Sue Bird defends WNBA response to right-wing news cycles: ‘For a very long time, it was never about basketball’
· Yahoo Sports
The gap between what happens on a WNBA court and the media conversation around the league has arguably never been wider.
As the league attempts to juggle the many controversies around it and its players, they have come so quickly and intensely that it is difficult for analysts to cut through with actual basketball commentary. The media instead is discussing transgender children, or white privilege, or Caitlin Clark’s temperament. Mostly, blame has been placed on the league office and commissioner Cathy Engelbert for failing to get a handle on the league’s outward-facing image.
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Having played in the league for nearly two decades and now working in mainstream media, Hall of Famer Sue Bird sees it a bit differently.
In the latest episode of her Bird’s Eye View podcast, Bird defended WNBA management. The four-time league champion argued that the league is, even by its supposed defenders, getting held to a higher standard than Democratic politicians or others whose actual job it is to combat conservative talking points by Donald Trump and the MAGA movement.
“I’m very protective, I’ll start by saying, of the league, of the players … everything,” Bird said. “And I’m just like, part of me wants to go out publicly and be like, look at President Trump. Has anyone figured out, have the Democrats figured out, has anyone figured out how to not be manipulated by the way in which he does things and operates? And to me, I feel like the WNBA is expected to have figured this out. But how is the WNBA, overnight, supposed to figure (it) out? Nobody else can.
“So it’s just, there are times where I’m like, is the WNBA as a league, and by league I’m going to be specific and say league office, do they get too much flak for not being able to handle things that even politicians who are paid to handle these things can’t figure out?”
One explanation posed by ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne, Bird’s guest on the episode, is that there has been “less expression across all sports” politically during the second Trump administration. Whereas, according to Shelburne, the WNBA has been a more “willing participant” in the conversation around social issues because its players are less hesitant to speak out.
To Shelburne’s point, two of the noisier recent news cycles centered around comments made directly by Sophie Cunningham and Dijonai Carrington.
While Bird (who, it should be noted, is also an executive at USA Basketball and part owner of the Seattle Storm) took the point, she also explained that WNBA players became so outspoken because they often were forced to defend themselves and their existence as pro athletes against the same outside agitators who now want to manipulate the conversation around the league.
“For years, we had to engage,” Bird said. “We were told to shut up and dribble; athletes are told to shut up and dribble at that time and years prior. We would have loved to. We would have loved to shut up and dribble. But for us, for a very long time, it was never about basketball. Because I do personally think what was held up against us was the … intersectionality of it all. So we kind of had to speak on these things, and now it’s almost been, like, flipped.”
As an example, Bird recalled the 2020 Bubble season in Florida, when players helped shift the U.S. Senate election in Georgia toward the Democratic candidate, Rafael Warnock. They did so because the Republican incumbent, Kelly Loeffler, despite being a part owner of the league’s Atlanta Dream, painted the players as radicals for their support of the Black Lives Matter movement.
While Bird acknowledged there is no simple solution to the broader issues facing the WNBA as it attempts to break through into the mainstream, it is useful to understand this history. Players today (or at least some of them) are being told to pipe down so that the league can grow, while the league office is expected to navigate a minefield of hypercritical 24/7 right-wing news coverage that almost nobody in America has ever tamed. Left unsaid is that all the while, the players and what they represent will continue to be co-opted by reactionary figures.
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