Wednesday evening, I went to my first WNBA game where the Washington Mystics played against the Dallas Wings, right here in my own backyard. I walked in a skeptic. I walked out something closer to a convert.
If the league’s leadership would just get their long johns out of a twist and quit politicizing a game that doesn’t need it, the WNBA could be a real international sensation, not just a niche one.
With seven minutes left in the third quarter, the home team Mystics were down by 20, and the game looked every bit like a blowout in progress. Then something clicked: maybe it was the crowd’s noise, the team’s four-game winning streak, or just spite. Cotie McMahon started finding the hoop like she owned the place, capping the comeback with a clutch three-point play that flipped the game on its head. Washington won.
It was electric. The crowd, heavy on women and short haircuts, was loud and locked in. The arena holds a modest 4,200 seats, and nearly every one of them was full. It was intimate and homey and felt like I was transported back to my days broadcasting Ohio State women’s basketball. It was athletic theater with the potential to be great.
That is, if the WNBA would stop shooting itself in the hightop.
This isn’t the league’s first rodeo with the national spotlight. Back then it handled the attention differently. When WNBA star Brittney Griner was convicted in Russia on drug charges in 2022 and came home in a prisoner swap for notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout, the league was quick to fumble the situation: an ESPN/Disney documentary, a Robin Roberts sit-down, a clothing capsule, a memoir. A player got caught with weed in a country where weed is illegal, and the WNBA turned it into a multi-platform victory lap.
Compare that to how it’s handling Caitlin Clark, a generational talent who’s been on the receiving end of ferocious fouls seemingly aimed more at her body than the ball, and Sophie Cunningham, the spunky, self-appointed protector who has taken to defending Clark and, more broadly, defending all ‘biological girls’ in sports — loudly and proudly. As you can imagine, she was not offered an ESPN/Disney deal for speaking out against dudes in female sports.
Instead of capitalizing on the two most talked-about players the league has ever had, the WNBA has sidelined them and alienated the very audience that is finally paying attention.
When Cunningham doubled down on keeping biological men out of Women’s National Basketball Association locker rooms (because that is, after all, what the W stands for), Seattle Storm co-owner Celeste Keaton took it upon herself to publicly berate two teenage girls holding up signs in support of Cunningham at a game last week. Minnesota Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve, who has previously complained about the league having too many male coaches, wore a “Trans Kids Belong” shirt on the sideline. Cunningham and Clark’s own coach, Stephanie White, offered the toothless line that she doesn’t believe that “exclusion is the answer.” Golden State Valkyries coach Natalie Nakase chimed in with an equally pathetic platitude.
Stranger still, the players themselves seem to be piling on, delivering their objections through elbows and forearms rather than words. The refs, for their part, keep calling the fouls on Cunningham, presumably because her face keeps getting in the way of everyone else’s arms. All this while she’s trying to protect their league from biological men like Julie Tétart, the French unit who competes in France’s Ligue Féminine 2 and averages 21 points a game there.
You can bet if I saw that burly, mammoth frame barrelling down the court at me, I’d cry.
These women are dismantling the sport that Title IX and the generations of women before these players fought to create. What’s the point of a women’s league if men can play in it? At that rate, just merge the WNBA and NBA and let the best man win. Literally.
I think about the little girls at that game, watching women who made it past high school ball, past college, all the way to the top of what a professional female athlete can become. That’s supposed to be something to strive for — not something men can simply walk in and corrupt by claiming gender confusion.
Women’s tennis, at least, has kept its balls at bay and its head on straight. After the WTA rolled out sex-screening to “preserve the integrity of women’s professional tennis,” world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka closed her press conference by saying, resolutely, that men don’t belong in women’s sports. It really is that simple. Not one of these women would be standing where she is today if men had been allowed into the pool of play.
In 2026, the WNBA’s new media rights deal jumped to $281 million a year, over six times its previous haul, and franchise values are up 59% in a single season. Money talks, and it’s trying to tell us that this league is on the verge of a real cultural moment, if it would just get out of its own way. Imagine what happens to those numbers, and to player salaries, if the WNBA actually let Clark and Cunningham be the show instead of the scandal.
Fans want talent, spunk, and someone to root for. They’ve got that in Clark and Cunningham, a pairing with the commercial upside of a young Serena Williams, who didn’t just win 23 Grand Slams — she dragged an entire sport into the mainstream behind her.
Wednesday night felt youthful and electric, the kind of night that could stay with you a while — like a hometown high school championship, where fans treated each other like neighbors and old rivalries came roaring back. Moms and dads held up handmade signs. Kids reached for t-shirts flying out of cannons. Strangers high-fived after every clutch free throw. It was sweet, and I could actually see myself bringing a little Chloe one day.
Unless, of course, her coach is wearing a “Trans Kids Belong” shirt. Unless I’m watching 300-pound loony birds hold up signs expressing their sheer disdain for the Lethal Weapon pair. Unless I’m dodging trans flags waving in celebration of a policy that would gut the whole point of the league. But the Mystics did a good job of keeping it classy. They kept it about the game.
Usher in more of that, usher in pride for the women who make this sport possible, usher in support for the patriotic players who make it worth watching, and I’ll keep coming back. My guess is plenty of other Americans would too.
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