Dear Friends, Stand with the players!
Note: everything I know about basketball I learned from my dear friends
Sydney and Rhys. But I make mistakes all on my own.
The Women’s National Basketball Association, WNBA, or just “the W” if you’re into the brevity thing, was founded in 1996. It succeeded a number of earlier women’s basketball organizations, and it has fulfilled their promise. Its success follows from its founding under the auspices of the National Basketball Association (NBA), the men’s basketball league (founded 1949).
Right now it has reached a high point of popularity, demonstrating to media outlets that “women’s sports” are not necessarily a dead loss. At the same time the Women’s National Basketball Players’ Association (WNBPA), the players’ union, is engaged in drawn out negotiations with the WNBA that seem increasingly headed towards a strike or a lockout.
Why the increasing popularity?
The huge and wonderful growth of women’s sports is the fruit of Title IX. Title IX was signed into law by President Richard M. Nixon in 1972. It needed time to take effect. The 2016 Olympics were a milestone: the US men’s teams struggled, the women’s teams swept the board. Gymnastics, Soccer (sometimes called Football), and Basketball are leaders of the advance.
But women’s rights and the recognition of women’s achievements are always hard won. Pay parity with men’s leagues and teams is a continuing struggle. The U.S. Women’s National Team, the US representative in international women’s soccer, secured pay parity in 2022 after a protracted campaign. (Fanboy moment: the great Megan Rapinoe played a major role in the campaign.) Pay parity is an underlying issue in the bargaining between the WNBA and the players’ union, the WNBPA.
Nonetheless, the growth of women’s sports is pretty much unstoppable. One of the most important forces behind it is the extraordinary relation between the players and their fans, and above all their girl fans – pre-teen, teen and beyond. After any WNBA game, as the players walk off the court you’ll see hordes of girls hanging over the railings asking for autographs, and the players (who have actually expended quite a lot of energy in the past hour and a half) so happily signing and chatting with the girls, showing that they are one with them.
The players now were those girls, but not so long ago there were no players to cheer for: never forget the miracle of Title IX. The fans – the girls – and the players love each other and see themselves in each other.
What’s happening in women’s sports, especially basketball, belongs to a larger, a global movement, calling it girl-power is not an exaggeration. Pop music is its other most important place, and, certainly, one person stands out leading on all the rest. Taylor Swift, with her fans, the Swifties, has created a new world. A world that is formed by the mutual love between them, a true bond that has been one of the great sources of happiness in the world today. And who are her fans? Overwhelmingly girls, many of whom are now young women.
This really is new, and good. Of course it’s not just Taylor, but she deserves vast gratitude, all kinds of flowers.
Women’s sports – gymnastics, soccer, basketball – are in there with the girl pop-stars, with Taylor, Pink, Ariana, Chapell, Sabrina, many more. The players’ connection with their fans is one with that of the singers. I usually try to avoid words like “empowerment”, here what other word is there?
But it goes both ways, yes all the girls in all those stadia, whether for Taylor, or Ariana, or Sabrina, or for New York Liberty are empowered in being there with their big sisters, present with them right here and now, the big sisters – and just for the power of proper names, Breanna “Stewie” Stewart, and another great Sabrina, Sabrina Ionescu both of New York Liberty, and, always, the one who brought me to women’s basketball, Brittney Griner – draw so much strength from their kid sisters. I won’t start in on the role of mirror neurons, but look them up, you’ll see.
The women’s sports teams have been fearless warriors for social justice, fighting for women’s rights, minority rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and now, defending immigrants against the terror unleashed by the Trump administration. Look at the roster of team members, the names – and not just the women’s teams – they point towards a just, humane, democratic society, a society in which the question “do you belong here?” has no meaning. Yes, still a long way to go, but who is doing better?
They have taken their proper place not only in the sports world, but also in the entire public world of American society. Supremely good citizens.
In the past two years something else has happened in the world of women’s basketball. There have always been outstanding players, stars, in the W, passionately loved by fans, but known mainly in the world of women’s basketball, not beyond. In 2024 two college seniors, Caitlyn Clark (Iowa) and Angel Reese (LSU), suddenly became media superstars, and the NCAA Championship (2024) achieved a popularity beyond anything before. It’s not that they’re better than their predecessors, they would never say so. But the media, for better or worse, caught on to them. The media frenzy has continued since they joined the WNBA in 2024. A third, Paige Bueckers (UConn), joined a year later.
Media frenzies are always problematic, they do also usually reflect, however falsely, a real trend. Caitlyn, Angel, and Paige are, first and most important, wonderfully good players, especially at their age. Second, they have increased interest in, and ticket sales for women’s basketball enormously. They clearly understand that their success comes from their predecessors, the ones who made the W.
They and all the others past and present show the truth of the WNBPA’s demands. At the WNBA 2025 All-Star game members of both teams came on for warm-ups wearing black t-shirts with “Pay us what you owe us” on them.
So if women’s sports, and especially basketball, are doing so well, why the hard and protracted negotiations that may well end in a strike or a lockout?
Major league sports are an integral part of the capitalist mode of production, though an odd one. The capital – labour relation is between owners and players. Owners may have a real commitment to “their” teams, a love of the game. But they own the team for the same reason that any capitalist owns any capital asset, accumulation. The players certainly do want high pay, but they play for their skill, for their competition with equally dedicated players.
Opposition and conflict between players and owners, that’s the nature of capitalism. In the ongoing struggle between capital and labour that will continue as long as the capitalist mode of production continues, capital, normally, has the upper hand. The WNBPA and the players they stand for have an unusual advantage. Their achievement ever since the founding of the league is so extraordinary, and it is entirely their achievement. Remember the warm-up t-shirts for the 2025 All Star game: “pay us what you owe us”.
The bosses are using a standard trope of class domination: you workers don’t understand how all this works, we do. Trust us, what you’re demanding will make you worse off. Keep quiet and follow us, it really is the best for you. They’ve been saying that at least since around 1806, around the world, wherever workers prepare to go on strike for their demands. Just take a look at some of the leaders in the WNBPA – Napheesa Collier, Breanna “Stewie” Stewart, for example – that line isn’t doing so well: Napheesa and Stewie are showing the world just what a league that starts from the players can be with their Unrivaled League, now in its second season, games happening right now, as we speak. Watch them!
The position of the WNBA and the team owners comes straight out of the sacred handbook forged in the founding of the capitalist mode of production, and its prime directive: accumulation is all. But the trouble, as with all prime directives, is that it defines a purpose, but not how to achieve that purpose under the endless variety of circumstances that it faces.
Speaking as an entirely objective and neutral observer (cough, cough), it seems to me that the WNBA and the team owners are pursuing a very questionable “business strategy” (as we say). Through it, they have managed to place themselves decisively on the wrong side in public opinion, and on a very wide scale: the Wall Street Journal is attacking them. When the WSJ says anything that in any way supports labour against management, well, it’s time to listen: hell hasn’t actually frozen over but the infernal temperature’s getting close to 33° (Fahrenheit), not much margin of error.
The WSJ’s main beef is that after the WNBPA had presented a new proposal, the WNBA didn’t even bother to present a counter-proposal at the next, and crucial meeting (all this about a week ago). They have now finally made a counter-proposal, with the smallest possible concessions.
The popularity of the WNBA – the teams and the players – is at an all-time high, and it can rise higher and higher. Why? Because of the players. Paige, Angel, Caitlyn, yes! But all the others too, more and more people are drawn to them, to them all – especially, maybe, people with daughters. Why right now is it a good idea for the league and the owners to nickel and dime the players, when every penny, nickel, dime, quarter, dollar, $1,ooo, $1oo,ooo, $1,ooo,ooo, etc. comes to them from the skill, exertion, passion of the players? And the $$$ are increasing, multiplying, accumulating.
Cold, indifferent, magisterial, I ask again, is this a good business strategy?
Stand with the players … though maybe don’t try to jump with them (I certainly won’t).
Love and solidarity,
Bobby
The Federal government no longer exists.