Well, that sure was something wasn’t it? The WNBA season, for all it’s highs and lows, ended with the New York Liberty claiming their first WNBA championship in franchise history. Yes, there will be plenty to discuss regarding officiating and end-of-game sequences. But the one thing I kept coming back to is that the W being the subject of mainstream discussion against an NLCS clinching game and Sunday Night Football shows the growth of the league. Is all growth good? Well, we’ll get to that. In the meantime, here’s what we got cooking on No Cap Space WBB this week.
Tuesday: We talk through the WNBPA’s potential options should they decide to opt-out of the league’s collective bargaining agreement.
Wednesday: The Legendarium heads to Cleveland, Mississippi to tell the story of Margaret Wade, Lusia Harris and the Delta State Lady Statesmen. We take you back to the late 1970’s to examine the after-effects of the Civil Rights Movement in the Mississippi Delta, how the Lady Statesmen built a hub for women’s basketball in the state and the lasting effect they have on the game today.
Thursday: Our crew unveils our ‘WNBA Ball-Out Team’ which is essentially the players that we thought played far above expectations and deserve a bit more shine for the year they put together. Tyler, Andrew and Rashard give their picks to form a first team and a sixth baller of the year.
Friday: Our NCAA previews continue with the Big 12. If you missed our previous Friday installments, we have already highlighted the Mid-Majors, Big East and ACC.
Now, onto THE Monday column in the world of women’s basketball…
A win for the Liberty is a win for New York basketball…
We’ll get to the controversy, the officiating, the 1-19 in due time. But off rip I want to highlight just how important this win is for New York basketball. For those unaware of the culture around hoops in the city right now, it’s in danger of being lost. Not completely, mind you. But over time there’s been a slow chipping away at the local prep circuit that’s taken the best players out of NYC and undercutting the culture of basketball that the boroughs are built upon. For the Liberty to be champions after 28 years is a visibility win for girls playing basketball in the city the same way that the Knicks resurgence is essential for boys.
And to have Breanna Stewart, who isn’t a city kid but came up in Syracuse and played ball at Cicero-North, be the one to have come home and win a title is meaningful, at least to this native New Yorker. When we talk about growth of the game, exposure and importance are major components of it. Minnesota is a clear example of how championships foster inspiration against younger generations (Paige Bueckers, for one). The Liberty winning has a chance to do the same for girls in the tri-state but also those that are upstate in areas like the Finger Lakes, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo and Albany. It can spread to Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, Staten Island and Manhattan.
But more importantly, the message it sends to those girls and everyone watching around them is that when you invest in women properly, the results will come. This is a franchise that were largely treated like second class citizens under former owner James Dolan. Women’s basketball legend Carol Blazejowski was the only thing standing between the Liberty and utter ruin. For years, the team was switching arenas and venues. Sometimes playing at Radio City Music Hall, moving to the Prudential Center in Newark and then, most insultingly, to the Westchester County Center from 2018 to 2019. Brooklyn Nets owner Joe Tsai and his wife, Clara Wu Tsai, took over and promptly invested appropriately. Two years into the experiment, they’re champions. There’s a lesson in that, from the Tsai’s to Mark Davis. The new age of the WNBA is here from an ownership perspective and if you want to win, you have to put your money where your mouth is. If that’s the lesson the folks with deep pockets take from this series, I count that as a massive win for the league.
It is okay for us to be honest about Game 5’s shortcomings.
Alright, we all should be honest with ourselves here. That was a bad game of basketball. After four games of pure adrenaline, I get that players were exhausted, tight and mentally drained. We typically see in elimination games that there is more of a lid on the hoop. But I did come away a little bummed at the idea that a lot of people tuned into the WNBA for the first time last night and saw a masterclass in brick-laying. I’ve defended Sabrina Ionescu forever and will continue to do so but this one? Yeah, Chauny wins the agenda-off. 1-19 is one of the worst performances I’ve ever seen in a Finals, win or lose. It doesn’t do justice to the series we got.
What’s worse is that the game tightened up at the end and we had a chance for a classic ending amidst a bad game. Then the refs got involved. It’s been no secret that officiating in the WNBA has been terrible for most of this year. It’s important to note that that isn’t restricted to women’s basketball, specifically. There is a refereeing epidemic in this country stemming from a lack of development in younger officials. Maybe, parents could stop being assholes at their kids youth games and we wouldn’t have this problem. But alas, story for another time. We’ll keep it Game 5-centric. I hated the end of game call on Breanna Stewart. Not because I thought it was the wrong call but I just don’t believe you blow the whistle there. This is the game where the winner goes home a champion. These are the two best teams with two of the three best players in the sport right now in Stewart and Napheesa Collier. Make them earn it. If you want to be great, go out and get it. Don’t be gifted a chance to receive it.
I don’t buy too much into Cheryl Reeve’s postgame comments regarding the officiating. Game 4 was tilted towards Minnesota and it’s a reasonable argument to make that she and Sandy Brondello have been trying to exert influence in postgame pressers all year. But beyond the general disparity, I thought it was wild for Napheesa Collier to take 23 shots and not get to the line once. There’s plenty of ‘refs didn’t tilt this’ arguments to make but that one is really hard, if not impossible, to rationalize. Conspiracy takes are always a little ridiculous, at least to me. It doesn’t benefit the Liberty to win a title that is being treated like a Lakers bubble season championship. That does the league no good. Often times, malice is just incompetence. With that said, WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert presenting the title trophy in a dress with the NYC skyline printed on it is just horrendous optics. It’s a great win for the Liberty and NYC basketball but it’s a bummer Game 5 was a bit of a blemish on an otherwise all-time great series.
Nyara Sabally’s journey deserves a point of its’ own.
I covered Nyara Sabally’s career at Oregon and to see her do what she did in Game 5 was absolutely magical. This is a person that had two major knee injuries before she played meaningful minutes in Eugene. She was believed to be, every year, one of the best players in the country. The issue is that she was always in street clothes. In 2021, I vividly remember sitting in press row at Matthew Knight Arena as she crumpled to the floor in the season opener against Idaho State. It was a non-contact injury and, among some within the program, believed to be more a mental issue than a physical one. After two blown ACL’s, who could blame her?
That anecdote is important because it was really heartening to see her sprinting the floor in a championship elimination game knowing the journey she had to get to this point. She finished with 13 points and 7 rebounds on 5/7 shooting, playing 17 huge minutes and being a part of a five woman rotation that Sandy Brondello had quite literally never played this year before Game 5. At 6’4, I couldn’t help but see shades of a bigger Napheesa Collier. She’s long, quick for someone her size, can play in the post but also run the floor. Her activity on the defensive end was spectacular and game changing. It was everything that Oregon head coach Kelly Graves had always talked about when she would be on the bench nursing an injury. Those are the kinds of stories that make sports great and athletes so unique. At multiple points in her career, Nyara could’ve hung it up. But she tapped into something mentally that most individuals simply can’t and now we’re seeing the results of that fortitude. So big props to her and keep an eye on her continued development. She, to me, is a year 3/year 4 breakout candidate in this league.
Buckle up, folks. The season may be over but the labor war is about to begin.
We are officially ten days out from the WNBPA’s opt-out deadline of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement. I’ve been on record as being unsure of the stomach the PA has to fight what truly needs to be fought here. Nneka Ogwumike, the president of the Union, told reporters in her exit interview with the Seattle Storm that her October would be spent whipping votes to get as much voter participation to opt-out as possible. In the past, the PA hasn’t had an issue with getting people to cast votes but this is the most important labor dispute in league history.
I thought Angel Reese getting pilloried on social media over her quotes regarding her WNBA pay and her rent was interesting because it represented a chance for the PA to be able to seize on messaging and insulate one of their star rookies from criticism. The argument would’ve been simple: Angel’s endorsements allow her to live a comfortable life. But what about the bench player who is trying to live on $70,000 in a place like New York or Los Angeles that doesn’t have the brand Angel does? I’ve had my misgivings in the past with the PA’s messaging and how they sometimes focus on the wrong things relative to what they actually need to be fighting. I hope they're loaded for bear because they’re going up against two leagues instead of just the W.
Enter our buddy James Dolan.
No doubt some of you read or heard of a recent New York Post piece that claims the WNBA will again lose money this year and *allegedly* NBA owners are getting impatient. If you read between the lines, the story is very complimentary of former Liberty owner James Dolan, cites one anonymous NBA executive and claims he’s pushing on Adam Silver to shut off the money spigot. It doesn’t take much to infer that their source is a guy that has always been more than willing to feed them information over the years. Dolan, over the last year, has been something of a villain to the growth of the league. He was the sole vote against expansion to Toronto and has voiced increasing frustration with rising upfront operating costs associated with the league (from the WNBA to the G-League). The Post story is a clear labor leverage hit piece, as league revenues are often obfuscated and it really shouldn’t matter to owners as long as franchise valuations continue to increase (which they are in the W). So the WNBPA is going to have a major fight on their hands, not just against their own league ownership but the NBA’s as well.
One conspiratorial note before we go: Unrivaled just inked a 6 year, $100 million broadcast deal with TNT for the centralized, player owned 3x3 league. It proves the money is there for an organized league. It also creates a fascinating bit of negotiating leverage for players who can directly point to the fact that networks want the product of women’s basketball beyond the WNBA specifically. So buckle up and support unions!
What do we truly make of this WNBA season?
Was this WNBA season a success? It really depends on who you ask. As friend of NCS
of Out of Your League notes, there are perils to visibility. This season has been a true test of what you value as a sports fan. Is all press good press? Does more money and investment into these players mean that the additional harassment and problems are worth it?I think it’ll be something that takes a year or two to truly assess and understand.
One thing is for sure: the WNBA as a league did not seem to be prepared for the moment in a litany of ways. I don’t put that on the players solely, though I think there’s some introspection that needs to happen on that end too this offseason. But the league, which has existed in a state of reactionary behavior for the last five years especially, utterly failed in their ability to understand what they were getting. Even now, I went back and watched their ‘Welcome to the W’ ad campaign and one of the first pieces touched on the physicality of the league for rookies. The ‘reality’ Diana Taurasi spoke of. Does it mean that, in hindsight, the league needed to treat rookies like Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese and Rickea Jackson with kid gloves? No. But the idea of leaning into the ‘hazing’ component as a league marketing tool was stupid then and even worse now.
I do believe that come next year a lot of the culture war discourse will settle down. It’ll exist, to be clear. But, as we saw during the Olympics, the grievance grifting machine will find another target to latch onto. It was Imane Khelif over the summer and now it’s a Mountain West volleyball player. It didn’t help that this was also an election year and an election that has been framed by everyone in the political sphere as the final fight for the soul of America. When that happens, people pick their avatars and their sides. It was vital that the league and its’ partners not fall into that same doom loop. Instead, members of longtime W media decided to happily get into the mud with the Stephen A. Smith’s of the world to try and make their point or earn some clicks and followers by drafting off major media members’ clout. In short, it was a shameless and gross year for damn near everyone involved in discussion about this league.
Overall, the business of the WNBA is thriving. The money is coming in, despite what the Post would have you think. Franchise valuations are up. The TV deal is significantly better. Depending on how labor negotiations go, players are set for a huge potential windfall. Interest is up and the sport has broken into the mainstream zeitgeist. But at the same time, some of that is a pyrrhic victory. Growth, but at what cost? I hope that’s something weighed heavily in offseason meetings among the league’s executive leadership. Because we can’t do a year like this again. Otherwise you risk turning everyone, fans new and old, off to everything you’ve spent 28 years to build.
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