Does the NBA Secretly Want to Clean Up the WNBA?
Reading between the league lines
The NBA Finals must be over, at least spiritually, because other basketball news is suddenly pumping. We’ll discuss Lakers ownership change on Thursday. For now, though, we get back to the league I cannot leave alone.
Barstool’s Dave Portnoy:
You can say whatever you want about the WNBA is but it’s never boring.
It’s undeniable right now. I said I was avoiding the league for a few weeks. I wanted to take a break. There’s NBA news. Then the WNBA suddenly serves up a Rick Mahorn type enforcer to defend Caitlin Clark and it’s…Sophie Cunningham. Yes, the WNBA’s newest Muay Thai goon is a lanky blonde woman already famed for her runway model looks. When Udonis Haslem retired, I wondered who’d inherit the role. Finally, we have an answer.
Tuesday’s incident between the Indiana Fever and Connecticut Sun is a perfect example of how the WNBA can’t help but accidentally generate heat right now. The league’s incompetent reffing allows Caitlin Clark to get bashed, jeopardizing its meal ticket, but even this act of self sabotage somehow leads to yet more interest.
I saw a lot of the argumentation over how abnormal it is for a league’s face to get battered, absent referee protection. I witnessed even non sports journalists speculating the topic with one another, so allow me to render a verdict for the sports outsiders: It is indeed abnormal, but makes sense in the context of this league.
No, it’s not just about the ambient hatred for Clark within the WNBA, though that’s a factor. Great players are going to get hit, as Michael Jordan once did, until the league authorities come up with disincentives.
These WNBA referees just aren’t very good, so they can’t even do the basics of maintaining order. And why would the referees be of high quality? This league only recently became an object of national interest. Nobody was prepared for the WNBA suddenly becoming a business.
And with that I direct you to an intriguing dog that isn’t quite barking. It’s a bit of behind the sourcing scenes that I’m paywalling so as to not kick up too much dust. As mentioned on the Random Offense Youtube show with Ryan Glasspiegel, there was a splashy USA Today story written about how bad ratings were in the games Caitlin Clark missed. Why was this out there? In whose interest was the unleashing of this story?