They're full of it: The WNBA and the media say they decry all the drama and conflict surrounding the league. They're being disingenous
We're all suckers for a great story. And the WNBA has an endless supply of them.
I’ve stood on the sidelines the last 48 hours, let the whole Stephanie White thing marinate, and the more I hear, the more I read, the more it occurs to me: Everybody is being hysterically disingenuous.
The league, which can’t buy this kind of publicity, is grimacing all the way to the bank. Drama sells. Conflict rules. Especially now, in the current day, where every utterance is deconstructed into some binary right-left referendum, on sports, on culture, on everything.
Have you seen the TV ratings? The WNBA is exploding. And they are being led by this generational change-maker, Caitlin Clark, and a compelling, must-see-TV cast led by the dynamic Kelsey Mitchell, the irrepressible Sophie Cunningham and the under-appreciated Aliyah Boston. There’s a very good reason why every Fever game is televised. They sell.
The more my friend Christine Brennan talks on CNN, the more the NBC national news features clips of White’s fevered soliloquy, the more it raises interest in the WNBA. The league has its hardcore fans, the ones who paid attention before Clark came on the professional scene. But a lot of fans are newbies, and they can’t get enough of the craziness. You’re paying attention, right?
Who can’t wait for DiJonai Carrington, the woman who committed the hard foul against Cunningham, then blamed her ejection on “white privilege,” to come face the Fever again, specifically Aug. 23 in Chicago?
Ratings, already soaring, will be through the roof.
The WNBA is trying to address all the nonsense, their anti-hate task force meeting virtually this week to address some of the nastiness inside the league and out, but as long as there’s social media and trolls who can’t resist a delicious story line, I’m not sure what they can accomplish.
Plus, the league lack’s the leadership plays a significant role as commissioner Cathy Engelbert continues to establish herself as one of the most feckless commissioners in pro sports.
I also want to take the media to task.
Yeah, my friends and colleagues.
There’s been a lot of tsk-tsk-ing going on, media voices decrying the off-the-court weirdness, insisting we all need to focus on the ample talent in the WNBA, write about all the good stories – like Kelsey Mitchell pursuing a doctorate while sitting second in the league in scoring behind A’ja Wilson.
“It’s awful,” they say and write after every WNBA-related outrage, whether they’re angry fouls or imprudent tweets like the one penned by Carrington. “It’s just terrible we can’t make space for any of the league’s truly inspiring stories.”
Bull.
Shit.
Look, if it bleeds, it leads. In my business – and I’m as guilty of this as anybody – conflict and drama are the coin of the realm.
I’m going to be painfully honest here: All those happy years of the Colts going 13-3 and clinching the top seed in the AFC weeks before the end of the season, that was great for fans, but a little bit boring for a columnist like me. Really, how many times can you write that Peyton and Marvin and Reggie and Dwight and Robert (and others) are remarkable players? I joke around with my old Star colleague, Mike Chappell, who loved all the success because it made for a happy, obliging locker room. For me, as a columnist, it kind of sucked. I appreciated their weekly excellence but found myself struggling for compelling new ways to tell their story.
Now, everybody is jumping on the WNBA-is-toxic bandwagon.
It’s become a front-and-center national story, everybody (myself included) chiming in. The truth is, Mitchell’s academic pursuit is a one-day story – a great and inspiring story, but one with a short shelf life. But it can’t compete with the daily drama that infests the WNBA. It’s an easy column. It’s many easy columns. Drama and conflict sell, whether the WNBA will admit it or not.
Media has changed in recent decades. Juicy controversies sell now more than ever. How often is the WNBA a significant story on the network news? It was this week, with everybody having something to say about Stephanie White’s angry soliloquy before this week’s Liberty game at Gainbridge.
Maybe they’ve got a Kelsey Mitchell story in the works. I have no idea, but I’m going to guess: No, they don’t.
We say we are disappointed and disheartened by the way the league is being hijacked both from the outside and from within, but let’s be honest as media members: This stuff is great for business.
At my old place of employment, The Athletic, you were largely judged on how many subscribers you produced with your copy. Well, I can promise you, every time James Boyd, the one survivor in The Athletic’s Indianapolis purges, gets great numbers any time he writes about Caitlin Clark or any of the madness surrounding the league.
Look, I don’t blame White for going scorched-earth the other night. It’s got to be hugely frustrating to have your leadership questioned every time Clark misses a shot. It’s got to be a huge challenge, keeping the team united when the trolls and the ultra-right-wing sports bloggers make an issue of White’s post-game quotes after Cunningham got clothes-lined.
In fact, if the Fever, one of the three or four true candidates for a WNBA championship, continues to play well – they’ve won eight of their last 11 games – we will look back to this moment when White went off and Clark offered a full-throated defense of her coach, and remember this as the night when it all came together and sent the Fever on the way to a title.
I’m not suggesting White did it to inspire her team, or anything like that. She did it out of pure anger and exhaustion, having been criticized (again) for her comments after the Liberty game, wounded by suggestions she failed to support her own player.
She’s trying to keep her team focused and united. All the outside garbage doesn’t help, not a bit.
But I’m not convinced the media feeding frenzy is, in itself, a terribly bad thing.
If anything, it raises the WNBA’s profile as an endlessly compelling league, with personalities and conflict and all the things that draw eyeballs.
I think we can appreciate the quality of play and dive into all the drama at the same time, like walking and chewing gum. We know there are great stars in this league. We know there’s great basketball being played, especially by the rising Fever.
Sports are built on a foundation of personalities. Look at Cunningham, a good but not great player, an important role player for the Fever. But she’s front and center with all her media ventures and her fashion sense and her winning personality. Everybody knows who Sophie is, as much as they know Kelsey and Aliyah – if not more. (Clark is in her own stratosphere).
Like her or not, Carrington is another big personality who is known outside of Chicago. Maybe for all the wrong reasons – I mean, “white privilege”…really? – but she brings a Dennis Rodman vibe to the proceedings. Every sport needs its bad guys (or gals), and Carrington fills that role, however unwittingly.
Now…did Fever fans really boo White when she was introduced during the Liberty game?
I was there and I would say: Mildly. You heard a vague undercurrent of dissatisfaction, a few scattered boos, but that’s about it.
What was important was how Clark addressed it later, saying it made her “sick” to hear those random boos.
White didn’t deserve any. Does anybody remember how White, a top-level WNBA coach for many years, led the Fever to the league semifinals and nearly knocked off the eventual champion Aces with a depleted roster one year ago. No Clark. No Cunningham. They were starting players who’d been in a Fever uniform for mere weeks. And yet, the Fever were right there in Game Five, hanging in there until Mitchell fell prey to full-body cramping that forced her out of the action. Took the Aces to overtime. Incredible.
Now they’re 21-12 and playing their best basketball of the season, and while everybody is chasing Minnesota, the Fever have every opportunity to reach the Finals and even win them. True, they have a ton of talent, but consider the job White has done, keeping the WNBA’s version of The Beatles on task and headed in the right direction.
There are unique challenges that come with coaching Clark and leading the most visible team in the league. White has to worry about a whole lot more than X’s and O’s.
