On Sunday, I watched my wife knock down an electrifying buzzer beater with just half a second left in a game tied up with the second-best team in the whole Women’s National Basketball Association, the New York Liberty.
Well, the woman who hit the game-winner was not my actual wife but Brittney Sykes, a stellar 5-foot-9 guard for the Washington WNBA team, whom I lovingly (and embarrassingly) consider to be my Mystics spouse. My actual girlfriend has a Mystics wife too: the perennially debonair Shatori Walker-Kimbrough, who was recently dubbed one of D.C.’s “Style-Setters” by Washingtonian magazine. (The two of us also consider braggadocious, hilarious, and beautiful Natasha Cloud to be our shared Mystics girlfriend, but I digress.)
This is how I would sum up our summer of falling in love with “the W”: Our rapidly acquired and almost-cringey adoration of these exceptional athletes has made us referring to them as our romantic partners (and not just, you know, our “favorite players”) feel completely and utterly natural.
What began with us casually attending the season opener in southeast D.C. back in May with a handful of friends has spiraled into so much more: My girlfriend keeps WNBA scores pinned as a notification on her phone’s home screen, I check the WNBA subreddit (a serendipitously positive little corner of the internet!) religiously, and I’ve rarely been seen this summer without my Mystics hat. Actual Girlfriend and I constantly text each other our favorite in-game highlights and off-court fashion moments. When long-distance buds check in and ask what’s new in my life, I’ve basically always led with “So, I’ve really gotten into the WNBA this summer!”
Sports and me were not always a natural match, though. Just ask my little sister, the sports journalism graduate. She’s been obsessed with basketball and able to rattle off stats about the game since she was about 6 years old. She’s even currently working for our hometown team, the purple-and-gold-clad Los Angeles Sparks. This week, when I texted her to brag about my girlfriend and I scoring last-minute tickets to a Mystics playoff game at Barclays Center, she described my newfound fandom (and knowledge of the league) as a “little miracle.”
I do have to admit: The main reason I’ve gotten so interested in this particular league—in spite of my strong identity as a theater-kid, non-jock journalist—is because the W is so damn queer. Carmen Phillips, editor in chief of the lesbian media organization Autostraddle, back in May published an exhaustive entry-level guide to enjoying the WNBA and wrote that nearly 1 in 4 players are gay, with “Black gay players mak[ing] up the backbone of the WNBA.”
Autostraddle was also at the forefront of blogging about the queer thirst potential of the W. Phillips and I aren’t alone in finding athletic fandom via the impressive (and sexy) queers who play them: Just last month, Defector’s Sabrina Imbler also dropped a very charming piece about their journey, with the all-time great title “How a Fat Baseball Ass and Four Lesbians Turned Me Into a Sports Fan.”
This uptick in WNBA fans is not surprising at all. Having seen a solid chunk of this newly expanded 40-game regular season, there is always something thrilling about watching the W. These teams play with their whole bodies—and they’re fearless about getting physical. Whether it’s a tough tumble earning a player a well-deserved trip to the free-throw line or a perfectly precise shot made against two defenders, I’ve found myself screaming myself hoarse at home—and at D.C.’s Entertainment and Sports Arena, where the Mystics play.
When I got to see my beloved Washington team take on the Connecticut Sun earlier this summer, I was especially excited to watch the 6-foot-4 forward DeWanna Bonner play alongside her newly minted fiancée, MVP contender Alyssa Thomas. I’m personally convinced that their status as teammates/soulmates helped enable Thomas’ tenacious yet smooth passes to her love, and helped Bonner’s subsequent shots to become easy swooshes in. A WNBA/NCAA fan account on Twitter recently calculated that Thomas assists 40 percent of Bonner’s made field goals, a high for the league. That exceptional teamwork—and lesbian power—on the court almost made the Mystics’ loss that night in August tolerable … almost.
Knowing about their personal identities—and relationships—has made the experience of seeing the Mystics (and their opponents) play live not just exciting but healing, in a way. The thrill of watching, hearing, and feeling a crowd of 4,200 people leap to their feet because of the sweaty triumph of an out queer player just never gets old.
Aside from the romantic love, there’s queer platonic love all across the W.
Slim—the moniker for Sykes, my aforementioned Mystics wife—and Cloud begin every game with an elaborate, exuberant handshake, and they’ll play little competitive games against each other in shoot-around, giggling and flopping around on the court ahead of fierce matchups. And their in-game collaboration is so dynamic that the Washington Post, in a feature dedicated to their chemistry, described it as “must-see TV.”
Another example of the many fantastic relationships across the league can be found on the Instagram of the WNBA’s first nonbinary and trans player, L.A. Sparks guard Layshia Clarendon. The other players in Clarendon’s replies just love them. After a run of scrappy games, Clarendon proudly declared themself to be “in my villain era,” with a smiling devil emoji and rock ’n’ roll selfie to match. Clarendon’s haughty swagger was not without some endearing self-deprecation: They declared they’re “bout to start crowd funding for these technical fines tho.” W opponents and teammates alike are in the comments with laughing emojis and love for Clarendon as a “BIG VILLAIN.”
This might sound like a lot about personalities and not enough about, you know, basketball. But oh, the basketball! This season saw reigning MVP A’ja Wilson knock down enough jumpers, layups, and free throws to tie the record for most points ever scored by a single player in a game, 53. It also featured the New York Liberty’s Sabrina Ionescu setting a new record for the WNBA and the NBA in the annual All-Star Weekend’s 3-point contest. Plus, there have been such spectacular performances from players like the Indiana Fever’s Aliyah Boston, who can knock down a 3-point buzzer beater against a 6-foot-6 defender as easily as she can carve out layup space in the über-crowded paint. Did I mention that Boston’s a rookie? We’ll get to see her do this for years!
While the players’ baller bona fides are undeniable, some who are learning about my love for them might say I’m reading a bit too much into a group of talented people who are just, after all, doing their job. But I want everyone reading this to jump into the WNBA fandom this playoff season. It begins tonight, meaning that right now is the perfect time to join me. It’s not just that the playoffs naturally will feature the best teams and the most competitive, exciting, high-stakes games of the year. Tuning in could also help the players in a real and important way.
Last year, the harrowing 10-month, wrongful detainment of nine-time WNBA All-Star Brittney Griner shone a light on the inexcusably low salaries that push players to seek opportunities abroad and can place them in terrifying, vulnerable positions. These types of circumstances are unthinkable for NBA players. In the NBA, the minimum salary for the 2023–24 season is about $1.1 million, and the average player makes six times that. In the W, the highest-paid players take in about $235,000 for the season, and the league minimum is currently a little more than $62,000 a year. As the WNBA grows in popularity—this season featured its most-watched All-Star game in 16 years and much talk of expansion to other cities—it’s alarmingly clear to me that these players deserve compensation that begins to chip away at this appalling gender pay gap. One way to help push that movement along is to watch. Higher viewership and ratings will mean that the league can command more lucrative television deals from broadcasters and streamers—a key source of the revenue geysers enjoyed by the NBA, NFL, and other major U.S. leagues—and, in turn, higher salaries for the stars bringing in that audience.
This extraordinary league, and its phenomenal players, deserves all our eyes on it today. So tune in—and if you’re watching Washington take on New York Friday night, squint a little and look for me in the Barclays Center crowd, sporting my Mystics jersey in an ocean of enemy seafoam green.
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