WNBA All-Star weekend wrapped up in Indianapolis this weekend, and even without Caitlin Clark playing, the festivities still drew plenty of buzz (my colleague Rachel Axon, who was on the ground, will have more on that in the SBJ Women\u2019s Sports newsletter on Tuesday).<\/p>\n
The game telecast on ABC also just had a different feel than in past years. Viewers could easily notice the brand involvement and the level of ESPN attention on production for the event (such as taping \u201cGMA\u201d from Indianapolis last week<\/a>, marking the first time WNBA All-Star has gotten such treatment).<\/p>\n Then, there was the real conversation starter for news outlets and social media. That would be the stars of the league rocking \u201cPay Us What You Owe Us\u201d shirts during the pregame. It was a strong message directed at WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert as the league and its players look to hammer out a new CBA.<\/p>\n \u201cAs we take a step back and we just look at the overall growth, it\u2019s like you look at something — I\u2019m not huge into stocks, but if you look at it, it\u2019s up and down and up and down up and down, but the trend is up. Caitlin bringing so many eyes to the game, it\u2019s always going to be a good thing in terms of how it grows the game over time,\u201d ESPN analyst Andraya Carter told SBJ<\/a>.<\/p>\n Beyond the \u201cGMA\u201d pop, there was added shoulder programming like \u201dWNBA Countdown” and a postgame show following the All-Star Game (all featuring the \u201cBig Three\u201d of Chiney Ogwumike, Elle Duncan and Carter — a group that continues to garner praise for its chemistry).<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not like we come into the studio and that\u2019s our first time talking in a week,\u201d said Carter. \u201cWe\u2019ve been talking all week long. We\u2019ve been connected to each other all week long. We\u2019ve probably seen each other before we even get into the studio together. Like any team, the chemistry is something you can\u2019t force. It just must develop naturally. Luckily, ours developed naturally, organically, and very quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WNBA All-Star weekend wrapped up in Indianapolis this weekend, and even without Caitlin Clark playing, the festivities still…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27210,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[352,99,434],"class_list":["post-27209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-espn","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}