It would appear that we are going to have to say this once more for the people in the back: women’s basketball is a thing. And if it isn’t your thing, then hush.
After a women’s NCAA basketball tournament for the ages, one that produced high-profile stars — most especially but not only Iowa’s Caitlin Clark — and an undefeated championship team in South Carolina, and then a WNBA draft that had more eyes on it than ever before, it is both shocking and yet also unsurprising that we are still having these conversations. Yet here we are, with sports pundits like Bill Simmons agreeing on his podcast with NBA reporter Ethan Strauss that the WNBA teams should have the same names as their NBA counterparts.
"Like, why force people to learn about the Fever?” Strauss asked. “Why not just have the ‘W Pacers’?”
I mean, seriously. Is it really that hard to add 12 team names to your brains, gentlemen? Aces? Fever? Sky? These are not hard words — they require the bare minimum of attention to wrap one’s brain around. Is it so hard to extract the women’s side of a sport from the men’s? Must everything be in relation to what the men are doing? Because I’m willing to bet quite a few dollars that more kids know who the Indiana Fever are right now than the Indiana Pacers.
Let’s start with a few doses of reality. First of all, not all WNBA teams have a geographical NBA counterpart. That’s just facts. Further, this isn’t the start of something. The WNBA is about to launch its 28th season. Just because the WNBA — and its team names — might be new to you doesn’t mean it is new.
What we are seeing is a wildly strong connection between the now enormously popular (19 million viewers don’t lie) women’s college game and the professional league. This connection is one that the men’s side has largely lost, with few, if any, headliner names. But women’s basketball is establishing the persistent development that is badly needed to make a sport explode, and the results, from ticket sales to sold out merch, make true my constant chant that we need to invest in women’s sport to get results, not wait for results to invest. Because goodness: men’s sports have had quite the head start when it comes to investment and attention. And the WNBA’s recent decision to finally offer charter travel to its players is only the tip of the iceberg.
Should women’s basketball have needed a Clark or an Angel Reese or a Cameron Brink to get the respect it deserves? No. Because it already had a Sue Bird and a Sheryl Swoopes and a Breanna Stewart and a — all bow in respect — Candace Parker. But now it has these new names — especially, without question, Clark — and it is up to us to respect it, own it, and try to keep up with it.
Keeping up with it hasn’t been easy. Some teams have been proactive, such as the indomitable Las Vegas Aces, who moved their July game against the Indiana Fever to a larger venue before Clark had even been drafted. But that has been the exception. After generations ignored the capacity of women’s sport to be profitable, the infrastructure of American sport is barely able to stay on pace with the fan frenzy that surrounds women’s basketball right now. Gregg Doyel became the lesson for all after the Indiana Star penalized him for his awkward — and I’m being kind — exchange with Clark during her first presser after the draft. Doyel is no neophyte when it comes to sports writing, and yet his first time out of the gate with Clark, he crashed and burned and then — so awkward — didn’t seem to understand what the problem was.
The league itself, too, has been caught off guard. After failing to broadcast Reese’s debut with Chicago, a fan livestreamed the game on Twitter from her seat. Over half a million views later, the WNBA decided to add a few preseason games to its League Pass schedule, including — oh yes — Chicago.
Yet there were clues. Before the NCAA women’s championship game, the open practices for Iowa and South Carolina sold out. Think about that for a minute: 17,000 people showed up to watch a basketball practice. So much for the tired theory that women’s basketball isn’t interesting to watch.
So, when Clark comes to New York to face the Liberty — and with it, Breanna Stewart — I will be there, in the worst seat I have ever had at a Liberty game. Because — oh yes — I, too, ignored the signs and had to get at the back of a very long line.
Amy Bass is professor of sport studies and chair of the division of social science and communication at Manhattanville College. Bass is the author of ONE GOAL: A COACH, A TEAM, AND THE GAME THAT BROUGHT A DIVDED TOWN TOGETHER, among other titles. In 2012, she won an Emmy for her work with NBC Olympic Sports on the London Olympic Games.
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