In the summer of 2020, Senate candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock were underdogs in Georgia until incumbent Senator and WNBA team owner Kelly Loeffler fully aligned with Trump’s MAGA movement and their attempts to turn the Black Lives Matter activism of the league’s players into a campaign strategy.
The players turned their attention to ousting Loeffler from her seat of power both in DC and in the owner’s box, and they succeeded in doing both, helping to put Ossoff and Warnock into the positions they now hold and are fighting to keep in this year’s midterm elections.
This summer, though, while Ossoff and Warnock continue to be a thorn in the side of, incredibly, a second-term Trump, the activist in the W that we’re being presented with is Sophie Cunningham and her “common sense bigotry.”
It occurred to me early in this thirtieth-anniversary season, now that the league has its watershed media rights deal and the players have their historic CBA, that both sides of that equation may have chosen to turn down the temperature on being so publicly politically active, even if it was never discussed explicitly. And even if their approaches are wildly different.
Players stay on the floor for the national anthem this summer. “Statement Tees” are infrequently worn unless you are Coach Cheryl Reeve or the always outspoken Natasha Cloud. Despite the dreadful record of the current administration and the progressive enthusiasm heading into this fall’s election cycle, there’s no collective action to be found among these women in 2026.
And that is their right. I’m not demanding action, just noting its absence.
Meanwhile, the league front office has taken a different approach. Or, perhaps, an approach similar to one popularized by their parent organization’s biggest star of the 1990s: “Republicans buy sneakers, too.”1
Caitlin Clark’s arrival in the professional ranks a few seasons ago brought a fan base that does not share the same values as those this league has been cultivating for most of its life. That they have glommed onto her, her team, and her teammate, Cunningham, seems to have inspired the most Corporate America thing possible from the association: protect the goose that lays the golden eggs at all costs.
I imagine they see it as being apolitical. But nothing is apolitical in this country, and when that stance becomes just not trying to antagonize “common sense” Americans, what you really get is what we’ve seen over the last week.
Meanwhile, a coach who might have a different perspective on her comments and the rights of trans people to play sports is cut off by her team’s PR team for a statement full of baby pablum.
When a team owner’s arena is invaded by bad-faith actors seeking to fabricate an incident, her understandable reaction and interaction with them result in disciplinary action from the league.
That seems pretty political to me. Choosing to coddle the bigots because you want them to keep spending their money is a devil’s bargain.
It also completely ignores what else has happened over the last five years and the groundswell of youthful progressive enthusiasm that has organically built around the league during that time. That fanbase, the one that will stick around long after Clark and Cunningham ride off into the sunset, has the values that underpin this league. And it is the fuel that drives all who thrive in and around women’s sports.
The lifeblood of women’s sports is inclusivity. We are here because we want to cheer for these women, this bountiful, broad, cornucopia of athletes, who compete like hell while also clearly being about something greater than themselves.
The billionaire NBA owners, both at a league and team level, may not want to hear that, but ignore it at your peril. Chasing fickle fans who have no respect for the people who have kept this thing going for the last 30 years may turn away the folks who get it better than you ever will.
And then you’ll be left holding an empty bag.
That’s just common sense.
- Yes, I know that Jordan denies saying it. ↩︎
