The Cultural Significance of Lisa Leslie's Olympic Success

I was watching Around the Horn yesterday and the first question was about the significance of the “Redeem Team’s” gold medal.

The brief conversation pretty much went as one would expect, including Kevin Blackistone commenting that they should be called the “Self-Esteem Team”.

But I would have liked to hear more people weigh in on the significance of Lisa Leslie’s fourth consecutive gold medal. There’s a significance to Leslie’s legacy that extends beyond basketball – and it is not just that she is a role model for young girls and aspiring female athletes.

She is a black female role model and a winner, which has been a rarity in the mainstream media for anyone not named Oprah.

And as a black female athlete who has publicly embraced her responsibility as a role model, Leslie was a great Olympic story and continues to be a great WNBA story.

Leslie manages to represent so much simultaneously – a role model, the success of Title IX, and the success of the women’s sports movement to this point. And she does it all with grace and humility. So when she passes the torch, she’s passing on more than a legacy on the court, but one of the most underrated cultural icons that has never gotten enough attention in the mainstream media.

A representation of Title IX success

Cathy Young of Reason Magazine writes that “It's an article of faith among advocates of women's sports that the remarkable growth in women's athletics over the past quarter century has been the fruit of Title IX…” And as a founding member of the most prominent women’s professional sports league, Leslie might be the poster child of that success.

Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post wrote the following:

The next time some fool argues that Title IX should be rewritten, just show them the highlights of the U.S. women's basketball team at this Olympics, and of Lisa Leslie in particular.

Twelve years of playing for her country, never a single loss, and four gold medals. Think she was worth the funding?

With so much focus on the impact of Title IX on intercollegiate sports, I think the impact on academics often go overlooked. So I’m a little wary of how people reduce the value of Title IX to a matter of sports legislation.

Nevertheless, I do think women’s sports serve a unique function within the broader Title IX agenda and Leslie represents that well. As perhaps the most concrete and visible example of Title IX success in the public sphere, women’s sports – and particularly the WNBA – might represent a means by which to rally people around broader women’s issues.

Of course, there is still plenty of progress that needs to be made toward gender equity in sports, despite increased participation from women. Brett Zarda of ESPN the Magazine writes that men typically receive significantly more prime time coverage than women in the Olympics. And unfortunately, that disparity in coverage continues after the Olympics.

But staying in the moment, Leslie’s individual success, her role in advancing women’s sports as part of the WNBA, and her participation on among the most dominant Olympic teams ever, make her a relatively easy figure to rally around and celebrate the progress that has been made and inspire further progress.

A strong role model for little girls everywhere

As rare as it is for black female role models to garner positive mainstream media attention, this week we’ve had the pleasure of seeing two shine on major stages: Lisa Leslie and Michelle Obama.

I know that seems like an awfully distant connection but if you look closely a close analysis of the function they each play as a role model reveals similarity.

Obviously, Leslie and Obama have pursued very different careers. But as articulate, educated, and successful black women they both represent dreams of success for black women that seemed unattainable only a few decades ago.

Look closely at Obama’s words from her Democratic National Convention speech last night and you see her articulating what Leslie’s Olympic success exemplifies.

And Barack and I set out to build lives guided by these values, and pass them on to the next generation. Because we want our children - and all children in this nation - to know that the only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.

Honestly, I acknowledge that the speech was somewhat cliché and clearly design to construct a more palatable political image for Michelle Obama, much to the dismay of some critics. But the inescapable theme of the speech is one of hope and empowerment.

Leslie embodies the spirit that Obama speaks of and has taken on that same responsibility as a role model in her own right. She captures that with her words in a 2006 WNBA.com article about the 10th anniversary of her first gold in Atlanta:

It's been amazing, this opportunity to be a role model… Plus, the ability to inspire young girls and women to want to be professional basketball players as well as going back to school are opportunities that I have embraced and feel a lot of gratitude to have been able to accomplish.

Whether they are inspiring young girls to go into politics or women’s basketball, what's important that they are both expanding the range of possibilities conceivable for young black girls. Just as Leslie helped to change the face of women’s sports as a WNBA pioneer, Obama is on the cusp of the opportunity to be part of a major shift in the way we perceive black women in politics.

But more importantly, both of them appear to do it with a grace and strength that almost makes it look easy to bear such a heavy burden. Why wouldn’t we want our youth to emulate the model they set forward? Kim McLarin at TheRoot.com describes the model of woman hood that Obama represents in words that could easily be used to describe Leslie.

Her sense of self comes across as being as natural a part of her as her beautiful skin or her bold and funky walk. It is a birthright, immutable and clear. For a woman—especially a black woman, especially a black woman who did not grow up clutching either the silver spoon of wealth and privilege, or the silver spoon of a normative kind of beauty—to possess such an unshakable sense of self is, as my grandmother would say, something! It is also something not often seen in America. Which is precisely the reason Michelle Obama has sparked the reactions that she has.

The way Leslie has represented the U.S. in the Olympics and as an icon for women’s basketball exudes a seemingly natural sense of self and sense of purpose, unshakable by the world around her.

However, none of this is to say that we have arrived at a post-racist or post-sexist society. But as Mallika Chopra describes, it is important to celebrate the accomplishments of these positive black women for the sake of our youth and a reminder of what’s possible when we continue to challenge structural barriers that limit blacks and women.

And it’s those narratives of continuing to dream and fight despite the odds that make both women’s stories particularly important additions to mainstream understandings of what it means to be a U.S. citizen and the challenges that plenty of people still face. Ding at Bitch, Ph.D. speaks to what Obama’s narrative means to black women.

What I'm hearing in her speech is the same narrative that I, and other people of color like me, have lived. It's familiar to us. It's a narrative, however, that mainstream America still cannot believe about communities of color; like the Mark Penns of this country, mainstream America can't grasp the fact that black, brown or non-white people have the same American dream as they and that they have lived by that dream and hoped for the day when their lives as full Americans would be acknowledged.

I was saying to a friend today that people of color are the last idealists in this country. Fundamentally, we believe - despite the slights and the snubs and the daily presence of racism - that the Great American Story of fairness, hard work and reward for that hard work still has the possibility to exist.

When Leslie celebrates those four gold medals around her neck she’s not just inspiring the next Candace Parker or Sylvia Fowles, but she's representing a narrative of life in U.S. society that so often goes unheard and misunderstood -- the actualization of seemingly impossible dreams.

Conclusion: Part of something bigger than basketball?

Young wrote the following in 2001 about the cultural implications of women’s sports:

Women's sports do have revolutionary cultural implications. This isn't just about equity for little girls but about a vision of womanhood that includes sweat and strength, competitiveness and even ferocity. One could say that this is feminism at its best -- it revels in female power and accomplishment, instead of wallowing in victimhood.

In Young’s terms, Lisa Leslie has become among the most enduring example of female athletic power and accomplishment that we have in U.S. society today, the accomplishments of past female athletes notwithstanding.

But having said all of this, I think it’s also important to point out that Leslie is not perfect in terms of shifting perceptions of women in society – the barriers still exist for black women, but Leslie had the right combination of ability, beauty, and intelligence to succeed. And with that caveat some may have legitimate critiques.

First, due to her exceptional qualities, she has succeeded in spite of racism and sexism whereas many other black women still face barriers. And second, as a former model, she still represents elements of the traditional beauty ideal that favors a very narrow definition of femininity.

Nevertheless, I think the best way to understand Leslie is as part of an ongoing “revolutionary” process that will be carried forward by the next generation, currently embodied by Fowles and Parker, among others. People like Leslie have opened doors and created new opportunities for women, but it will take a collective effort to realize a society in which women can participate equitably once they walk through those doors.

Although the WNBA is first and foremost a business, with women like Leslie creating a foundation for future generations, it could develop into something of a modern women’s movement by embodying a new vision of womanhood for young girls. But for now, instead of critiquing the WNBA for what it has not achieved politically, I think it’s worth celebrating for the accomplishments of accomplished women like Leslie.

Relevant Links:

Dreamy: Leslie says American women have earned name, too
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/olympics/beijing/basketball/2008-08-24-basketball-women_N.htm

Thoughts on a Black First Lady in Waiting
http://www.hnn.us/articles/53429.html

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The Future is NOW: How Lisa Leslie Passed the Torch and Sylvia Fowles Grabbed It

I assume that a large portion of this morning’s proverbial water cooler chatter will center on the Olympics and someone might eventually try to make the argument that “The Redeem Team” is the most dominant basketball team in U.S. history.

Hopefully someone else will rescue your discussion from that historical vacuum by at the very least bringing up the obvious fact that the 1992 “Dream Team” was objectively more dominant. But if you’re feeling a little argumentative and willing to challenge people’s gender biases, you might want to make the point that J. Douglas Foster at NBCOlympics.com made on Saturday: the U.S. women’s basketball team that has won four consecutive gold medal is objectively among the most dominant Olympic teams ever…in any sport.

Of course, once the discussion turns to the subject of women’s basketball, someone should bring up the fact that they heard something about Lisa Leslie’s fourth consecutive gold medal in her final Olympic appearance. And that could turn into a discussion of how Candace Parker is the future and how exciting it might have been if she had dunked in the Olympics.

This hypothetical discussion is a rough reflection of the hierarchy of media headlines as the Olympics closed yesterday: men’s basketball first, then historical men’s basketball, women’s basketball, Lisa Leslie, and a smattering of Candace Parker (a sad commentary on media bias, but check Google News for yourself if you don’t believe me).

But lost in the media hype is the outstanding performance of WNBA rookie Sylvia Fowles.

Before the Olympics, it seemed like the passing of the torch from Leslie to Parker was nothing more than a formality. But somewhere between the pre-Olympic hype and the actual games, Fowles has turned heads and made a strong case to fill Leslie’s enormous shoes – both in future international competition and the WNBA.

**Picture above courtesy of SPMSportspage.

An overview of Fowles' performance

Fowles did get a few mentions here and there for leading Team USA in scoring with 13.4 points per game. But that’s only the beginning of a very impressive international portfolio for Fowles.

Fowles also led Team USA in rebounding and was first among all women’s basketball players in field goal percentage. She recorded 26 points, 14 rebounds, and 2 blocks in the medal quarterfinals against South Korea.

And oh yeah, she’s a WNBA rookie with eight games of professional experience.

Without digging too deeply, we see that Fowles had an outstanding freshman Olympic campaign. But digging a little deeper, we can also see that Fowles was indisputably one of the top contributors to Team USA

Assigning credit to Team USA players

After the first two preliminary round games, I made a post about Fowles being Team USA’s biggest contributor using the David Sparks’ technique of assigning game-by-game credit for wins. The metric is called “Marginal Victories Produced” (MVP) and a detailed description of this metric is available at Hardwood Paroxysm, but here’s an excerpt:

…here I will develop a value estimator that works at the game level, to give us an even more accurate picture of just how much each player contributes…in each game, there is a total of 1.00 MVP to be allocated. Each individual's contribution to the total production in the game is considered their Marginal Victory Production. This way, players on losing teams can be seen as producing valuable contributions--they might be valuable enough to get their team right to the cusp of victory--and this value shows up in MVP (but not in BoxScores).

I’m using an older version of this metric because that’s what I was working with when the Olympics started, but the concept and spirit is the same despite the change in formula.

Anyway, here are the final MVP values for Team USA, along with Sparks’ metric of Model Estimated Value per game (MEV/g), which measures productivity:

China vs. USA
PLAYER	MEV/g	Credit
Diana Taurasi	11.95	1.08
Sylvia Fowles	14.21	1.04
Tamika Catchings	12.22	0.94
Candace Parker	10.35	0.79
Tina Thompson	10.09	0.78
Kara Lawson	10.31	0.71
Lisa Leslie	10.01	0.66
Cappie Pondexter	8.44	0.53
Seimone Augustus	7.18	0.50
Sue Bird	5.53	0.40
Katie Smith	5.19	0.37
Milton-Jones	2.21	0.14

**Correction: As I re-examined the formula, I miscalculated MVP and these numbers are actually numbers for a different metric, which was simply called, "credit". The results are rather similar but the distinction is important to make.

So one of the first things you might notice is that Fowles has a higher MEV/g than Taurasi, a lower MVP. This illuminates the point that MVP is looking at the productivity in specific games relative to the production of both teams.

So for example, in Fowles' most productive game, her MEV was 34.45 but her MVP was 0.28. In Taurasi’s most productive game, her MEV was 23.43, but her MVP was 0.45. In other words, though Taurasi produced “less” statistically that production made a larger contribution to the team’s winning effort than Fowles’ “more” productive game.

But anyway, what we see is that Fowles was the most productive player by a significant margin and the second biggest contributor, behind Taurasi by only .04 MVP credits. Again, that’s from a player who hasn’t yet finished their rookie year.

The future of WNBA post play

After the game against the Sparks in which Fowles suffered her knee injury, I wrote that Fowles is the next generation of WNBA post play. It seems that her Olympic performance has only confirmed that. And as described by Leslie and the Team USA coaching staff on multiple occasions, Fowles is still learning…and doing so quickly.

Leslie and Parker definitely deserved the attention they got prior to the Olympics. And Leslie’s four medals is a great story for women’s basketball in its own right – she leaves an amazing legacy and some huge shoes to fill for the future.

But Fowles has proven that she’s a star among stars even on the sports world’s biggest stage. She will never get the media attention of Parker for a number of reasons, but it’s clear that she could easily rival Parker and Diana Taurasi as a perennial MVP candidate in the not-too-distant future.

By no means is any of this meant to suggest that Fowles is better than Parker – as of right now, I think Parker is the better player. However, Fowles might have more potential than most people give her credit for and her Olympic performance is evidence of that.

Transition Points:

A note on Taurasi: Even if she doesn’t win the MVP award this year, I think Taurasi has made a strong case for herself as the best player right now in the WNBA. Lauren Jackson is a legitimate candidate and Fowles and Parker may have something to say about that in a few years, but right now, I would pose this question regarding Taurasi: if you were starting a team today, how many players would you take over Taurasi?

But very few players in sports have the ability to singlehandedly win a game the way Taurasi can. Need evidence? A team needs at least .50 credits to have a chance at winning a game (meaning they have to be at least as productive as their opponent). Against Becky Hammon and Russia – Team USA’s closest game – Taurasi had .45 credits. In other words, she almost won the game by herself (at least statistically).

And from all reports, it’s Taurasi’s leadership abilities as well as her basketball talent that make Taurasi so good. From Team USA coach Ann Donovan after the Russia game:

“The bigger the game, the bigger Diana is and her energy, players feed off that… Her confidence just kind of oozes from her and gets passed on to everybody else. She has done a tremendous job for this team.”

An interesting little statistical tidbit -- every one of the starters has a negative plus/minus for the tournament overall. This is probably a case where their plus/minus reflects the fact that they were the ones in the games while they were actually close...the bench players normally came in with a lead in hand.


It sounds as though Sky coach Steven Key is looking forward to resuming the WNBA season with a more experienced Fowles on the roster:

"She's gaining a lot of confidence, and she's learning a lot, too. She's being exposed to a great coaching staff. And just the players she's getting to play with on her own team, she's seeing how the game is supposed to be played. I expect her to bring all of that knowledge and intensity to her teammates here. We're so happy to see her coming back."

It will be interesting to see how Fowles’ Olympic performance translates into post-Olympic marketability. The track record for female Olympic athletes’ marketing deals after the games end is dismal. What role could the WNBA play in building her up a little as the Sky make a long-shot playoff push? Will she get consideration for the All-Rookie team despite missing a large chunk of the season?

Related Links:

The Chicago Sky: My Choice for Team of the Future
http://rethinkbball.blogspot.com/2008/06/chicago-sky-my-choice-for-team-of.html

Sky's Fowles coming up big in Olympics
http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=229695

U.S. Women Pass the Torch, Win Gold
http://www.wnba.com/usab/goldmedal_20080823.html

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Last Olympic Weekend

The Olympics are winding down and although it's an exciting worldwide event, I have to admit I'm looking forward to more WNBA basketball

But to keep up with all the sights and sounds in Beijing, check out the little widget below.

See you Monday with some previews of the WNBA's sprint to the playoffs! Yipee!


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Lessons Learned From the Olympics: How and Why the WNBA Should Webcast More Games

During my e-conversation about Darnellia Russell with Lakehead University’s sports information director Mike Aylward, we ended up having an extended discussion about the use of new media technologies to broadcast sporting events.

I was particularly interested in the use of the web for broadcasting WNBA games and Aylward was a great resource for that. Since no television networks will come to the small city of Thunder Bay, Ontario to broadcast games, Aylward set up a system for video and audio casting Lakehead games via the web. Although his effort to independently broadcast Lakehead University’s games is of a much smaller scale than that of the WNBA, I found his insight useful in framing the range of possibilities for web broadcasting.

I return to the subject now after reading an article about NBC’s web casting of the Olympics by Saul Hansell of the New York Times “Bits” blog. In that article, and a previous one from August 13, Hansell challenges the dominant perception that webcasting reduces television ratings and thus hurts advertising revenue by consulting executives from Major League Baseball and CBS, which webcast the men's NCAA tournament this year.

“We’ve learned that wherever you are, you watch on the biggest screen you can,” (Robert A. Bowman of Major League Baseball Advanced Media) said.

To be sure, CBS came to this conclusion slowly. In past years, the network Webcast the early games of the NCAA basketball tournament, but you had to tune into television to see the semifinals and final game.

This year’s Web simulcast of the final games “only added to revenues and therefore profit,” he said. A “low single digit” percentage of the total audience for those games was online, and consisted most likely of people who were not able to get to a television.

(Jason Kint of CBSsports.com) suggested that NBC would have done well to follow the same model, at least for the live events, with the Olympics.

“The way we program March Madness on Demand, making it available on any platform live, is the ideal way to handle it” he said.

To summarize, web casting is not only a means to make sports events more accessible, but it may also increase profit as people generate a buzz about the games they watch.

Furthermore, webcasting a live event that is not televised could also provide accessibility without threatening advertisers, affiliate stations, or cable systems – it only “fuels interest” by allowing people to discuss the “dramas of the day” more easily. From the August 13th article:

“We know without question people want to see the best viewing experience,” (Alan Wurtzel of NBC) said. “If you watched the Olympics in high definition on a big screen, you are not going to watch it online. So that is why there isn’t going to be a cannibalization.”

What this seems to mean for the WNBA is that they are currently under-utilizing the web for broadcast purposes, despite touting an impressive 90+ live webcasts for free this season. The problem seems similar to the dilemma NBC is struggling with regarding the Olympics – the WNBA only makes games available for webcast when they are also televised by a local network (not national networks, like ABC/ESPN).

It’s unclear whether the WNBA limits webcasting because it has given exclusive broadcasting rights to local/national networks. But if we believe Hansell’s article, it’s to the WNBA’s benefit to find a way to independently webcast games that are not televised. And that’s where Aylward’s insight is helpful.

Webcasting is not very difficult or costly

The first insight gained from Aylward -- and something that could probably be discerned just by watching events on the web -- is that webcasting is not that difficult to do. Webcasting does not require a television broadcast to work, although the WNBA’s current broadcast strategy may lead you to believe that.

Really, all you need to webcast a sporting event is a computer connected to the Internet and a camera, preferably equipped with a FireWire port. A very simple example of a webcasting system is available at Ustream.TV. Obviously, the quality of the webcast would depend on the quality of the camera and the Internet connection. I’m sure that a league like the WNBA could find a way to do this simply and cheaply.

In fact, Aylward suggested that WNBA teams could probably pull something like this off independently using a simple two camera system. It is my understanding that WNBA teams already hire interns to work for them and others looking for summer broadcasting experience would probably work for free. So why not put them to work doing something substantive?

A team would probably need to find 5 or 6 interns to set up and operate the cameras. They could assign 2-3 per camera, with one operating the computer, one operating the camera, and possibly a third who can serve as a runner to help troubleshoot any problems that occur during games. An extra 1 or 2 interns (or perhaps one of those monitoring the computer) could be responsible for doing the commentary.

For interns interested in broadcast journalism, it’s great experience. For fans, it’s increased accessibility to the game.

It’s definitely possible that these simplified broadcasts would not have the same television-level production with graphic overlays and such. But the key thing is that it makes more games available to fans thus making it easier for fans to build a connection with the league. The league doesn’t lose anything by broadcasting additional games.

Given the problems the league had simulcasting games earlier in the season, it’s likely that it would take some time to work out the bugs in this system. But there’s no reason not to try, especially for teams that don’t have good local broadcasting agreements.

To charge or not to charge

The next major concern is whether to charge in order to cover the expenses for these games. Part of that depends on the system they use to broadcast the games.

For a league as big as the WNBA, it would probably make sense to just use league servers and broadcast games through the league’s website, similar to what they do now. But Major League Soccer – a similar league in size and age – uses the organization that runs Major League Baseball’s web services to webcast their games. And there are many other services that provide sports leagues with webcasting services.

Aylward sent me a variety of sites that do everything from small events to small leagues to professional teams. A brief overview: Aylward uses News-Cast.com for Lakehead University and reports that while they are small, they provide good customer service.

B2TV provides season passes for a number of hockey leagues and collegiate programs, including USA Hockey and the US Hockey League. The one disadvantage that I notice about that service is that it appears to have technical limitations that the others don’t.

INSINC works with bigger leagues, including the Canadian Football League and Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment which owns the Maple Leafs, the Toronto Raptors, and the MLS’s Toronto FC. What I notice off the bat is that this service seems to have a more professional presentation than some of the others.

With more webcasting, why not add more interactivity?

Another feature of webcasting mentioned by INSINC that I haven’t seen elsewhere is the use of “enhanced interactive services” that allow fans to connect with one another as they watch games. The vision was described in a case study of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment.

Leafs TV was able to demonstrate a market for enhanced interactive services, that included four additional camera angles, chat server and in game voting contests ($3.95/game) adding new revenue streams in the process.

This is a perfect example of how webcasting could in fact enhance rather than detract from the experience of watching games, especially for games that are not otherwise televised.

Enhancing the fan experience

I write this post partially out of frustration that I’m assuming other WNBA fans share – some of the most exciting moments thus far this season have gone completely un-broadcast because of the league’s current broadcast strategy. My goal here was only to find out if there are options…and from what I can tell not only are there options, but they’re feasible and smaller leagues are making it work.

Jason Kint of CBSsports.com, which webcast the entire NCAA mens basketball tournament this year (did they do women’s as well?), makes a point in reference to the Olympics tape delaying games, which I hope the WNBA has already paid attention to.

“What makes sports so special is the live moment and not knowing what would happen.”

The joy of watching sports is not just knowing the outcome, but watching people compete to determine the outcome as it unfolds.

I would have loved to be able to see Candace Parker’s first dunk live. Or her 40 point, 16 rebound, and 6 assist performance against the Comets on July 9th. Or the Dream’s overtime thriller against the Sun on June 27th that they almost won in regulation…or so it seemed from the radio feed.

The bottom line for the WNBA is that the fan experience would be much better if they broadcast more games and we live in an age in which that can be done cheaply and efficiently for all parties involved.

I certainly commend the league for providing us with 90+ free games, but it seems like an attainable goal to webcast every game independent of television contracts. If the problem is the cost of providing more than 90, then webcast 90 for free and then charge for the rest.

But it seems like the next step in the league’s growth is to make sure that the average fan can see all the games.

Related Links:

WNBA 2.0: Can Web 2.0 Tools Help the WNBA Build Its Fanbase?
http://rethinkbball.blogspot.com/2008/06/wnba-20-can-wnba-build-fan-base-with.html

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More On the Olympics, the Media & When "Keeping It Real" Goes Wrong

This isn't a basketball post, but I wrote a post last week about "intellectual journalism" and have been monitoring the Olympics coverage for good examples since. Coincidentally, what I've come across is a few articles that are holding the media accountable in similar ways.

What I found interesting is that a few of those articles got to the core of what sports journalism could be doing in terms of providing some insight into the humanness of the Olympics -- both the pure joy embodied in victory and the tragedy of perpetuating unattainable body images. Here's a brief summary of some articles that caught my eye...

More on the Olympics and Body Image

I posted a link to an article by lindabeth at the smartlikeme blog the other day about the problematic gender differences in Olympic uniforms and wrote a thought-provoking piece about the Olympics and body image last week. Well, Karen Blotnicky of Canada's Chronicle Herald touched on a similar point about the double standard of attacking China for their efforts to market their country while continually failing to address some of North America's own that crop up in the Olympics -- body image.

Blotnicky makes the point that if we are going to blame China for being unethical in its efforts to market the Olympic Games, it’s time we take responsibility for our own actions as marketers in this country.

It’s time we created images of men, women, boys and girls that are more realistic and attainable.

It’s time we took responsibility for the fact that girls as young as 10 are beginning to diet.

They want to look like teens in the fashion industry and on television.

This is a point that seems to be brought up at about every Olympics, especially with the young female gymnasts. However, as lindabeth points out in her piece, it would be interesting to see the sacrifices that all Olympians make, especially given all the attention given to the male athletes.

Again, I think this comes down to the proliferation of conflict journalism -- in an attempt to present the big story, they far too often deprive us of the whole story. We don't have to defend China or their actions, but far too often during this Olympics we've been given the opportunity to self-righteously condemn China, without also looking at what we could improve as a nation/society.

Invariably disappointing interviews

The second story is an article from Janet Gilbert of the Baltimore Sun who writes about those "invariably disappointing" post-game/win interviews. For example, it seems like reporters have to eventually find a better way to bring us insight into a basketball game than asking the same old, "So what were you thinking as you took that game-winning shot?" question. Gilbert takes on the interview issue, apparently inspired by observations for swimming:

The interviews are invariably disappointing. These athletes have just pushed themselves to the physical and mental limit, and now they're supposed to be paradigms of poise. I don't like seeing them reduced to icons of inarticulate...but it escapes us in the Olympic setting because we expect extraordinary athletes to be extraordinary speakers. And yet, it is their very humanness that is the essence of their glory.

Interviews are hard, but if the folks covering the Olympics are not able to capture the humanness of the Olympics themselves, then I'd rather just savor a moment of pure joy without the formality.

How keeping it real can go wrong

The third, an last, is from a former Olympic reporter who rose to prominence working for ESPN -- Steven A. Smith. He's been ridiculed over the last few years for being a loud, obnoxious, "angry black man" (most of that reputation admittedly deserved). But in the latest issue ESPN the magazine gave him the opportunity to respond to critics of his article entitled, "Remember when athletes had the guts to stand up for their beliefs?" in which he explores the responsibility of Olympic athletes to take a stand on the political issues of the day. One of the responses from Smith stood out to me as interesting in the context of my thinking about intellectual journalism:

Trivial stuff doesn't interest me. What affects the masses, what's important and substantive is what matters most. I have no desire to be PC. My motto: Be professional and as thorough as I can, but above all else be as real as possible—in everything I say and do.

I see his point here, especially in response to criticisms of the aforementioned article; journalists should first and foremost be responsible for telling the truth about what affects people even if people don't want to hear it.

However, where Smith's claim can be dangerous is when the media pretends it doesn't affect the desires and perceptions of the masses and forgets to be thorough -- it's a delicate balance between reporting to the masses and catering to the masses. I always find it to be a little bit suspect when media members throw up their hands and say, "I'm just giving people what they want" as though those desires are shaped and often created by the media.

So, I tend to agree with both Blotnicky and Gilbert that the media at some point also has a responsibility to help the masses make sense of the things that they should be concerned about without being condescending or pedantic. And sometimes, that means addressing things that "affect the masses" even if the masses think it's trivial.

As Smith alludes to, quality journalism necessarily involves being as thorough as possible. But if "keeping it real" becomes nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to endear oneself to the masses for better ratings or self-interest, then we end up with nothing more than self-righteous conflict journalism that simplistically paints everything as dichotomous rather than providing us with the full story.

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Weekend Olympic Numbers: Team USA Dynamics

I've put together the “team dynamics ratings” for Team USA and their opponents through Friday to keep you busy over the weekend (I've described those ratings at length previously).

The ratings are similar to Dean Oliver's four factors so I have added Oliver’s fourth factor, free throw rate (FTM/FGA). I’ll describe more about this as we get closer to the WNBA resuming, but I can say that it helped greatly in correcting a few odd results from WNBA games. Since I’m now using free throw rate, I have also changed my measure of shooting from true shooting percentage to effective field goal percentage. The difference is that effective field goal percentage does not take into account free throw shooting.

I’ve also decided not to use synergy differential (the difference in each team’s offensive efficiency) and just compare each team’s synergy. In other words, I’ve decided to stick to describing each team’s performance rather than explaining the outcome. I’ll describe more about that rationale later as well.

A few interesting points about these numbers:

1. Against Spain, Team USA had the problems that they had in the Diamond Ball tournament – low assisted field goal percentage, a high turnover percentage and a lot of offensive rebounds allowed.

2. Although they are playing excellent defense – take a look at their opponents’ effective field goal percentage -- the Spain game was close at half-time and it looks as though the rebounding continues to be a weakness although they are generally out-rebounding opponents.

3. It’s worth noting that Spain got 30% of the available offensive rebounds…in the Diamond Ball championship, Australia got 33% and lost by 4.

Here are the full numbers through Friday’s match against Spain.

The team dynamics rating is the total of the following: Synergy + FTM/FGA + Oreb% - Tov% (Synergy is simply eFG% + A/FG%). The average team dynamics rating in the WNBA for this year is 106.86.

You can think of this rating as looking at the team’s ability to manage possessions (ball movement, shot selection, extending possessions with offensive rebounds and wasting possessions with turnovers) and their ability to draw fouls and make the opponent pay from the free throw line. Most of this has been explained in more depth in a previous post.

The Numbers

Team Ast/FG% eFG% Synergy FTM/FGA Oreb% Tov% Team rating  CZE 23.64% 41.82% 65 20% 23% 33.75% 74.56  USA 25.35% 55.63% 81 25.4% 37% 15.11% 128.07  Team Ast/FG% eFG% Synergy FTM/FGA Oreb% Tov% Team rating  USA 23.46% 59.88% 83 13.60% 44% 12.47% 128.99  CHN 19.05% 38.10% 57 23.8%% 24% 22.78% 82.56  Team Ast/FG% eFG% Synergy FTM/FGA Oreb% Tov% Team rating  USA 43.94% 66.67% 111 13.6% 29% 13.48% 139.93  Mali 12.50% 30.36% 43 12.50% 37% 38.36% 53.58  Team Ast/FG% eFG% Synergy FTM/FGA Oreb% Tov% Team rating  ES 13.46% 38.46% 52 28.8% 30% 30.64% 79.86  USA 15.94% 60.87% 77 13% 56% 24.74% 121.31

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Candace Parker and the Marketability of Female Olympic Athletes

A week ago, SI.com writer Selena Roberts wrote an article about the declining marketability of female Olympic athletes, highlighted by the disheartening Marion Jones controversy.

Although female Olympic athletes experienced a brief period of popularity after the 1996 Olympics, according to Roberts, female athletes' performance on the court or field of play is no longer enough to attain stardom.

What's in Vogue? Fewer female Olympians, more LeBron James. What's a gal gotta do to get a little attention? Play a man, be a novelty. That's how Michelle Wie has flexed her endorsement power despite never winning on the LPGA Tour. That's how Danica Patrick has landed on the SI cover twice in three years. And in between Patrick? No solo act has appeared on the cover of SI without wearing a swimsuit.

But one person Roberts didn't mention is Candace Parker, who is participating in her first Olympics as a reserve on the U.S. women’s basketball team and has gotten more national media attention over the past few days. Some people have already anointed her as the star, but can she overcome the barriers that Roberts laid out?

It might seem at first that Parker doesn’t quite fit Roberts’ “criteria” for sustainable stardom. Parker did first gain mainstream attention for winning the 2004 Slam Dunk contest at the McDonald’s High School All-American Game, but that’s not exactly an example of playing men head-to-head. And although she is a WNBA rookie and the first WNBA player to dunk twice, she is not the same type of “pioneering” novelty as Patrick, who is unique as a woman in the male dominated world of auto racing.

However, Parker has something that the other athletes mentioned in Roberts' article don’t: she’s already won on a big stage once this year (the NCAA championship at the University of Tennessee under the legendary Pat Summit) and now has the unprecedented opportunity to win a NCAA title, a gold medal and a WNBA championship in one calendar year. In other words, Parker is a star in her own right with or without a strong Olympic performance.

So what can Parker gain from the Olympics? It seems as though Parker might be an exception to the recent trend observed by Roberts among Olympic athletes – it’s conceivable that even one significant performance as a reserve in Beijing combined with her pre-Olympic stardom could catapult Parker into a level of superstardom not previously inhabited by any female athlete.

The sexualization of female athletes

Roberts’ observation that no female “solo act has appeared on the cover of SI without wearing a swimsuit” highlights the sexualization of female athletes at the Olympics, which is a barrier to stardom that all female athletes must deal with. From Kayla at Feministing.com:

Why is it that women cannot simply be strong, powerful, and athletic? Why must they be sexualized and forced in to evening gowns? And why is it that similar articles featuring men are never published? Oh, right. It's the Olympics. Of course the big, strong men will be going. But these muscular, toned women? Let's just cover up all of that masculine power with a sexy dress so we aren't too afraid to ogle their tits.

As a result of the Western beauty ideal, there is often an attempt to portray female athletes in their most “feminine” light. Women’s basketball in particular does not traditionally lend itself well to the sexualization of athletes, primarily because basketball has been considered as a “man’s sport” due to its physicality and premium on height. Therefore, women who play basketball often unfairly have their femininity, sexuality, and attitude questioned under the assumption that they are trying to be like men.

However, that has not stopped people from trying to mold basketball players to fit some elusive ideal – the much talked about make-up classes for WNBA rookies and Australia’s provocative photo shoots are examples of that. The photo shoots are particularly relevant to this topic: Australia’s Lauren Jackson and Erin Phillips participated in them prior to the Olympics as a means to draw attention to their women's basketball team. An excerpt from a Daily Telegraph about Phillips:

While basketball has traditionally struggled to create a profile on Australia’s sporting landscape, Phillips’ lingerie shoot is set to help put the Opals on the map.

So can Parker become popular without a lingerie (or nude) shoot? I think so.

As Lisa Leslie has said multiple times, Parker is attractive but she also has a college degree, she’s smart and she can play ball. Plus, she's confident without being excessively cocky. And in the words of China’s coach Tom Maher:

"She's the whole package," Maher says. "She's smart. She's bloody gorgeous. It's just not fair. God picks and chooses."

Parker is attractive enough to fit most people's beauty ideal, but she's also so exceptional as a person and a player that she's hard to dismiss.

Where are the black female athlete role models?

Not only is Parker a perfect marketing icon, but she's also a role model, which sounds like pretty standard rhetoric for a WNBA player. From Parker, via the Boston Globe:

"I'm playing so my daughter and my son would have the same opportunity. If she wants to play basketball, then she can have a career playing basketball and all the doors will be open. I think it's just about making steps."

Unfortunately, the black female basketball player role model is a rarity in the mainstream, despite the success of Parker's teammate Lisa Leslie and a number of other upstanding WNBA citizens.

Think back to Roberts’ claim about the rarity of female “solo acts” appearing on Sports Illustrated covers. Well, that track record is even worse for black female athletes, according to the Women in Mass Communication blog.

I was surprised to find when conducting research on sports magazine covers that black female basketball players were rarely present. In its 10 years of existence, ESPN magazine has never had a black female basketball player on the cover. There have however been other black female athletes on covers, mainly from tennis (Venus and Serena.) Furthermore there have been white female basketball players. Thus it seems that the problem is not necessarily with black female athletes, or with women’s basketball players, but it arises when the two combine. This suggests that the message a black female basketball player sends is thought too controversial.

With this and Roberts’ account, it’s fair to say that the two major sports magazines have a poor track record when it comes to black female athletes. So how will Candace Parker avoid the same fate?

It's hard to imagine anything that would liberate Parker (or others) from the racialized assumptions about black femininity. But Parker might have something else that mitigates the effects of racism on her star potential. An admittedly decontextualized excerpt from a 2000 Village Voice article written by Alisa Solomon (still relevant and worth a read):

...our culture's abiding racialized definitions of femininity make it that much harder to tame African American athletes as sex kittens and girls-next-door...So out come the boyfriends and body-masking flouncy skirts in a desperate effort to assure a male-dominated culture that just because a woman is strong doesn't mean that her body doesn't still belong to guys. But this is an old story. Hyper-hetero femininity has been saturating our media culture for ages. What's different now is that it's not the only body ideal out there.

The Candace Parker image right now has been crafted as the "girl-next-door" and seems to persist despite her involvement in the Shock-Sparks melee. But sadly, following Solomon's logic, the fact that Parker is so often associated with her fiancee -- NBA player Shelden Williams -- only makes her more palatable to mainstream society.

The ironic thing is that Williams doesn’t have quite the basketball resume that Parker has. And in fact, if it’s true that Parker makes more endorsement money than the majority of her NBA counterparts, Williams is very likely part of that under-endorsed majority, but that’s beside the point. The point is that the image constructed about Parker thus far comes off as "friendly" in a society that has been decidedly unfriendly toward black female basketball players.

It's certainly debatable as to whether the visibility of her spouse actually helps Parker's mainstream appeal. But the visibility of a spouse combined with extended mainstream exposure as a basketball player might just make Parker more palatable to the "unfriendly majority". In other words, it will be difficult to just dismiss Parker as less-than-feminine, homosexual, or angry when we’ve known her to be otherwise since age 18.

Beijing is just preparation for a bright Olympic future

It's hard to pinpoint one thing that will help Parker rise above the trend among female athletes that Roberts' lays out -- it really is the combination of multiple things. However, that doesn't mean Parker is transcendent or that the barriers for women are less than they were a decade ago. It means that Parker is so exceptional and likable that she is able to succeed despite the barriers. And really, it's hard not to like Parker on some level. A quote from Lisa Leslie via the Boston Globe summarizes what makes the "Parker package" so marketable:

"I think she's built to be in the spotlight. She's a pretty girl with a sweet heart and personality and a natural love for people. On the court, her skills are great and they speak for themselves."

Nevertheless, as the Boston Globe’s Marc J. Spears writes, “Candace Parker’s got next” – Team USA is not yet “her team”. So the greatest value of the 2008 Olympics to Parker’s marketability may be as preparation for future Olympic stardom built upon increased WNBA visibility.

Similar to LeBron James, Dwayne Wade, and (to a slightly lesser extent) Kobe Bryant on the U.S. men’s basketball team, even a bad performance (2004) could set the stage for wider stardom in subsequent performances (2008). So perhaps if we exercise some patience Parker will be an even bigger star before the 2012 Olympics – she’ll have four more years of professional experience, probably a few more accolades and records broken, and still have the winning personality that makes her so marketable to the mainstream.

Imagine the headlines for the U.S. women's basketball team for the 2012 Olympics: “Can Candace Parker establish herself as the leader of Team USA and usher in a new era in U.S. women’s basketball?” Sound cheesy? Of course. But no cheesier than the “Redeem Team” that will inevitably enhance the already astronomical marketability of NBA stars Bryant, James, and Wade.

The fact that Parker is getting experience now and formally “introducing” herself to the world seems to make her marketability in subsequent Olympics even greater than some might imagine. Moreover, as unbelievable as it sounds, the potential "triple crown" that Parker could win in 2008 might not even scratch the surface of her stardom -- by the end of her career, it might even be an after-thought.

I’ll close with a dose of hyperbole from Maher (via USA Today) that rivals Michael Cooper’s hyperbolic proclamations about Parker:

"I always say Einstein was probably the smartest person in the world when he was 20," Maher says. "But he was smarter at 30. Give her time. She's going to be great."

Transition points:

More on the issue of sports magazine representation from the Women’s Sports Foundation:

In the U.S. sports media, women of color receive considerably less coverage than their white female counterparts and are often depicted in a racially stereotypical manner. For example, of the 151 CN/WS&F magazine covers published between 1975 and 1989, only 12 pictured women of color, all Black women, and only 8% of the featured articles were written about Black women with nearly 70% of these articles focused on track athletes or basketball players (Leath and Lumpkin, 1992). In reviewing 13 editions of CN/WS&F published between 1997 and 1999, I found no women of color on the cover and only 21% shown in the photographs accompanying sport articles.

It might be interesting to pay closer attention to Williams’ games with the Sacramento Kings this year to see if Parker is mentioned as often to determine whether there is an imbalance. However, I have never heard an NBA spouse mentioned for any reason other than being attractive (and coincidentally, it’s the spouse of an unrelated Parker – Tony).

Relevant Links:

Gender and the selection of public athletic role models.
http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-31261387_ITM

Must-read posts about Olympic uniforms and photography
http://smartlikeme.wordpress.com/2008/08/15/a-must-read-post-about-olympic-uniforms/

Reviews mixed for Olympic gender equity
http://thechronicleherald.ca/Sports/1073025.html

The XY Games: The Olympics and Gender.
http://www.familyequality.org/blog/?p=739

(Dis)Empowering Images? Media Representations of Women in Sport
http://www.womenssportsfoundation.org/Content/Articles/Issues/Media%20and%20Publicity/D/DisEmpowering%20Images%20%20Media%20Representations%20of%20Women%20in%20Sport.aspx

Recent sports articles remind us that female athletes are (sexual and maternal) women first
http://smartlikeme.wordpress.com/2008/05/11/recent-sports-articles-remind-us-that-female-athletes-are-sexual-and-maternal-women-first/


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Looking Past Olympic Prelims, Team USA Needs To Improve Rebounding

It can be difficult to critique U.S. women's basketball team given that they have blown out their opponents by an average of 47 points in three preliminary games.

Yet despite their dominance, a number of players have pointed out that rebounding – particularly preventing their opponents from getting offensive rebounds – is a key area to work on. DeLisha Milton-Jones addressed the issue and why it’s important after the China game:

You can always get better. One thing that we stressed at half-time was that China had a lot of offensive rebounds. They were able to get put-backs and that put us in trouble because normally in that situation you end up fouling.

Although they ended up beating China on the offensive boards 16-10, Mali managed to get nearly 40% of the available offensive rebounds and totaled 15 offensive rebounds to Team USA’s 7.

It might seem like nitpicking considering they beat Mali by 56 points, however it was a problem that hurt them against Australia in the championship game of the Diamond Ball tournament. And if it leads to increased fouls as Milton-Jones said, then Australia is a team that can beat them from the free throw line – Australia went 17 for 19 from the free throw line in that game.

In Team USA’s defense, Mali is apparently a good offensive rebounding team and Lisa Leslie commented that they’re still trying out different defensive schemes.

I thought playing against Mali would be tough because they offensive board so well. We really wanted to try and put a lot of pressure on them and we got a chance to work on a lot of different defenses and that really helped us. We’re looking forward to (playing) Spain, you just never know what defense you’re going to need so we got a good chance to review them all.

So it’s possible that in experimenting with different defenses, they missed an occasional rebounding assignment that led to an inflated number of offensive rebounds. It’s also possible that Mali got more offensive rebounds because they only made 25% of their shots – with more missed shots, it makes sense that there would be more offensive rebounds.

But offensive rebounding is generally about effort so the fact that it’s cropping up as a problem despite the fact that they have such talented interior players is reason for concern. Hopefully, it’s something that they can work out as they play more games before they play Australia again.

Transition Points:

One thing Team USA has improved upon since the Diamond Ball tournament is their ball control, increasing their ball movement and decreasing their turnovers. Against Mali, their assisted field goal percentage was almost 44% and they only had 10 turnovers. Conversely, Mali’s assisted field goal percentage was only 12.5% and they had 29 turnovers, 12 of which were steals by Team USA.

Relevant Links:

Additional Quotes: USA 97, Mali 41
http://www.usabasketball.com/news.php?news_page=08_woly_03_quotes

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Fowles Making Big Contribution to Team USA Off the Bench

It has to be hard for a bench player to get the media’s attention on the star-studded U.S. women’s basketball team, possibly the most talented U.S. team at the Olympics.

This is probably Lisa Leslie’s last Olympics. Diana Taurasi had a big game against the Czech Republic. And Tina Thompson flirted with a record number of points against China yesterday. Not to mention Candace Parker, whose instant superstar status inevitably attracts attention.

But who has been the biggest contributor for the team thus far in the preliminary rounds? Sylvia Fowles.

Using a strategy that the Arbitrarian blog used for the U.S. men’s team to assign credit for games to individual players, I tried to figure out who was the biggest contributor on the women’s side. The goal is to assign each person a percentage of the credit for every game. The methodology is explained both at his blog and at Hardwood Paroxysm. Here’s how the credit looks for the first two games:

USA vs. Czech Repub.  PLAYER MEV Credit  Fowles 23.53 13.43%  Taurasi 13.99 7.98%  Pondexter 13.65 7.78%  Bird 12.02 6.85%  Augustus 10.27 5.86%  Leslie 8.90 5.08%  Parker 8.21 4.68%  Catchings 8.08 4.61%  Lawson 5.75 3.28%  Smith 4.74 2.71%  Thompson 1.19 0.68%  Milton-Jones 0.09 0.05%

China vs. USA  PLAYER MEV Credit  Thompson 28.35 13.63%  Fowles 20.92 10.06%  Parker 12.44 5.98%  Catchings 11.45 5.51%  Taurasi 11.34 5.46%  Leslie 11.33 5.45%  Lawson 10.76 5.18%  Pondexter 8.08 3.89%  Smith 5.96 2.87%  Bird 5.57 2.68%  Milton-Jones 3.18 1.53%  Augustus 1.91 0.92%

As you can see, Fowles is the only player to be among the top players in both games. And she’s doing it primarily with her strength – she’s getting high percentage shots and a lot of offensive rebounds.

Good news for the Sky

Chicago Sky fans have to be encouraged not only by her play as she continues to recover from injury, but also by the positive comments from teammates regarding her willingness to learn and her growth as a player, even in this short period of time. A quote from Diana Taurasi from USA Basketball via the Women’s Hoops blog:

She’s incredible really. We can talk about her physical attributes, we can talk about how amazing foot work she has, but more than anything she is a great person and I think that’s what’s going to make her one of the best centers to play in the United States and in the world. She’s willing to learn; she’s willing to take criticism and apply it to her game and a lot people that are as good as her don’t want to hear it, she’s open ears which is going to make her unstoppable.

As the Sky try to make a playoff push in the final weeks of the season, the mentoring Fowles is getting from veteran players and coaches should be invaluable for her and her team. As I've described in the past, a lot will depend upon how the Sky use her. They were playing well before the Olympic break and a healthy Fowles coming off a strong Olympics performance will be valuable. I think she can be more productive offensively than the Sky make use of her.

What don’t the numbers capture?

However, there are a few things these numbers don’t capture, but really, the discrepancies may not matter much.

First, these numbers don’t take into account when Fowles is playing. What percentage of her minutes come when the game is already out of reach? Who is in the game when the lead is built?

Second, is the match up question – is Fowles getting big numbers against second string players?

Third, is that this method – like any other statistic – doesn’t take intangibles into account, and specifically that of point guards. Assists are counted a bit differently the NBA-based equation may not be fully accounting for the impact of a player like Sue Bird.

Nevertheless, this is a helpful tool for judging how productive each player is as well as how valuable each player is to the team. And even if you do not agree that Fowles deserves this much credit, it seems that you have to agree that she has a bright future ahead of her.

Transition Points:

These credit numbers are an interesting complement to plus/minus numbers. While plus/minus measures the positive or negative impact a player had on the score while on the court (not based on box score statistics), credit provides a snap shot of what the player contributed to the team's win/loss while on the court (based on box score statistics). It would be interesting to see how well using these two statistics together would approximate adjusted plus/minus.

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“Raising the Bar”: Basketball, Gender, and “Intellectual Journalism”

Even though the WNBA is on hiatus for the Olympic games, the growing league still has a lot riding on what happens in Beijing.

It seems like a safe assumption that a strong performance by the U.S. women’s basketball team could translate into increased attendance and/or ratings after the Olympic break…if managed correctly. And strong media coverage seems like a major determinant of that.

It should come as no surprise that the Women’s Hoops blog has done an excellent job of highlighting the best articles written about women’s basketball in the early stages of the Olympics.

One of my personal favorites was an article written by George Vescey in the New York Times. An excerpt regarding a hard foul by Tina Thomson on Penny Taylor:

Thompson denied any ill intent, at least beyond making sure that Taylor did not have free access to the basket. Two decades ago, the women were making crisp little passes and tossing up nice little layups off the backboard. Now, an intruder pays for the incursion, the way teams paid for trying to get around Charles Oakley and Anthony Mason of the Knicks back in Pat Riley’s day.

“In basketball, we are attuned to touching one another,” Thompson said, citing her American teammate Diana Taurasi as a player who must be checked before she gets a step on anybody.

There are a few things about that paragraph that embody what makes the article as a whole great: it gives us a sense of the emotion of the Olympic games without sacrificing good basketball insight. And it gives us more than what many people might infer from common sense, which makes the article worth reading.

Most importantly, Vescey gives us some sense of the importance of this game to women's sports without trivializing the fact that these are passionate athletes, not just “me too” sports charity cases looking for athletic attention traditionally given to men. Articles like Vescey’s are just the type of publicity the WNBA needs because it draws people into the drama of sports without just being sensational.

There are entire blogs dedicated to what’s wrong with sports journalism, but I wonder what the ideal might be? And how might that ideal apply to women’s basketball? Reading Vescey’s article reminded me of an article I read at the Pop and Politics blog a few weeks ago about “intellectual journalism” and I think sports journalism stands to gain a lot from hose principles.

What is "intellectual journalism"?

The biggest challenge of journalism is clearly objectivity – a journalism professor once told me that nobody can be objective and anybody that tells you they are is lying. Shazia haq from the Pop and Politics blog writes:

What is now become run-of the mill, conflict journalism is the result of journalists’ inability to relate with foreign cultures, according to Hedges, former New York Times foreign correspondent and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on global terrorism. “Journalists look around and see things that they can’t comprehend, and that is reported as incomprehensible,” he said.

Conflict journalism works because conflict sells papers and boosts TV ratings. However, when newspapers are dominated by ambition and greed, integrity and truth are suddenly lost in an attempt to make reality as provocative and sensational as possible.

Intellectual journalism is the exact opposite of conflict journalism. Rather than oversimplifying the complexity of a given situation, it serves as a guide to make sense of a situation for those that have neither the time nor ability to sift through all the facts. It challenges people to expand their horizons rather than see everything in dichotomies. That’s exactly what women’s basketball needs…and exactly what sports journalism is not.

How does that intellectual journalism apply to sports…or the WNBA?

To understand sports journalism, we have to understand who consumes it: predominately 18-35 year old male sports fans (myself included). There is generally a very simple formula to appease that demographic: biased, black and white, conflict journalism.

In fact, part of the fun of being a sports fan is indeed conflict: from celebrating with others when your team wins to arguing about who’s the best player. In fact, since most professional sports games are played publicly, most sports fans don’t need information about what happened as much as the behind-the-scenes “fantasy news”: potential changes in the rotation, rumors about potential transactions, or injury updates. That’s the stuff that gives people something to talk about and helps you enjoy the experience.

And that’s fine for an 8 hour news cycle. But for a 24 hour news cycle, it’s insufficient – there’s not enough behind-the-scenes news to fill the cycle. So it begins to makes sense that more and more news outlets are hiring the loudest, most obnoxious professional fans as “sports reporters”, instead of true journalists that write out of love for the game.

All of this is of little consequence for an established sport, but niche sports like the WNBA suffer in this climate. We need look no further than the coverage of the recent Shock-Sparks melee for evidence – in the race to be the most provocative, there is little concern for respecting the athletes or actually helping people understand the state of the WNBA with actual facts.

However, it would seem that the way to confront the blatant homophobia, racism, and sexism that abound in people’s commentary about the WNBA is to help people challenge narrow perspectives by expanding their understanding of the game. It would seem that journalists could do that by appreciating the work the athletes put into their craft, promoting an understanding of the women’s game, and providing balanced coverage (especially in the absence of television coverage).

To represent the game well doesn’t necessarily mean that newspapers need to hire WNBA public relations representatives as beat writers; but journalists (and editors) should be accountable for respecting the game and appreciating it for what it is: a form of professional competition. I’m not saying the whole world has to like it, but there’s no reason to publicly disrespect it.

The type of coverage that the WNBA needs seems to fit well within the spirit of intellectual journalism.

Appreciating the craft

A major obstacle to the popularity of women’s basketball is that people find it so easy to demean the female athletes…and some of your “average lunkhead male” seems to even take pride in it, often dismissing it before having watched it.

However, I read a statistic some time ago that has stuck with me throughout the season – WNBA vice president of marketing Hilary Shaev described the positive effect of just seeing game footage:

“We took a controlled group of men and women and showed them game footage and, with the men,” she said, “the positive perception of the game increased by 25%.”

The take away lesson from this focus group seems to be that people do develop an appreciation of the game the more they see it. If we accept that premise, then it’s reasonable to say that increased exposure would lead to increased attendance and ratings.

Extending that reasoning to journalism, the goal should be to present as much insight into the game – through player interviews, vivid descriptions of key plays, or even statistics – as possible. This is especially true when considering the fact that so much of the WNBA goes un-televised.

The only way to appreciate the craft is to see it, and the only way to help others appreciate it is to present it as fully as possible. If the only thing we get is a recap with the score and the leading scorers, it’s difficult to appreciate what actually happened in the game; in fact, that’s hardly journalism.

Promoting understanding

Part of appreciating the WNBA is also about appreciating the fundamentals of basketball. Since the WNBA fan base includes many fans who are new to professional sports, there is an additional need to represent the game well so that people can understand it fully and stick with it.

I think that’s a simple task and goes right back to the need for papers to do more than just report a terse recap and box score. At some point, they have to present basketball insight so fans new to professional sports can participate in those arguments that make fandom great.

Balance

But the biggest obstacle to the WNBA is balanced reporting. Really, it’s not only a WNBA problem, but a much larger problem in professional sports.

It always surprises me when major media outlets talk about the WNBA being unpopular as though media exposure has nothing to do with that -- people can’t like a game they don’t see.

So the biggest obstacle for the WNBA is not bad coverage, but a lack of coverage. And unfortunately, it’s a problem in professional sports broadly. From Le Ann Shreiber:

We have gotten used to the narrow world of sports. In its news coverage, the world of sports is often shrunk to the North American big three -- baseball, football, basketball. And within those sports to a handful of dominant, usually big-market teams. And within those teams, to a few dominant positions -- pitchers, power hitters, quarterbacks, wide receivers, running backs. The result is a predictable surfeit of certain stories, a force-feeding of portions so large that it makes one feel queasy, like after a big Thanksgiving meal. The disproportion also creates a dizzying lack of perspective -- so that a managerial change, if the team is the Yankees, is treated like the toppling of a nuclear power's head of state.

Women’s basketball writer Milton Kent described how he left his job essentially because the editors decided to narrow the scope in favor of ambition and greed.

This might present an interesting chicken and egg dilemma for the WNBA – it’s not currently lucrative so it doesn’t get much coverage, but if it doesn’t get more coverage, it cannot grow.

But this is also where principles of intellectual journalism apply to editor-level decisions – a decision needs to be made to allow writers to learn a game that may seem “foreign” in order to help it grow. If media outlets help the game grow, they stand to profit from it long-term once people like it. So in the end, balanced coverage of all sports – including the WNBA – greatly benefits the media. But that doesn’t mean tossing in an arbitrary two cents about the fight – it means taking an interest and constructing a narrative about the local team that people want to follow.

Conclusion: "Talk is cheap and reporting is expensive"

Due to the magnitude of the Olympics, we see journalists applying these principles to U.S. women’s basketball team now. Journalists are spending time to construct narratives about the most obscure teams and helping people to appreciate even the most obscure sports mostly because of the spirit of the games. But what if that same ethic were applied to the WNBA?

Clearly blogging provides a novel way for the average sports fan to serve as a conduit for quality journalism about the WNBA in what could be seen as an otherwise toxic sports journalism climate. Through blogging, we have the opportunity to present the sports world with balanced perspectives, fresh thinking, and a media free of corporate interests that have led many people to abandon mainstream media sources altogether. It can help the game grow.

However, what if ambition and greed were to affect bloggers as well? Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter describes some of the pitfalls that the “netroots” movement has fallen into:

Today, of course, we’re all press lords, or can be. But the “crowd-sourcing” of news cuts both ways. Like democracy itself, it can cleanse, correct, and ennoble. Or it can coarsen, spread lies, and degrade the national conversation.

The problem with blogging is the lack of the press credentials that provide access to behind-the-scenes news compounded by a dependence upon the very mainstream media sources that they are supposedly a corrective for. When ambition and greed turns information-starved bloggers into nothing more than eGossip columns or rumor mills without accountability, then there’s not really much of a benefit to anyone.

In other words, due to limitations of bloggers, the highest function of the WNBA blogosphere is probably to keep the mainstream media honest and push them to pursue an ideal of intellectual journalism by filling in the blanks when necessary. The hope would be that as appreciation and understanding are supported by bloggers, the mainstream media would pay attention and add balance to their reporting.

However there’s a critical weak link in that logic: will the “real” journalists be forced to pay attention? And if they don’t, how can the WNBA grow? (More on that later this week…)

Transition points:

However, this brings to mind a scene from one of my favorite movies – Citizen Kane – which was loosely based on the life of William Randolph Hearst, who was mentioned in Haq’s article. The composition of the entire movie was outstanding, but this scene stands out to me as one that subtly (or maybe not so) captured the essence of the movie.


Of course we know what happened to Kane’s principles: as he got more and more invested in building his image as a champion of the people, his original principles were lost. The newspaper became an extension of his own vanity rather than a source of information to benefit the people.

Relevant Links:

What's Happening to The Atlantic?
http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/groundgame/2008/08/whats-happening-to-the-atlanti.html

Newsies (The Challenge of Intellectual Journalism)
http://musicology.typepad.com/dialm/2008/02/newsies.html

The Double Edged Sword of the Web
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/opinion/2008/July/opinion_July91.xml§ion=opinion&col=

ESPN-ing Blackness
http://sportsonmymind.com/2008/07/22/espn-ing-blackness/

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