” However, the union wanted to point out the bigger picture. Any player – specifically, any Black player – who dares to “D” up Clark has endured personal attacks on social media. It’s been the troubling trend throughout this season, so the union, justifiably, viewed Brennan’s follow-up question as playing to that crowd. Not the cute and cuddly fan base of girls who wear No. 22 Fever jerseys, but the contingent of wackos who have nothing better to do than celebrate their hero by attacking the others of the WNBA.
When a sport enters the mainstream, it opens the door wide to anything that can come crawling in. Everyone watches women’s sports, the slogan says. Everyone, sure, including the racists. As condemning as it is of American sports culture, the presence of an uglier faction of fans is another indicator of the league’s rising popularity.
Still, responsible reporters should be wary of questions that can double as bat signals to bigots, whose attacks usually come coded in racially offensive mockery or downright disgusting vitriol. However, the union mishandled the moment with its over-the-top and shortsighted declaration that Brennan didn’t “deserve” her credential. With two sides going at one another – athletes vs. media – the conflict has kept the league atop the news cycle even as the playoffs roll on. This isn’t quite the vision that Sue Bird had for the growth of women’s basketball. But hey, everyone is watching and now everyone has an opinion about the women of this sport.
Recently, Bird, the league’s career assists leader, and her partner Megan Rapinoe shared a wide-ranging conversation on their podcast about the racist, misogynist and homophobic narratives against the predominantly Black league. Because these narratives exist – and have so for many years – Bird said the players themselves have had to fight back. As Bird pointed out, the women became known for their advocacy – even if sometimes it would have been nice to be just athletes.
“For so long as a player I would almost joke, I’d be like: ‘I would’ve loved to have shut up and (dribbled),’ ” Bird said. “In so many ways, I would’ve loved to have been valued as a basketball player. I would’ve loved to have been spoken about just for my play. I think everybody in the league can say that. But nobody ever let us do that. So what happened? We started to build a backbone. A little bit of an identity. We understood that in order to push our league forward, we were going to have to combat these things.”
But now the WNBA is moving forward, and expanding from its target demographic of women, girls and basketball lovers within the LGBTQ+ community. Change is indeed coming, and so are all the growing pains.