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I don’t think any of us saw this coming two years ago, did we?
The WNBA was about to emerge as the launching point for leading women’s sports into the vision of mainstream America.
The “W”, led by a wave of fresh, marketable stars who were really good at playing basketball and a new collective bargaining agreement that would pay players more than ever before, was ready to break the narrative of women’s sports not appealing to a broader swath of Americans.
It had success by the throat…and then it just let go.
With a generational talent being drafted to the WNBA franchise in the heart of the basketball-crazy state of Indiana and her biggest rivals joining the league at the same time, we find today that none of the stories surrounding it have a single thing to do with last night’s games or the current race to the playoffs.
Nope. Everything you see and hear about the WNBA has to do with officiating, the commissioner and politics.
Everything we don’t want from our sports leagues is exactly all we are getting from women’s professional basketball.
For the first half of the season, all anyone was talking about was how the officiating in the league was so slanted against Caitlin Clark. It was so obvious it was comical.
She would be dribbling the ball up the sidelines and get pushed out of bounds, and the officials not only didn’t call a foul on the defense, they called an offensive foul on Clark and went to the video to review whether or not her actions could be upgraded to a flagrant foul.
Anyone who spoke out about it was called a racist and a bigot.
It was ridiculous.
It still is, even though the officiating has been better since the all-star break.
With the all-star break looming, several entities that were described as “stakeholders” in the league expressed their disapproval in how the league was trending. Without being named, they collectively questioned the leadership of the commissioner, Cathy Engelbert.
Engelbert is the one, when preparing for negotiations for the league’s labor deal, who had the audacity to declare the success of the league over the last 30 years to her own skill and leadership.
When she said that, the collective sports world snapped their heads to stare at her and wonder what planet she came from.
In her most recent display of genius, she declared over the weekend that the league would spend the offseason considering whether men who pretend to be women will be allowed to play in the WNBA.
I will say this about that: she’s in a rough spot on this issue.
Of course, there is no way people who were born men should be playing in a women’s sports league. We’ve been over that before, so I won’t belabor that point today.
But on the other side of it, there is a large section of the core fan base of the “W” that is gay women.
That truth does make the commissioner’s job very difficult here.
As a general rule, that demographic is supportive of transgenderism.
Engelbert knows that she can’t upset that section of her fans from a marketing standpoint. They currently buy the tickets and they support the sponsors.
At the same time, the people who were climbing on board the WNBA bandwagon do not fit into that group. They are pure basketball fans, mostly from middle America. They want to be entertained, and they like the thought of being a part of something bigger than themselves.
They are a combination of people who oppose the homosexual lifestyle and others who don’t care what the players’ sexual preferences are — they just want the team they cheer for to be good.
Now, the most successful women’s sports league in history is racing towards a crossroads and its driver is not sure which way to turn the wheel.
The truth is, it’s a losing proposition either way.
And while it’s a tough spot to be in, it’s a spot that Engelbert has allowed herself and her league to be in.
The WNBA is going to take its offseason and discuss what to do about allowing transgenders to play in their league.
They are actually going to consider turning the league away from being what it set out to be — a league for women.
It’s such a farse, that several men with NBA experience went on social media to announce that they were declaring for the WNBA Draft in the spring.
But that’s where the league is. At age 30, it doesn’t know who it is or what it wants to be. It’s still living in its parents’ basement.
It’s lost, and it feels like it doesn’t want us to find it.
And it has a choice to make, and the person making the choice has proven that she is the wrong person to do that.
