the WNBA rules SO HARD
on the league everyone's talking about (go fever)
Otters,
October is the best month on the sports calendar. With the NBA season starting tonight, all four major sports leagues will be playing meaningful games for the next little bit, and it is gonna be beautiful. There is so much I could talk about but I’m picking and choosing since I don’t wanna bore y’all but also this is my Substack and I’m gonna write about what I wanna write about goddamnit.
This weekend was an especially killer sports weekend. I couldn’t keep up with everything. Lots of great college football and NFL games, Alabama lost to Tennessee, Georgia beat #1 ranked Texas, the Chiefs took down San Fran in a Super Bowl rematch, the Yankees won the pennant, and Decision Day in MLS was about as dramatic as you could ask for (and we’ll likely talk about that league in December, once the playoffs wrap up).
Now, you may remember this post from April:
In that post I had mentioned how I couldn’t wait for the start of the WNBA season. And guess what. Today is October 22, and that season is already over. The final game of the WNBA Finals was played on Sunday night between the New York Liberty and the Minnesota Lynx. And New York won! In overtime! It marks their first championship in franchise history (they’ve been around since the W’s been around). It also marks New York City’s first professional basketball championship since 1973. This is because the New York Knicks exist.
I am not gonna tell you about the series because I only have, like, a thousand words to work with here, but it was essentially sick as frick. The Lynx’s Napheesa Collier putting on a two-way clinic. Two overtime games. A buzzer-beater from Liberty sharpshooter Sabrina Ionescu. It had it all. Exactly the kind of final you’d want to have after such a big year for the league. Viewership and attendance records have been absolutely SMASHED. More people are talking about it than ever before. We are in a watershed moment for women’s basketball.
I am also not gonna tell you about game 5 partly because I don’t wanna bore ya with basketball terminology, but also because I honestly wasn’t paying full attention to it. I was studying for the three midterms I have to write this week, and plus I had the game on a split screen alongside the Dodgers-Mets NCLS Game 6 (the Dodgers won) and then the Sunday Night Football game between the Steelers and Jets (the Steelers won).
Split screens are kind of how I roll these days. They make it easier to consume all the sports I want while also sacrificing the art of, well, you know… actual legit focused consumption in the process.
So I was just switching between those three games back and forth every so often whilst I got all pissy about how my brain can literally retain zero scholarly information whatsoever.
Just briefly, though: the most notable part about Sunday night’s game was that people didn’t like how it ended. My Twitter (I refuse to call it X) timeline was just full of people calling the officiating shoddy and the result rigged. Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve, who is kinda known for being outspoken about these things, was irate at her post-game presser last night. Hell, I would be too if I lost a winner-take-all game 5 in overtime because of bad officiating!
Also of note: Jonquel Jones, a Bahamian freak of nature forward for the Liberty, won Finals MVP. She was easily the LIberty’s most consistent player over the course of the series. She makes plays, she digs into the paint and she digs deeeeeep. Seeing the surprise on her face as WNBA Commissioner Kathy Englebert announced she was Finals MVP, and then her little speech about how she wanted more Bahamian girls to fall in love with basketball, made me wanna tear up. She’s one of many players whose game I’ve really fallen in love with this year.
I am no WNBA expert—I just catch the games that get simulcast on Canadian TV and which I have at least a modicum of time to watch—but I feel the need, having fallen in love with it just this past year, to make the case for it.
And I don’t think this is a quote-unquote “woke” idea in the slightest.
Let’s compare it to the NBA: It’s a 12 team league. 144 players. When people call the W the most competitve league in the world, they aren’t kidding. These women battle for time on the floor like no tomorrow. There is no such thing as “load management” here. The quarters are two minutes shorter. The pace of play is slower, so it’s way easier to follow. The games themselves are competitve and physical as hell. There’s a real emphasis on basketball fundamentals, which is a beautiful thing if (like me) you are kind of a purist. Not every seemingly simple layup is made (as many are quick to point out) because most women aren’t 7’4 mutants a la future NBA goat Victor Wembamyama. But I’ve found that that has increased the drama of games Yeah yeah yeah there’s no dunking but you know what the W has that every other league lacks? Ellie the Elephant. A goddess among mortals.
Like many, I have become a supporter of the Indiana Fever because of Caitlin Clark (see above). And she’s balled out! A near-unanimous Rookie of the Year, an All-WNBA First Team appearance, two triple-doubles, the WNBA single-season assists record. The insane thing is that this the worst she’ll ever be. A’ja Wilson of the Las Vegas Aces is far and away the best player in the world, but Clark might give her a run for her money a few years down the line. Getting adjusted to the professional game took her a minute, so she missed out on making USA’s Olympic women’s basketball team, but then I guess halfway into the year something clicked and she was like “F this, I’m Caitlin Clark,” and put the entire league on notice?
The league is a helluva lot more than just Clark, obviously. You’d be remiss not to acknowledge that, and many haven’t. Look at her teammates—I am an Aliyah Boston and Kelsey Mitchell and Lexi Hull fan now. Look at Clark’s rookie class, one of the best ever: from Angel Reese and Kamilla Cardoso on the Chicago Sky to Rickea Jackson and Cameron Brink on the LA Sparks. And look at a sample of established stars on other teams: Kahleah Copper of the Phoenix Mercury, an absolute baller; Alyssa Thomas of the Connecticut Sun, who is literally good at everything; or Arike Ogunbowale of the Dallas Wings, who would put up 83 points a game if she played for a better team.
Anyways. I say all this because it would be wise of you to get on the WNBA train stat. Or at least get on the women’s college basketball train, since that’s starting up again soon. But there will be books written, academic articles published, and documentaries made about this past WNBA season in all its rich contradictions. And that final game on Sunday night was somewhat of a microcosm: good, bad, ugly, undeniably compelling.
See ya Friday.