Due out in mid-March,\u00a0Court Queens: Celebrate the Players, Teams and History of Women\u2019s Basketball\u00a0(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\u2019s young talents like Caitlin Clark, Paige Bueckers, and Angel Reese.<\/p>\n
Jordan Robinson, one of the book\u2019s authors, played at Division II Point Loma Nazarene University. In recent years, she\u2019s been a journalist, TV host, podcaster, and content creator. Co-author Emma Baccellieri is a long-time sportswriter who has covered women\u2019s hoops for\u00a0Sports Illustrated.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have always wanted to write a book, specifically on women\u2019s basketball \u2026 and have it centered on the individual stories and decades of the sport,\u201d said Robinson, who grew up in Northern California and attended Sacramento Monarchs games as a kid.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 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,\u201d said Robinson, who co-hosts the Women\u2019s Hoops Show with four-time Women\u2019s National Basketball Association (WNBA) Champion Sheryl Swoopes, talking about the WNBA, Unrivaled, Athletes Unlimited, and college hoops. <\/p>\n
Robinson has spent endless hours on Googling different players and games to deepen her knowledge of basketball history. \u201cIt allowed me to think of sports in a different way,\u201d she said. \u201c[As a podcaster,] you have to be able to tell those stories and bring facts and history to tell the complete story.\u201d<\/p>\n
Legendary players like Cheryl Miller, Lisa Leslie, and Diana Taurasi, as well as their coaches, are part of\u00a0Court Queens, which has photography to illustrate the stars and the fandom that have loved women\u2019s hoops long before the current craze.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe 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\u2019t heard of,\u201d said Robinson, who examined pre-NCAA women\u2019s hoops in the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) and the pro game\u2019s early leagues, dating back nearly 50 years. \u201cI hope as people are reading it, they have those lightbulb moments. The connections between the decades are crazy, like Dawn Staley\u2019s throughline as a college player, professional player, and now a coach.\u201d <\/p>\n
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