Despite moving on to a flashy new role at Netflix this year, Elle Duncan has continued the role that put her on the map: WNBA studio anchor. Duncan is the host of USA Network\u2019s pre- and postgame coverage, and will be part of the network\u2019s WNBA Finals broadcasts this fall.<\/p>\n
Yet while Duncan has clearly found a home covering the league as it blossoms into a major sports media property, she is not immune to the negative energy that has enveloped it this season. In fact, Duncan, who covered just about every sport coming up through local news in Atlanta and Boston before her high-profile stint at ESPN, believes WNBA commentary is already back at a low point.<\/p>\n
In an interview<\/a> on WHYY\u2019s Sports In America podcast released last week, Duncan called women\u2019s hoops \u201cthe most toxic space to cover,\u201d echoing language from other figures in the sport by saying WNBA discourse has been \u201chijacked<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI remember how much passion, energy, and excitement there was for the attention that these women were finally getting, and the ratings, and this new crop of superstars that were going to come into the league and help elevate this game even more,\u201d Duncan said. \u201cAnd it would finally be all these women reaping everything that they had sewn all these years. And very quickly over the course of the last three years, it\u2019s just turned into \u2026 a sticking point for sides to continue to politicize things that shouldn\u2019t be, to be as divisive as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n Already this year, there have been significant tensions around the league\u2019s new collective bargaining agreement; multiple news cycles<\/a> around Caitlin Clark\u2019s on-court interactions<\/a>; unproven rumors about a player getting black-balled<\/a>; a reporter banned by the Indiana Fever<\/a>; multiple calls<\/a> for a new commissioner; several rounds of debate<\/a> around the WNBA\u2019s participation policy for transgender women<\/a>; a mini gambling scandal<\/a>; and a foul blamed on \u201cwhite privilege<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n When Duncan talks with her colleagues, they almost unanimously agree that the WNBA has quickly become the worst sport to cover.<\/p>\n \u201cRight now, the WNBA is the most toxic space to cover, and that\u2019s incredibly frustrating and sad,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was so much conversation \u2026 about, early on, \u2018Hey this is maybe not such a bad thing, right? No such thing as bad publicity, right? It\u2019s all good! Now we\u2019re like the men\u2019s sports! We\u2019ve got stupid narratives and discourse and we\u2019ve got, like, false things being said. Uh-oh, we\u2019ve made it! We\u2019re like the men!\u2019 And I think, very quickly, that\u2019s turned into, \u2018Oh my goodness, everything that people revered and loved about this space is essentially being hijacked.’\u201d<\/p>\n Duncan said the noise comes from \u201ca perpetual cycle\u201d that everyone must work together to stop.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s on absolutely everybody,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cI know everybody that I work with is exhausted by this space right now, and I think the players included. But I do think that it\u2019s not just the media to blame, just the league to blame, or just the players. I think, collectively, we\u2019ve got to put our heads together and figure out how we right this ship.<\/p>\n \u201cBecause we have an opportunity here to celebrate this monumentous moment and this movement in the WNBA, and I think we are wasting it by muddying it down with everything else that\u2019s bothering us in this country right now.\u201d<\/p>\n Having covered the WNBA close to full time during the entirety of Clark\u2019s rise, Duncan has seen the environment at games and within the fanbase evolve from a welcoming one to something more confrontational. The host said she fears the WNBA is no longer the \u201cinclusive space\u201d it once was.<\/p>\n Still, viewership has remained strong for the games themselves. And with multiple star-laden teams in position for deep playoff runs, the WNBA can look to redirect fan passion toward games and basketball stories sooner than later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite moving on to a flashy new role at Netflix this year, Elle Duncan has continued the role…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":817339,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[160902,99,346773,434],"class_list":["post-817338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-elle-duncan","tag-sports","tag-sports-in-america","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817338","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=817338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817338\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/817339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=817338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=817338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=817338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}