Let’s talk about, arguably, the biggest joke in professional sports, girls prep basketball on steroids, an all-you-can-eat buffet for sexist men. Let’s talk some WNBA. Why not? It’s their postseason, after all.
When the WNBA formed in 1996, it narrowed — albeit barely — the athletic gap between men and women. They proved a point: Girls can play, too. But women hoopsters don’t have equality when it comes to respect. Case in point: the league gave away tickets to this year’s All-Star Game. Heck, there isn’t even a WNBA topic option on this web site.
The difference, I think, boils down to entertainment. Not that the WNBA doesn’t have action and drama. But men posses superior athleticism, enabling them to give more captivating performances. For your money, would you rather watch Sue Bird, Diana Taurasi, Becky Hammon, and Deanna Nolan? Watch them give a strikingly accurate imitation of seventh grade girls game, where 80 points indicates a shootout, shotput-like shooting form makes “chucking up a prayer” seem fundamental, and free throws are expensive?
Or do you opt for Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Dwayne Wade, or other muscle-bound ariel artists and their rim-rocking slams? Check out cold-blooded snipers like Ray Allen and Gilbert Arenas knocking down 30-footers? Or watch Western Conference teams score points like they’re bowling?
It’s an obvious choice, really. But there has to be something that can shrink the gap. Well, here’s an idea…For whatever reason, last Sunday I decided to switch my television program from a Detroit Tigers-New York Yankees baseball game to the defending WNBA champs, the Detroit Shock, who, after losing Game 1 of their first round playoff series with the New York Liberty, stood one loss from elimination.
My 18-year-old brother walked in, glanced at the tube, and blurted amid a chuckle, “What the hell are you watching?” — a typical response flung my way when I tune in to women’s basketball.
Enter my mother. She has a different reaction, being a girl and all. She’s intrigued. Never one to ignore the negative, she mocked the players for making bonehead mental errors, missing free throws and layups, and jumping “two inches off the ground.”
“Has anyone ever dunked?” she asked.
“Yeah, a couple. There’s a girl in college right now that’s pretty good at it,” I answered.
“They look like they can’t even get off the floor,” she said, and then added “Look at them shoot. They can barely get it up there.”
My brother and I giggled, watching the game play out like many high school basketball games I’ve covered. Turnovers. Bricks. The biggest girl dominating among the shrimps.
My mom shook her head. “Why don’t they just lower the basket to make it more fair?”
Hmm, I never thought of that. Would that work? Women already play with a smaller ball. Why not give them another advantage, too? Could it better the game?
God didn’t bless women with the bodies of men, statures built for physical performance. Not that women can’t keep up with men. Sure they can. Heck, we may see one in the White House real, real soon. Anyway, back to hoops. Why not lower the rim to, say, 9-foot-5 or 9-foot?
Such a move could improve scoring, more specifically the two things that make basketball fans drool the most: 3-pointers and dunks.
Lowering the rim would enable women to shoot higher percentages from downtown. Less strength would be necessary to get the ball to the target, improving accuracy, and thus boosting consistency. There are talented long-distance shooters in the WNBA, but nowhere near as many as the NBA. Perhaps a lower rim would level this area, making three-point shooting as common an attribute in women players as in men.
Next up, dunking. Now, I know lowering the rim wouldn’t ignite a nightly dunk contest, a la the NBA. A majority of the women need a trampoline to come close.
But some, mostly the tall ones, can at least nick the rim at 10 feet. Lower it and then a good number of women could throw down — which is better than the half a handful capable now. In basketball, it doesn’t get more entertaining than a dunk. At least give the girls a chance. Right now, playing on men’s rims, their athleticism is handcuffed.
No, lowering the rim will not solve all the WNBA’s problems. Not by a long shot. But the move could provide plays to make the women’s game more entertaining.
2 replies on “Stop laughing- here comes a WNBA column”
Haha Funny article. But if we had to play with 10 ft hoops in 5th grade CYO, then professional women should have to.
Any sports fan will have to admit that one of the greatest endings to any basketball game took place in a WNBA championship. A team was on their home court (I wanna say Houston) about 1 second away from winning it all and the crowd is already celebrating winning the championship. All of a sudden, some girl fires a half-court shot and banks it in to win the game for the visitors. If that would have happened in an NBA Finals game, it would have been one of the most talked-about moments in sports history.
So simple it could work It is such an amazing idea that I’m surprized never to have read it before. Someone must have already thought of it.
I have to agree with the other comment though. Don’t just do it to the professional game to make it entertaining, but lower it across the board. High school & college games would profit from this too.