2024 WNBA Thread

[Germanshepherd]

Nobody who says they’d watch if they lowered the rims would actually watch. They’d just shift criticism to their dunks not being as spectacular/athletic as the men. Every basketball gym in the country’s hoops are 10 feet. That’s what basketball is. 
 

Plus, in the age of Steph Curry, people shooting from 30+ is just as much a draw as dunking, and a damn big reason why Caitlin Clark is as popular as she is. 

[McCall]

16 minutes ago, Germanshepherd said:

Nobody who says they’d watch if they lowered the rims would actually watch. They’d just shift criticism to their dunks not being as spectacular/athletic as the men. Every basketball gym in the country’s hoops are 10 feet. That’s what basketball is. 

Yet women play with a smaller ball and have a shorter 3-point line. They're on average much shorter than men, so a lower rim is not really that out of line of a suggestion.

[OnWis97]

The only way a shorter rim would work for a pro league is if women used that shorter rim everywhere (i.e., college, high school, etc.). Otherwise it's just a strange novelty like arena football.

 

(Yes, arena football has some history of popularity but only as a sliver of the popularity of real football; if women's basketball reflected this, there'd be very little interest).

[FriedPickles]

28 minutes ago, Germanshepherd said:

Nobody who says they’d watch if they lowered the rims would actually watch. They’d just shift criticism to their dunks not being as spectacular/athletic as the men. Every basketball gym in the country’s hoops are 10 feet. That’s what basketball is. 
 

Plus, in the age of Steph Curry, people shooting from 30+ is just as much a draw as dunking, and a damn big reason why Caitlin Clark is as popular as she is. 

I'm somebody who'd love to see these ladies in the wnba dunk. #lowertherim

[FiddySicks]

2 hours ago, OnWis97 said:

The only way a shorter rim would work for a pro league is if women used that shorter rim everywhere (i.e., college, high school, etc.). Otherwise it's just a strange novelty like arena football.

Yeah and if you think women’s sports are inaccessible now, just wait until every school in the country/world has to have a separate court for them to play on (someone would “invent” a sliding hoop I’m sure, but even that wouldn’t be inexpensive to install). 
 

One of the real benefits of sports like soccer and basketball is that you don’t have to make any full scale alterations to the existing playing area, thus making it accessible for everyone. That’s kind of the reason why it’s so widely popular while sports like softball usually hit their apex in the amateur leagues. 

[McCall]

Y'all do realize that just about every basketball goal is adjustable, right?

[BBTV]

3 hours ago, FriedPickles said:

I'm somebody who'd love to see these ladies in the wnba dunk. #lowertherim

 

I don't just want to see them dunk, but I also want exploding backboards.  Every so often, when a team is on a run, the backboard turns red and it explodes when there's a dunk (which would count for 4 points.). Obviously there would need to be limits on how many times this could happen during a game (they can't keep too many spare backboards laying around) and there would need to be controls in place so nobody actually gets burned or injured, but I think they could make it work.

 

 

[McCall]

6 minutes ago, BBTV said:

 

I don't just want to see them dunk, but I also want exploding backboards.  Every so often, when a team is on a run, the backboard turns red and it explodes when there's a dunk (which would count for 4 points.). Obviously there would need to be limits on how many times this could happen during a game (they can't keep too many spare backboards laying around) and there would need to be controls in place so nobody actually gets burned or injured, but I think they could make it work.

 

 

And what of the gorilla?

[FiddySicks]

43 minutes ago, McCall said:

Y'all do realize that just about every basketball goal is adjustable, right?

Actually, no I did not! Well then there you go, solves that (non) issue I just posted about

 

 

I think basketball and I think of those old post set blacktop hoops you see in parks. Get off my lawn. 

[infrared41]

4 hours ago, kolob said:

 

Something Shaq and T-Mac have been proposing for the past few years. It's not a bad idea, but the reactions from most WNBA players has been pretty negative. 

 

Turns out the lowered hoops women's league was a bigger failure than I remember.

 

LINK

[BBTV]

1 minute ago, infrared41 said:

 

Turns out the lowered hoops women's league was a bigger failure than I remember.

 

LINK

 

Cool, but nowhere in that article does it mention exploding backboards - so I'm not sure that experiment is valid when debating my proposal.

 

Seriously though, I'd like to see it and judge it for myself with today's athletes.  I'm sure that even something as seemingly benign as lowering a hoop by 1 foot would have drastic implications, since everyone's learned to shoot at a 10' hoop, and dropping it to 9' could take a while for a pro athlete to adjust to.  Or not - they're pros, so maybe they could adjust quickly.

 

While I'm changing the world, I may as well throw in that I'd like for women's baseball to become a thing at the college and eventually pro level.

 

 

[infrared41]

23 minutes ago, BBTV said:

I'd like for women's baseball to become a thing

 

Tried a version of that in the 90s too with the Colorado Silver Bullets. I actually saw them play a game in Syracuse. They kicked the out of a bunch of older ex-college players and a couple of ex-minor leaguers. It was pretty cool. Phil Niekro was their manager.

 

[Digby]

The women's game at college and pro levels is bigger than it's ever been, not sure why we are entertaining the idea that gimmicks are necessary. Turns out you just need to invest in marketing it, invest in your players (so they don't have to moonlight in authoritarian states), have a little patience and a few smart ideas. Which honestly the WNBA had been doing better than they previously had within the past five years anyway.

 

The way things are going, they could market the whole Caitlin Clark thing as a new culture war between the three-happy modern game and the cheap-foul body checks of the 80s and 90s. Personally I don't mind a little bit of "welcome to the league, rook" type of play but the media discourse about it became severely annoying within about 5 minutes.

[MJWalker45]

17 hours ago, kolob said:

 

Something Shaq and T-Mac have been proposing for the past few years. It's not a bad idea, but the reactions from most WNBA players has been pretty negative. 

If the players think it's a bad idea, I'd go with what they believe. 

[OnWis97]

It's also not uncommon to hear people say that the women's game being "played below the rim" can be a welcome contrast to the men's game. I am not sure that offsets the PR/interest that would be created by dunking but it is an existing perspective. (Plus it makes the rare WNBA dunk more of a story).

 

In any case, I think the game is still defined at the college level; that is, until that changes,* the WNBA should hold true to that otherwise it's a novelty akin to arena football or the three-on-three league.

*I don't think it's likely to change. But we've seen sports make all sorts of changes to create more offense. 

[MJWalker45]

10 minutes ago, OnWis97 said:

It's also not uncommon to hear people say that the women's game being "played below the rim" can be a welcome contrast to the men's game. I am not sure that offsets the PR/interest that would be created by dunking but it is an existing perspective. (Plus it makes the rare WNBA dunk more of a story).

 

In any case, I think the game is still defined at the college level; that is, until that changes,* the WNBA should hold true to that otherwise it's a novelty akin to arena football or the three-on-three league.

*I don't think it's likely to change. But we've seen sports make all sorts of changes to create more offense. 

That seems to be the case for a lot of women's sports in the United States. Softball is in the same situation as well. 

13 hours ago, infrared41 said:

 

Turns out the lowered hoops women's league was a bigger failure than I remember.

 

LINK

I guess it's good that we've gone beyond needing to advertise for players during the games now.  Reading about all of the hiccups during that game, I'm not surprised there wasn't another attempt until 1996. Those uniforms reminded me of how Australia's women went with something similar to this to get attention for their games as well. They went back to them for the 2021 Tokyo Olympics as well. The uniforms in that LBA game looked more like they cut the legs off some pairs of 1980's fitness outfits and slapped some numbers on them.

[gosioux76]

3 hours ago, Digby said:

The women's game at college and pro levels is bigger than it's ever been, not sure why we are entertaining the idea that gimmicks are necessary. Turns out you just need to invest in marketing it, invest in your players (so they don't have to moonlight in authoritarian states), have a little patience and a few smart ideas. Which honestly the WNBA had been doing better than they previously had within the past five years anyway.

 

The way things are going, they could market the whole Caitlin Clark thing as a new culture war between the three-happy modern game and the cheap-foul body checks of the 80s and 90s. Personally I don't mind a little bit of "welcome to the league, rook" type of play but the media discourse about it became severely annoying within about 5 minutes.

 

I think it's easy to assume that Clark helping to raise the profile of the WNBA is a good thing for the league, and I wouldn't argue that. But I think there's also some justification to the other side of that argument, where veterans of the league might feel resentful that their existence prior to this year went largely unrecognized. For those of you wondering why players might be so willing to bite the hand that fees them, I'd guess that resentment is a big part of the reason. 

 

I'd consider this to be a really good problem to have for the WNBA and women's sports in general, which is going through a long-deserved renaissance in this country. That's exactly why, to @Digby's point, resorting to gimmicks is probably the last thing this league needs. For one, it suggests an unwillingness to accept that the women's game is fundamentally different to the men's game. Dunking has never been, nor does it need to be, part of the women's game. If you see that as a limitation, that's because you're comparing it to something that it isn't.  We witnessed the women's game reach new heights during the NCAA tournament this year under long-established standards. It can do the same in the WNBA. 

 

I'm sure it exists, but I can't think of a single instance in which introducing a gimmick to make a game more flashy has delivered results. It reminds me of the MLS resorting to penalty kicks so games didn't end in a tie. It was a silly idea that also put MLS out of compliance with FIFA standards. 

 

The same thing would be true of lowering the basket. The last thing women's basketball needs is a professional league that operates at a different standard than FIBA. While its three-point-line is shorter than that of the NBA's, the WNBA and FIBA adhere to the same standard.

[MJWalker45]

33 minutes ago, gosioux76 said:

I'm sure it exists, but I can't think of a single instance in which introducing a gimmick to make a game more flashy has delivered results. It reminds me of the MLS resorting to penalty kicks so games didn't end in a tie. It was a silly idea that also put MLS out of compliance with FIFA standards. 

FIFA actually considered moving to the 1996 MLS style of penalty kicks a few years ago, as a way to add a little more difficulty for shooters. It eventually didn't pass but I'd love to see them try it in a World Cup as opposed to the standard:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNExAtWu0CU

[Digby]

1 hour ago, MJWalker45 said:

FIFA actually considered moving to the 1996 MLS style of penalty kicks a few years ago, as a way to add a little more difficulty for shooters. It eventually didn't pass but I'd love to see them try it in a World Cup as opposed to the standard:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNExAtWu0CU

 

Yeah, I do think there's some argument somehow that a breakaway-type PK might be a better idea, although it still needs work and to feel less like an XFL-style rush-and-fight for the ball. But the overall point stands and you could point to the other gimmicks MLS had tried to Americanize the game, too. It turns out American sports fans are not as passionate about the descending clock as early MLS people may have believed! 

 

MLS remains deeply flawed in my opinion, but it does work as an analogue in the sense that what saved MLS from oblivion was improving the fan experience, putting those stadiums in more accessible places, elevating the abilities of players themselves rather than lowering the standard of the gameplay. It also helped -- another analogue here -- that global soccer became increasingly mainstream and popular in North America in recent years, which MLS wasn't responsible for, but it had positioned itself to ride those coattails a little bit and take advantage of the cultural context. Maybe WNBA itself can't produce the next Clark and still won't be as popular as the college game on the women's side, but it has done a decent job being ready for this as a happening. There will be gatekeeping over that by resentful old heads, but there always is, so so what.

[The_Admiral]

7 hours ago, MJWalker45 said:

 

 

Well, this league would have been successful if it had launched ten years ago.