The gap between what happens on a WNBA court and the media conversation around the league has arguably never been wider.<\/p>\n
As the league attempts to juggle the many controversies around it and its players, they have come so quickly and intensely that it is difficult for analysts to cut through with actual basketball commentary. The media instead is discussing transgender children<\/a>, or white privilege<\/a>, or Caitlin Clark\u2019s temperament<\/a>. Mostly, blame has been placed on the league office and commissioner Cathy Engelbert<\/a> for failing to get a handle on the league\u2019s outward-facing image.<\/p>\n Having played in the league for nearly two decades and now working in mainstream media, Hall of Famer Sue Bird sees it a bit differently.<\/p>\n In the latest episode<\/a> of her\u00a0Bird\u2019s Eye View podcast, Bird defended WNBA management. The four-time league champion argued that the league is, even by its supposed defenders, getting held to a higher standard than Democratic politicians or others whose actual job it is to combat conservative talking points by Donald Trump and the MAGA movement.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m very protective, I\u2019ll start by saying, of the league, of the players \u2026 everything,\u201d Bird said. \u201cAnd I\u2019m just like, part of me wants to go out publicly and be like, look at President Trump. Has anyone figured out, have the Democrats figured out, has anyone figured out how to not be manipulated by the way in which he does things and operates? And to me, I feel like the WNBA is expected to have figured this out. But how is the WNBA, overnight, supposed to figure (it) out? Nobody else can.<\/p>\n \u201cSo it\u2019s just, there are times where I\u2019m like, is the WNBA as a league, and by league I\u2019m going to be specific and say league office, do they get too much flak for not being able to handle things that even politicians who are paid to handle these things can\u2019t figure out?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n One explanation posed by ESPN\u2019s Ramona Shelburne, Bird\u2019s guest on the episode, is that there has been \u201cless expression across all sports\u201d politically during the second Trump administration. Whereas, according to Shelburne, the WNBA has been a more \u201cwilling participant\u201d in the conversation around social issues because its players are less hesitant to speak out.<\/p>\n To Shelburne\u2019s point, two of the noisier recent news cycles centered around comments made directly by Sophie Cunningham<\/a> and Dijonai Carrington<\/a>.<\/p>\n While Bird (who, it should be noted<\/a>, is also an executive at USA Basketball and part owner of the Seattle Storm) took the point, she also explained that WNBA players became so outspoken because they often were forced to defend themselves and their existence as pro athletes against the same outside agitators who now want to manipulate the conversation around the league.<\/p>\n \u201cFor years, we had to engage,\u201d Bird said. \u201cWe were told to shut up and dribble; athletes are told to shut up and dribble at that time and years prior. We would have loved to. We would have loved to shut up and dribble. But for us, for a very long time, it was never about basketball. Because I do personally think what was held up against us was the \u2026 intersectionality of it all. So we kind of had to speak on these things, and now it\u2019s almost been, like, flipped.\u201d<\/p>\n As an example, Bird recalled<\/a> the 2020 Bubble season in Florida, when players helped shift the U.S. Senate election in Georgia<\/a> toward the Democratic candidate, Rafael Warnock. They did so because the Republican incumbent, Kelly Loeffler, despite being a part owner of the league\u2019s Atlanta Dream, painted the players as radicals for their support of the Black Lives Matter movement.<\/p>\n While Bird acknowledged there is no simple solution to the broader issues facing the WNBA as it attempts to break through into the mainstream, it is useful to understand this history. Players today (or at least some of them) are being told to pipe down so that the league can grow, while the league office is expected to navigate a minefield of hypercritical 24\/7 right-wing news coverage that almost nobody in America has ever tamed. Left unsaid is that all the while, the players and what they represent will continue to be co-opted by reactionary figures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The gap between what happens on a WNBA court and the media conversation around the league has arguably…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":866878,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[254517,49,48,82,38379,630],"class_list":["post-866877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-birds-eye-view","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-sue-bird","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=866877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866877\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/866878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=866877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=866877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=866877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}