04/25/24
December 03, 2003
The female Michael Jordan could be on the way ...: if Candace Parker's coaches and the experts are right. She's a 6-3 senior playing near Chicago that can dunk and shoot the trey. Find info and pictures in an in-depth interview and yet another interview. Could someone this good (or a fleet of them) make women's hoops marketable?
posted by wfrazerjr to basketball at 07:59 PM - 8 comments
I have heard of Diana Taurasi, and Sue Bird and Jackie Stiles, lil ... none of whom have made the slightest dent in the national sports psyche, and that's the point. I guess you have to decide where you would like the WNBA to fit in. If you are happy with the women's league enjoying the same prestige as say, Arena football, then I think that has been achieved. I just somehow think that the right athlete has not come along to explode onto the scene and make those other sports fans that need to be slapped upside the head sit up and take notice. Parker could just be that kind of talent, but until that dunkin', rainin'-J's, do-it-all-and-smile-and-sell-the-league player comes along, the WBNA will be second- or third-tier at best. I want the women to at least not be playing on Lifetime.
posted by wfrazerjr at 09:38 PM on December 03, 2003
yowza
posted by garfield at 11:04 PM on December 03, 2003
I'm just bitter because (apparently) she badly wanted to come to Duke and her mother refused to sign her LOI if she didn't go to Tennessee.
posted by tieguy at 11:08 PM on December 03, 2003
Maybe it's just me...but women's basketball will never get the good recognition, as long as it's big news that one of them dunked during a game.
posted by bcb2k2 at 08:19 AM on December 04, 2003
Alternately, one could say it will never get good recognition while basketball 'fans' find a dunk more interesting than actual passing and shooting.
posted by tieguy at 11:31 AM on December 04, 2003
Exactly, tie ... the fact that they actually shoot the ball, run good offenses and don't have the dunk is one of the main reasons I enjoy the WBNA. Just not enough sizzle for the average sports viewer though, I guess.
posted by wfrazerjr at 12:18 PM on December 04, 2003
Well, I dunno, I think it's a wee tad simplistic to say it's the fact that the women's game isn't played above the rim. Rather, I think that's an excuse being used to dismiss it altogether...because, Candace Parker (and Lisa Leslie) aside, I doubt you'll ever see a large percentage of women in basketball going above the rim consistently. It's already been done. Women have dunked in high school, college, and pro games. Did that attract a huge influx of Joe Sixpack fans? Nope. So why is that -- because they hate the idea of women in sports? There's some of that going on, but I think the real reason is because Joe Sixpack already has a ton of sports offerings to choose from. Leave gender out of it, and ask why you can't watch bicycle racing on TV all the time, or competitive swimming, or track and field, or (my favorite) ski racing. Why can't they all be like the NBA? Simple: because the NBA already exists. There isn't room for another. There isn't the room, there isn't the time, there isn't the ad dollars or the consumer dollars to buy commercial spots and stadium naming rights and bobblehead dolls and logo jackets and hats and t-shirts and athletic supporters. So no, "the female Michael Jordan" is not going to make women's basketball "marketable", because the market is saturated. It's a vain effort to try to make women's hoops, or any other minority sport, succeed in those terms. The correct course of action for a minority sports fan is to try and find different ways that success can be defined, and to support those outlets that provide what coverage there is.
posted by lil_brown_bat at 07:45 PM on December 04, 2003
What rock ya been living under that you haven't heard of Diana Taurasi? This whole bizniz about making women's basketball "marketable" is, if you'll pardon me, more than a little bit of nonsense. Why? Well, "marketable" is nothing but a code-phrase for "just like the NBA". If that's how you want to humpty-dumpty the word, fine, but by that metric, nothing in sports in the USA is marketable except the Big Three, and if you need the detailed explanation I'll tell you why. But you're on to something. Dumbass critics of women's hoops (very few of whom know anything about it) sneer, a la the Mad Dog, "They can't draw flies," but they miss the point that the NBA's dollars do not come from butts in seats. And let's not forget that things have changed a lot from the day when the NBA was rising from obscurity. Nowadays, analysts will tell you that the spectator sports market is "saturated", meaning that there's so much out there competing for the spectators' attention that no new offering really has a hope. It doesn't matter if it's men or women, you have to sell it to people who are already watching something else -- and to do that, you have to sell them the idea that what you offer is better than what they're watching now. That's where the WNBA has been somewhat different: it has drawn its fans, whom the women's hoops haters love to mock, largely from people who aren't pure-spectator sports fans, unlike most MLB/NFL/NBA fans. I suppose it's better to be a beer-swilling couch potato who owns all the NBA logo gear...