UPDATE (Sept. 22, 2024 10:45 a.m. E.T.): The WNBA announced Sunday that A’ja Wilson was the unanimous choice for league MVP.
When she was interviewed on CNBC’s “Power Lunch” on Sept. 9, WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert was asked about racist and homophobic bullying from different players’ fan bases and gave an answer that was insufficiently empathetic and filled with corporate jargon. Her response upset players and fans in that it didn’t seem to sufficiently condemn the bullying or stand up for the league’s players.
And to be clear, they care for reasons other than the exciting play of rookie phenoms Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese.
While she didn’t adequately answer the question about a topic that affects the well-being and safety of the WNBA’s players and has since apologized for not doing so, there’s no denying the truth in something Engelbert did say in that interview: “There’s no more apathy,” she said about the WNBA. “Everybody cares.”
And to be clear, they care for reasons other than the exciting play of rookie phenoms Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese, the subjects of so many headlines this WNBA season. This season wasn’t just about the league’s future but also about its exciting present and its iconic past. And the WNBA playoffs, which tip off Sunday, will make that clear.
A’ja Wilson, who plays center for the back-to-back champion Las Vegas Aces, put together one of the most dominant seasons in league history, becoming the first WNBA player to reach 1,000 points in a full season and putting up the best numbers of her career, averaging 26.9 points per game, 11.9 rebounds, 2.6 blocks, 1.8 steals and 2.3 assists. This season might be the last we see of Diana Taurasi, the league’s all-time leading scorer.
The New York Liberty, the only original franchise without a title, is still looking to win one. The Connecticut Sun, which has been in two of the last five WNBA finals, is also still looking for its first championship. The Minnesota Lynx is a team that few predicted would be in the running for a WNBA championship, and the team will begin the postseason with the No. 2 overall seed. And despite underperforming during the regular season and forcing Wilson to take on a much heavier load, the Aces are entering the playoffs hoping to three-peat.
To Engelbert’s point about there being no more apathy, this season, six teams recorded an average attendance of more than 10,000 fans per game, which hadn’t been done since the league’s second season, in 1998. ESPN reported that the 2024 WNBA regular season has been the most viewed regular season on its family of networks, which includes ESPN2 and ABC, since the network televised games during the league’s inception in 1997. The ION Network, which began showing WNBA regular-season games in 2023, reported on Thursday that the league doubled its viewership on the network this season and aggregated 23.72 million total viewers.
Engelbert also announced two new expansion franchises for the WNBA, one in Toronto and the other in Portland, Oregon. The ownership group that will oversee the Portland team paid a $125 million fee for the team. Compare that to the $10-14 million Joe and Clara Wu Tsai spent in 2019 to buy the New York Liberty, an original WNBA franchise. The Portland ownership duo of Alex Bhathal and Lisa Bhathal Merage are paying around 8 to 10 times more.
In addition to who will win the 2024 WNBA championship, there’s so much more to look forward to before these playoffs end. Will Wilson, a shoo-in to win her third MVP award, be the unanimous pick of the members of the media who vote for the award? The only time that’s ever happened was in the league’s inaugural season in 1997, when the award was granted to Cynthia Cooper-Dyke.
Is this it for the 42-year-old Taurasi? The Phoenix Mercury, with its social media posts titled “If This Is It,” is encouraging us to think so, even as Taurasi says “I don’t know.” She said, “The last couple of weeks have been a little nerve-racking for myself. I don’t want to make any emotional, rash decisions. I know the end is near. When that is, I don’t know.”
Will Wilson, a shoo-in to win her third MVP award, be the unanimous pick of the members of the media who vote for the award?
On Thursday afternoon, the team posted photos of the free T-shirt fans received at the Mercury’s final regular-season home game. The front features a silhouette of Taurasi with text calling her the greatest of all time, and on the reverse is a long letter to the WNBA legend thanking her for 20 seasons of stellar WNBA play. Taurasi’s family, friends and former coaches were all in attendance on Thursday night to watch her be celebrated by her home crowd for potentially the last time.
The 2024 WNBA season has given us a long list of compelling storylines, people and teams to root for and against. This has always been the case throughout the league’s history, but the issue was the lack of mainstream attention. In the past, networks have refused to put these games of meaning and consequence on television because of a bias that the casual sports fan doesn’t want to watch women’s sports.
The executives at the top of the league who preceded Engelbert didn’t try hard enough to alter those biases.
If it is the last time, it felt like the first time. I love you guys. pic.twitter.com/ojfrH1QGjt
— Phoenix Mercury (@PhoenixMercury) September 20, 2024
The dual phenomenon that is both Clark and Reese took the WNBA’s exponential growth in recent years to new heights. Clark led the league in assists this year with 8.4 per game, as did Reese in rebounds, with 13.1 per game. Both rookies broke records. Clark broke the rookie season scoring record, and Reese set the record for the most consecutive double-doubles.
Clark’s Indiana Fever averaged 17,035 fans per home game this season, the highest attendance average across the league. Reese has expanded her personal brand and helped expand the WNBA’s. She partnered with well-known brands like Reese’s candy and Reebok, launched her own weekly podcast and even appeared in a commercial promoting the highly anticipated movie musical “Wicked.” She and Clark are expected to be honored as members of the WNBA’s All-Rookie team, with Clark most likely to earn the rookie of the year honors.
And while there’s been a lot said about how veteran WNBA players have responded to the attention Clark and Reese have attracted, there’s an understanding that the exposure and sometimes uninformed hot takes serve a purpose.
A'ja Wilson, Caitlin Clark, and Angel Reese shine as the 2024 WNBA Peak Performers, dominating the court and setting new standards of excellence 🌟#WelcometotheW pic.twitter.com/dukIM0vaJj
— WNBA (@WNBA) September 20, 2024
“I think that is a sign of growth,” Lynx star Napheesa Collier told me on Sept. 16. “And having all these controversies, while sometimes obviously it’s really frustrating, it gets people talking … and you need people discussing what’s going on. So for better or worse, and what they’re talking about, I think it’s great for the game overall.”
But don’t forget there’s still work to do, including making sure games of consequence during the final week of the regular season are shown on national television, the league continues to find ways to protect its players from online harassment, that 50-50 revenue sharing becomes a reality rather than a target, and so much more.
If anything, this season was a glorious rebuke to all the haters who claim that nobody cares about the WNBA.
