The WNBA's Caught in the Culture Wars

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1:11Have you ever seen that t-shirt? The one that reads, everyone watches women's sports? I do know that shirt. I do own one. Maitri Anatharaman. She covers the WNBA for Defector. And she is the target audience for this shirt. But this shirt, it is a product of a different time. A time when women's sports still needed to convince people to tune in.

1:38Matreyi Anantharaman: I always felt that when I told people I cover the WNBA, it was like a good conversation ender at parties. People sort of were like, oh, that's nice. And then just, I mean, they had no... At best, it was a conversation ender. At worst. I remember once going to, I was at like a friend's uncle's house, mentioned I covered women's basketball and he was like, oh, that's awful. Like no one, no one watches it. And I was not sure what to do. That was maybe four or five years ago. And now, now everyone loves to, you know, for better or for worse, it is not a conversation ender anymore. Do you think anyone at the WNBA is like, I wish everyone was not watching women's sports.

2:20Matreyi Anantharaman: Yes, I think there's a joke among any fan of a sort of niche sport. The meme is like, please like my sport. And I've often thought recently, please do not like my sport. Just let's leave it to the inner circle, the original fans. My three is feeling this way because a lot of people who would not otherwise be paying attention to the WNBA are now tuning in and for some not so great reasons. But before we get into all the drama, all the ways the WNBA fans and players might be thinking of that T-shirt as a be careful for what you wish for sort of thing. Let's do the numbers. You say a lot of people are watching women's basketball this year.

3:05Like, can you put some numbers behind that? Like how how many?

3:08Matreyi Anantharaman: At the WNBA All-Star Game, actually, Kathy Engelbert, the commissioner in her press conference, so this was in late July, and she shared a stat that more people this year had watched a WNBA game already at sort of the halfway mark, a little past halfway through the season, than had all of last year. Whoa. The new TV deal has kicked in, so there are games on NBC now, there are games on network television. Thing is, when you tune in, weird stuff has been happening. Usually weird stuff around gender. People have thrown sex toys on the court, for instance. And at the most watched game this season, a retired NBA player who's made himself into something of a political gadfly turned up courtside.

3:55He sparked a fight with a player over trans people in sports. Keep in mind, there are no trans people in the WNBA. I think there are a couple of things going on, which is the first thing is there is a cost to entry when your sport becomes super popular where you're letting a lot of new people in. They don't really know the deal. And it feels a little awkward. Like all of a sudden this like 10 person party is like 100 person party. Right. Right. But then there's something else, which is how the WNBA is being used by some people. Media Matters for America estimated that Fox News has spent more than 13 hours talking about the WNBA this summer, ranting about the WNBA.

4:43I do not think of Fox as the usual WNBA fans, and I'm not sure they're there to just like enjoy the party, right? No, I suspect not. Yeah, I think they're there to like stir something up. There have been fights. There have been people throwing stuff on the court. Is any of what's happened over the last few months good for the WNBA?

5:04Matreyi Anantharaman: I don't really think so. I sometimes hear people say, like, now you're a real sport because everyone's having dumb arguments about you. It produces such awful vibes. But every time you turn on an actual WNBA game or attend an actual WNBA game, at least an NBA game that does not involve some sort of agitator there, you have a great time. Today on the show, how this summer the WNBA became a political punching bag. I'm Mary Harris. You're listening to What Next. Stick around.

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7:59so if i asked you to tell the story of what the heck is happening with the wnba i'm wondering where you'd begin because if i had to pick a starting point i'd actually probably go back a couple of years to when caitlin clark started getting a ton of attention back when she was in college playing for iowa um made it to the ncaa finals didn't win but still like caitlin clark was the talking point, right? Like watching her play was such a joy. Like I feel like part of the reason everyone was watching women's sports was because of her and she became this kind of magnet. Is that fair?

8:37Matreyi Anantharaman: I think so. There was, I think, growing attention in women's sports. But I think it's really fair to call Caitlin this catalyst, the sort of like gasoline on the fire who really helped women's basketball just kind of explode overnight. I feel like people were primed from like soccer, right? Like they'd seen like soccer have a moment and then it was sort of like, oh, and now basketball as well. Right. You can point to the growth of women's soccer. You can point to the NCAA's changing its rules around name, image and likeness restrictions, which made a lot of women's sports and women's athletes in college suddenly able to build their brand and become household names.

9:26Matreyi Anantharaman: Caitlyn was one of them and is really like among the earliest athletes to be able to do that. I remember this like conversation about is she too good for the WNBA? Actually, should she be playing with men? And then it was like, no, she's going to the WNBA. You know? Yeah, there are some like Fox News types who just imagine her like I see this fantasy expressed a lot that she just quits the WNBA. And I don't exactly know how this is going to work, but she's going to just play in Europe and her life will be so much better. You can read Europe as the code for what that is, certainly. But yes, I think there are a lot of people who were inclined to think of the WNBA in a certain way.

10:11And in a way that, it should be said, is very different from how Caitlin Clark saw the WNBA.

10:16Matreyi Anantharaman: It is, you know, as has been documented, it has been her lifelong dream to play in the WNBA. You can all athletes, they're like moms and dads keep the little like paper they wrote in kindergarten so they can show it on draft night. That's like, see, she said when she was five years old that she wanted to do this. And Caitlin does indeed have one of those those little kindergarten papers. Can we go back to that Europe thing you said, though? Because, I mean, we should just be we should be explicit about it. Like the interest in her was around her whiteness, a lot of it. And like the idea that she would go to Europe, the WNWA is a league that is 70 % black and pretty queer too.

11:00And like there is this like interesting kind of focus on Caitlin Clark, who is identified, I believe, as straight and definitely white in this league that looks pretty different. And she seems completely fine with that. But some of her fans seem really interested in those things, right? Yes. And so I guess Europe is this sort of white space in their minds where a white player like Caitlin Clark is free of the burdens of playing with a bunch of black lesbians, I guess, is the idea that they're getting at. Well, you could see that from the beginning, right? Like, so much was made of Caitlin Clark's rivalry with another NCAA player who was black.

11:50And like, that was the initial focus of her like, oh, she has this rivalry with this other woman, blah, blah, blah. And like, so much of the interest became around things that were not the basketball. I think with Caitlin, like, I really do think a lot of, I think, you know, most of her stardom is the fact that she's this really engaging player and plays this compelling style of basketball that just translates really well to

12:16Matreyi Anantharaman: highlights and clips. I think in the beginning the play was the thing, and then you have just all these other layers, and slowly people are gravitating toward her for less noble and earnest reasons. Has Caitlin Clark talked about any of this? Not to the extent that some people, some women's basketball fans would like. I think you can tell that she is either exhausted or like a little bit befuddled with the interest in her and doesn't feel super equipped to talk about the kind of culture war issues that seem to follow her. And I think her thought is none of this has to do with me or was encouraged by me or is anything I want.

13:12Matreyi Anantharaman: So I'm just going to keep my head down and play. And that's one strategy. I think it's a strategy that some women's basketball fans don't find satisfying, especially because this is a sport that has taken some pride in its players' activism, in their outspokenness around social justice issues. And so that's something she's navigating, which is managing her stardom without wanting to step on anyone's toes or say anything out of line. Well, I think part of the issue is that I understand the approach of trying to starve of the coverage, just be like, I'm not going to address X or Y or Z. I'm really here to play.

13:56I get it. But it doesn't seem to be working. Like all of the nonsense this season, to me, it sort of started in June with Caitlin Clark and this sort of discussion about a foul involving her in June. And then all of a sudden, a lot of interest, you know, was ginned up, including from Republican Congress people about like protecting Caitlin Clark. Can you just tell that story? Because to me, that's where things kick off this season.

14:27Matreyi Anantharaman: Yeah, this has been now kind of common theme with Caitlin since she joined the league in 2024, that any sort of foul that involves her is scrutinized and run in slow motion. And people are inclined to see more intent in those fouls. This was a foul where Caitlin Clark was literally on the floor and like someone, someone's kind of falling over her and they have their hand in a fist. And so it's like a sort of a punch at her, but it's, it really seems like they're falling. Right. It's, it's players kind of scrambling for a loose ball. And Alyssa Thomas kind of catches Caitlin's neck with her hand as she's like getting back up to, this was all like a live play.

15:15Matreyi Anantharaman: So everyone's trying to get back up to go to the run to the other end of the court. Kaitlin stayed down for a second. You could tell she looked at the referee and was annoyed that it hadn't been called. But no one else really reacted. No one else on the fever bench really reacted. So she just kind of ran back and joined the rest of the play. And then a few weeks after that, Kaitlin Clark's teammate, Sophie Cunningham, made headlines on her own because she did this big ESPN profile where she addressed trans people. in sports. Very briefly, she said, you know, talked about protecting young girls in locker rooms from biological men.

15:54It was a little bit confusing. I mean, she says like, I'm not a conservative, but then she says this thing as a real conservative talking point. My main thought reading this was just like, you know, saying nothing was an option here. Like you didn't need to say this, but okay. And that was just like, it was like chum in the water. Yeah, there was there's a sort of tee he coyness to it that I found a little bit grating also. So I mean, she said, like, I get a lot of negative feedback about me hating trans. These are her words. And I'm like, I never once said that. I think I'm here to extend love.

16:29But I also think love with that love is truth, being honest. And I want to protect young girls in a locker room or young girls in a sport who shouldn't have to go against biological men. This is the full quotation that she said just to present it. Was that in context when you heard that? Were you surprised? Like, did that make sense with what you knew about Sophie Cunningham? Yeah, I would say I'm like online enough that I know that like, you know, years ago, someone saw who she was following on Instagram and like determined that she was conservative. And who is she following on Instagram? I think like Candace Owens and maybe Donald Trump.

17:04So there have been theories here. I mean, people have called her MAGA Barbie because she's this long blonde hair. You know, she she presents in a certain kind of way. Yes, our culture just now has all sorts of random signifiers for your political orientation. And so another point was she was a ring girl at a UFC fight, and that kind of inclined people to see her as the MAGA Barbie also, right? And then earlier in August, we have former NBA player Enes Kanter showing up at a game, basically trying to start something with a player on the court. And for people who don't know Kanter, his last name is now Freedom.

17:52He renamed himself Enes Kanter Freedom after he became a U.S. citizen. He's Turkish. He had been very outspoken years ago about President Erdogan in Turkey. Like he's sort of he's had a lot of he's wanted to be in the political mix. Now here he is again at a WNBA game. But now his issue seems to be trans people in sports. Like how did he enter the conversation? Great question. I think the through line here is just that he likes getting attention and has, I guess, done so successfully because he sort of decided that he would declare for the WNBA draft, I guess, to use himself as like a test case to expose the WNBA's shortcomings in like not clearly defining what a woman was in its collective bargaining agreement.

18:48Yeah, let's be clear here. He said he's going to try out for the 2027 WNBA draft. Like, do you think he's actually going to do this? No, not really. I do not put a lot of stock in any of this. And the CBA does say... The collective bargaining agreement. The collective bargaining agreement does say that only women are eligible to play in the WNBA. This is not really an issue at all. The test case here is some guy just trying to make a point. There is not a trans person trying to play the WNBA. the really like disheartening thing about the story is that like it feels like trans people just don't even have any actual voice in this like there are so many colorful characters in this story now and actually not one of them is actually trans and so they're like purely this political football for whatever Ennis Cantor and Riley Gaines and whatever Fox News anchors to kind of bat around, which sucks.

19:57We'll be right back after a quick break.

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22:10I was rereading the ESPN profile of Sophie Cunningham just to like be familiar with it before we talked and in some ways I wondered if for someone like you who covers the WNBA day in and day out the bigger problem wasn't what Sophie Cunningham said but the way her words were presented, which is sort of in this very hazy way with no pushback, just kind of like floated out there. Like, here you go. Here's something from this person with no contextualization, right? Of like why she was saying it, like no questioning of that even. And to me, that environment, it just leaves room for all the fighting we're seeing now.

22:59It makes the brush fire bigger, I guess.

23:00Matreyi Anantharaman: It does. And one thing that frustrated me about the ESPN profile is like it didn't actually explain to an uninitiated person like why people might call Sobhie Cunningham MAGA Barbie or like why anyone had these impressions of her that she was like so vigorously pushing back against in the profile. She said, well, I get a lot of negative feedback about me hating trans or something. And I was like, OK, why? What started that? And so I think, yes, that was something that annoyed me about the way that it was presented was we're sort of asked to just take our word without even knowing what the other side of the argument was or what kind of prompted the rebuttal in the first place.

23:51I mean, since this profile came out, Sophie Cunningham said more, or she just kind of gone to ground? After this profile came out, there are so many random people involved in the story. But Jennifer Say, who runs a... There are like so many words that I'm stringing together that I never thought I ever would. But I gather it's some sort of like anti-trans athleisure company. What? she began organizing these like pro-Sophie Cunningham rallies outside various WNBA arenas. The idea, I think, was that they were like following the Indiana Fever around on the road trip. And so one of the in-arena confrontations involved, there was like two girls wearing the anti-trans shirts.

24:47sitting courtside at a Seattle Storm game and a minority owner of the Seattle Storm, of the team, came over and said something to them. And, you know, of course, they had like, gotten what they wanted out of that interaction and it became the whole thing. And Sophie Cunningham did tweet something about wanting to support those girls and like send them some free merch. You know, you're raising something that I think is really important. You talk about how this minority owner for the Seattle storm came up and got into a disagreement with them. I think she actually called these teenagers fucking insane.

25:24she was this minority owner was suspended afterwards right like the owner was punished after sort of responding in such a hot way to these teenagers with signs which raises this question to me like where's the actual wnba in all of this drama about the players on the wnba

25:47Matreyi Anantharaman: Yeah, I think a lot of fans and players are wondering the same thing. I mentioned the Caitlin Clark playbook of maybe keeping your head down and not giving this oxygen. And I think it's clear that that's what the WNBA wants to do, that they don't want to make a big public statement. They don't want to turn this into an official controversy. I think it's sort of like past the point of really being able to ignore. But I was going to say, can they actually do that? Like, I mean, the WNBA just did have a meeting, right, about their policy on trans athletes. And like, I guess we need to talk about this now.

26:31Yes, which, again, is frustrating because no like real event actually precipitated it. they've sort of just caved to the pressure of these anti-trans activists who like want to make this a pressing issue that the league must deal with right now. But Kathy Engelbert has said to owners and other like front office people that it's an issue they're going to kind of keep looking into and talk about for the foreseeable future. Does that feel reasonable to you? Or does Does that just feel like kicking the can? Yeah, I mean, I think it's sort of frustrating that they, like, conceded the point in the first case and the first place and are even really entertaining this or, like, that they decided that they needed to address this.

27:23I think that handed these bad actors, like, a big win. And I think that's like the anti-trans playbook is to kind of operate in bad faith and pick this big fight to the point that the league has to kind of take your terms or whatever governing body and whatever sport has to accept your terms. And it's frustrating. To me, I look at all this and I sort of wonder if the WNBA is unique here, like whether other women's sports have dealt with this much nonsense. I also sort of wonder if some of it is timing, like the WNBA took off at this moment that we're in now, which is like a hot mess of culture war stuff.

28:17And also the WNBA is much blacker than, say, women's soccer. And that creates a different world of interested people who may be interested for terrible reasons. Yeah, you know, as someone who like covers the WNBA regularly, sometimes I'm like, oh, this is such like a Bush league, whatever. Like, you know, they're so unprofessional about certain things. And then I talk to athletes in women's soccer or women's hockey who like see the WNBA as this like gold standard for women's professional sports. And that really puts things into perspective.

28:52Matreyi Anantharaman: Like, yeah, the WNBA is the longest running women's professional sports league. It is certainly the most visible. It is now like of any team sport, it is the highest paying and by a lot in the U.S. And so, yeah, I think it has this kind of place of prominence in women's sports that no other women's league has. That's so interesting to me that like the women's hockey players are like, we wish we had all this drama. Exactly. Wild. Because maybe it just comes with the territory. I do think that, like, yes, we're in the, like, everything is about gender era in our country right now. And so the WNBA makes for a very, like, fertile culture war battleground.

29:43How are the founding mothers of the WNBA reacting here? Like, people like Sue Bird, who came up with the Everyone's Watching Women's Sports t-shirt, like, are they making themselves known?

29:54Matreyi Anantharaman: I feel like they have not been very loud in this conversation. That may just be because a lot of people have been much louder and it's hard to get a word in these days. Again, I think a lot of their thinking is the same thing where they just find it all sort of exhausting and like don't even want to engage in it really. like they they you know when you when you are in women's sports if you're a woman uh who who plays sports like at a certain point i think you you learn that there are some battles that you're just you're never going to win them and i think like so much of this just feels unwinnable you have these people who are just kind of never going to to take your take you seriously never going to take your sport seriously.

30:45And it can be kind of, it can feel just sort of draining to even try to engage with that. It's interesting. It's like a, it's almost an argument for the Caitlin Clark approach of just like, keep playing, keep doing what you're there to do. And I will say, it's like not a really satisfying one too, because you see how successful these right-wing anti-trans actors are in getting their message out and in sort of commandeering the conversation around women's basketball.

31:16Matreyi Anantharaman: And that I don't think it's easy either to just let all that slide. Yeah. Can I ask you a personal question? You can. Do you enjoy watching WNBA games as much as you did like a year or two ago? Yeah, I really enjoy watching WNBA games. I think it's sort of harder now that the membrane between online discourse and the actual arena is sort of withered away. But again, I love WNBA basketball. I love watching basketball. And it's really hard to ruin that for me. My three, I'm really grateful for your time and all of your insights. Thanks for coming on the show. Yeah, thanks for having me.

32:34Thanks for listening. Catch you back here next time.

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