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This would have been so much cooler if he had caught the ball, high-fived the fan, ate some of his popcorn, threw a punch at someone, hit his head on a railing and THEN threw to first base for the double play. But whatever, I guess it's still pretty cool.
You’ve come a long way, baby.
But not without your blush, eyeliner and lipstick.
No matter if you can dribble and drive with the best of them. Or have two consecutive NCAA championships to your name. Or you’ve out-dunked the boys -- back when you were in high school.
Your cuts to the basket might be divine, but as a woman athlete you must cut a goddess-like image to get noticed.
And that’s what the WNBA is telling its rookies: You want to get noticed, you gotta wear makeup.
Yep, baby, there’s still a long way to go.
As part of the WNBA’s two-day rookie orientation at a Chicago hotel, the basketball phenoms for the first time were offered hourlong sessions on makeup application and fashion, the Chicago Tribune reports. The orientation also addressed finances and fitness and nutrition.
Sadly, this is what it’s come to. The WNBA, which wouldn’t know a creative marketing move if it were slam-dunked in its face, is relying on sex appeal to generate interest in the best women basketball players in the world. The tactic isn’t new. The league has been using its “Have You Seen Her” campaign, which features top players on the court and off, looking sexy and glam. Before that, it was “This Is Who I Am.”
And it sickens every fiber of my feminist being to say I’d be all for it if I thought it would work. I’d take nearly anything to turn around slumping attendance figures. If seeing a dolled-up Candace Parker will put butts in the seats at every arena she plays in, break out the blush!
But c’mon, the reason ticket sales for the LA Sparks are up is because she’s the most dazzling player to come out of college in a long time, and she’s about to join arguably the best veteran, Lisa Leslie.
The pairing should be a marketing -- and a fan’s -- dream.
But instead, Parker, the nation’s No. 1 pick and two-time NCAA champ, is talking makeup.
“I think it’s very important. I’m the type who likes to put on basketball shorts and a white T, but I love to dress up and wear makeup,” she said in the Chicago Tribune. “But as time goes on, I think (looks) will be less and less important.”
There’s nothing wrong with wearing a little makeup and dressing up off the court. But any player worth her high-tops wants to be known less for her looks than her no-looks.
Let’s call the emphasis on players’ appearance what it is: sexism and homophobia.
The WNBA’s push for pretty is applying makeup -- concealer, if you will -- to gloss over the unsightly blemish of the perception of the league as a bunch of lesbians. As if handing out lists to the media of the moms in the league and emphasizing the players who have husbands or boyfriends weren’t obvious enough tactics.
Just the mere staying power of the league is a testament to these women as athletes and individuals. Don’t take away their legitimacy by falling prey to stereotypes.
“Once you begin to worry about how the person looks as opposed to how she plays, you've crossed the line into dangerous play,” said Susan Ziegler, a Cleveland State professor of sports psychology. “We’re not really focused on marketing them as athletes but as feminine objects.”
Yeah, players wear makeup on the court, too. Four-time WNBA champ Tina Thompson, known for her bright red lipstick, says she wears the stuff as a sort of armor going into battle. And Leslie’s new autobiography, “Don’t Let the Lipstick Fool You” describes the pride she takes in her self-described feminine appearance. But she also makes clear that she lets her game speak for itself. And it has spoken: She has three Olympic gold medals and two WNBA championships and is a three-time league MVP.
Let the women’s games do the talking.
Say it ain’t so!
Dawn Staley, the Philly hoops phenom who came home to coach just blocks from where she grew up, is leaving Temple University for the University of South Carolina and a total annual salary package of $650,000.
Staley, who’d been reluctant to coach at all when she was approached for the Temple job in 2000 while she was still playing in the WNBA, said her goal had been to make Temple a national women's basketball powerhouse. In her mind, that meant a national championship, which she’d fallen just short of in her stellar college career at the University of Virginia and in the WNBA.
In her eight years at the gritty North Philadelphia campus, she immediately turned around a decade-long losing record and took her team to the NCAA tournament six times, won the Atlantic 10 Championship four times and compiled a 172-80 record, the best in team history. The Owls cracked the AP Top 25, and two of Staley’s former players are in the WNBA.
Still, by her own measure, Staley leaves unfinished business. Her Owls had yet to advance beyond the first round of the Tournament. Although Staley regularly scheduled powerhouse non-conference opponents -- Tennessee, Maryland, Rutgers, Duke -- who would draw more fans to the Liacouras Center, attendance at the women’s games still came nowhere near the men’s, which was a struggling squad during Staley’s tenure.
It’s hard to believe the three-time Olympic gold medalist would leave Philadelphia for another coaching job, given her protestations that she was attracted to the Temple job only because it gave her the chance to give more back to her hometown. She’d started the Dawn Staley Foundation to help inner-city youth years before, but she’d not considered coaching. Didn’t think she’d be good at it.
Nearly everyone else knew better. The best in the business have called her, well, simply the best. C. Vivian Stringer: “Dawn is just special.” Nancy Lieberman: She’s a “gem.”
So Temple awarded their gem a six-year contract extension last year, worth about $500,000 annually, when other teams came calling. After all, this is a school whose founder, Russell Conwell, built the institution based on the mission of cultivating the “acres of diamonds” in one’s own backyard. Staley had been one of those diamonds in the rough, just 10 blocks away at the Raymond Rosen houses.
But diamonds are much-coveted, and South Carolina has an attractive setting. Who wouldn’t jump at the chance to compete in the all-powerful SEC? The conference draws bigger crowds and thus is an easier sell for top recruits. And then there’s the $650,000 a year, plus the promise to help pay back Staley’s $500,000 buyout.
Staley’s guaranteed income is more than Gamecocks baseball coach Ray Tanner ($345,000) and the man who hired her, USC athletics director Eric Hyman ($475,000), The State reported.
So while I’m bereft that Staley, one of my idols, is leaving my alma mater, I’m consoled that she left it much better than when she came. Still, how great would it have been for her to have done what even the legendary John Chaney could not?: Bring a national basketball championship to North Broad Street.
