Due out in mid-March, Court Queens: Celebrate the Players, Teams and History of Women’s Basketball (published by Black Dog & Leventhal, an imprint of the Hachette Book Group) is a love letter to the sport and the incredible players who have made their marks. It acknowledges Senda Berenson of Smith College, who introduced the game in 1892, to those who built the WNBA and today’s young talents like Caitlin Clark, Paige Bueckers, and Angel Reese.

Jordan Robinson, one of the book’s authors, played at Division II Point Loma Nazarene University. In recent years, she’s been a journalist, TV host, podcaster, and content creator. Co-author Emma Baccellieri is a long-time sportswriter who has covered women’s hoops for Sports Illustrated.

“I have always wanted to write a book, specifically on women’s basketball … and have it centered on the individual stories and decades of the sport,” said Robinson, who grew up in Northern California and attended Sacramento Monarchs games as a kid.

“The WNBA has always been a part of my life. I went from a fan to realizing I was a little too short to play in the WNBA, but I can talk about it and write about it,” said Robinson, who co-hosts the Women’s Hoops Show with four-time Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) Champion Sheryl Swoopes, talking about the WNBA, Unrivaled, Athletes Unlimited, and college hoops.

Robinson has spent endless hours on Googling different players and games to deepen her knowledge of basketball history. “It allowed me to think of sports in a different way,” she said. “[As a podcaster,] you have to be able to tell those stories and bring facts and history to tell the complete story.”

Legendary players like Cheryl Miller, Lisa Leslie, and Diana Taurasi, as well as their coaches, are part of Court Queens, which has photography to illustrate the stars and the fandom that have loved women’s hoops long before the current craze.

“We started out with a list of people that we thought had to be in the book, but while we were writing, there were other names that we hadn’t heard of,” said Robinson, who examined pre-NCAA women’s hoops in the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) and the pro game’s early leagues, dating back nearly 50 years. “I hope as people are reading it, they have those lightbulb moments. The connections between the decades are crazy, like Dawn Staley’s throughline as a college player, professional player, and now a coach.”

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