Breanna Stewart Is Bridging the Gap in Women's Basketball

[RandySF]

She’s 29 now, which means, as she collects a dizzying tally of accomplishments, there are still two young children to care for and another game upcoming. She sounds groggy. But she’s still marveling at the year that was, all that life-ing—awards, Finals run, MVP, a second child, staggering grief, overwhelming joy and the one shot she most wishes she had taken but did not.

Rest? Ha! That’s never been her default. Even if it were, now’s really not the time. Like every other athletics obsessive on the planet, Stewie understands that women’s sports in general and the WNBA specifically are both having moments. Meaning: upticks in viewership, engagement and every other metric that measures interest. Meaning: sold-out arenas, even before this season’s much-hyped rookie draft class. Meaning: Serena Williams and Coco Gauff, Simone Biles, the USWNT, Mikaela Shiffrin, Nelly Korda, Stewart, Wilson and the rest.

Speaking about the W specifically, Stewie says, “It’s like, We told you so. We’ve been here. We’ve had the product. We haven’t been as mainstreamed as we should have.”

For decades now, WNBA luminaries have dismissed the context-ignoring argument that always centered on the same outdated, misogynistic concept: that their league would never reach the same level of popularity as any of the so-called major sports. They’ve answered that criticism by noting the length of the respective runways for the others: MLB (1876), NFL (1920), NBA (1946). The WNBA’s first season was 1997. None of those leagues exploded immediately into the national athletic consciousness. The WNBA put forth a quality product, with a loyal, if limited, fan base, right from the jump. It only needed what all the other leagues did: time.

Good luck finding a comparison to Stewart in those sports. In the early days of each of the so-called Big Three, stars competed amid limited news coverage, minimal (if any) television exposure and no social media accounts. Stewie has already reached a level of worldwide fame far beyond anything any of them possessed.



https://www.si.com/wnba/breanna-stewart-is-bridging-generationalgap-womens-basketball