This week on The IX Sports Podcast Basketball Edition, hosts Jackie Powell and Howard Megdal break down the WNBA’s fight for dignity, starting with Indiana Fever Head Coach Stephanie White’s Tuesday night statement. The pair played the statement in full on the episode, and it is also included below.
White’s statement
“This isn’t necessarily for those people that are in this room. This is more for an online community that’s trying to create narratives that simply don’t exist, trying to create a fabrication or distortion of who I am, of what I’m about. Our players’ success, our players’ health and wellness, our players’ safety is always a top priority for me. One of the things I pride myself on is my relationships with players,” White said before referencing reaction to a recent hard foul committed by Chicago Sky guard DiJonai Carrington against Sophie Cunningham on Saturday.
“For those who have anything to say about the play in the last game, I didn’t see the play in real time. I went straight to a press conference. I thought the play got called right. Thankfully, Sophie’s okay. Was it egregious? Absolutely. When you have a chance to watch that over and over and over on replay, you can see that. I didn’t have that in real time. I take personally any suggestions that I don’t 100% always have my players’ back. I ride with them 10 toes down all the time. All the time. They know that. It’s a shame that we can’t have an opportunity to talk about what great basketball they’re playing. Because they are fucking playing,” White continued.
“The reality is with me, I will always lead with love. I will always lead with grace. I will always lead with humility. And I will always lead with integrity,” White continued. “Doesn’t mean I will always get it right. I’m also human. The hate, the fear mongering, the divisiveness, the stuff that’s trying to hijack our league will not win. It won’t win. We are united. We are connected. We will not be divided. Every day, these women put their ass on the line. Every day. When they go low, we go high. Love will win. Grace will win. Humility will win, and kindness will win. I stand by them. I will always stand by them. Everybody else can go to hell,” she said.
Breaking it down and ‘bad actors’
Both Megdal and Powell praised White’s statement. Powell said she agreed especially with White’s comment that basketball is not the priority for much of WNBA coverage in the current moment.
“I’ve spoken publicly on on many podcasts, including probably this one too, about the reason that I’m here is because of how intersectional this league is, and because of how much this league reflects what’s going on in our society,” Powell said. “But at the same time, I think I do agree that this is a basketball league, and for the basketball to be not at the forefront of what we’re talking about each and every day is sad.”
Then Megdal introduced the fact that two ex-NBA players are attempting to join the WNBA “in a way that is easy, easily, and obviously identifiable as bad faith,” Megdal said.
He attributed their actions to a larger attempt to “infuse a moral panic in the general population” that trans women in women’s sports will have an unfair advantage and come to “take over” women’s sports leagues — ideas, Megdal said, that are not backed by science or reality.
Powell and Megdal also discussed how the WNBA already had a meeting set to discuss the inclusion of transgender athletes in the league before these ex-NBA players made their respective announcements.
Court Vision
On the Court Vision segment, Powell and Megdal discussed paths of the Washington Mystics this season in comparison to the New York Liberty. (Megdal penned a column on the topic this week.)
“From my perspective, the New York Liberty continue to face the most critical season in their franchise’s history, which is to say that they have made some decisions that have put their relationship with their fans in — I don’t want to say jeopardy — but it has forced people to really reevaluate how they feel about the team,” Megdal said.
Tune in to this week’s episode to hear more — and how the Mystics factor into the equation.
Monumental Sports and Entertainment, the group that owns the Washington Mystics, holds a minority stake in The IX Sports. The IX Sports’ editorial operations are entirely independent of Monumental and all other business partners.
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