Why We Will Never Know As Much As We Think We Know About a Draft Pick: A Lesson From the Success of Michael Redd

Kristi Cirone’s situation – going undrafted and then being picked up by the Connecticut Sun with an outside chance to make the roster – made me think about just how completely unscientific this whole drafting process is…and how every year some player defies the odds.

For example, remember Michael Redd?

Well, yeah of course, says the collective voice of the handful of NBA fans reading this blog.

He’s an NBA all-star, an Olympian, and one of the league’s top shooters.

What I’m wondering is if anyone remembers the Michael Redd from Ohio State – the high scoring “shooting guard” who could not, you know, shoot. People can look back now and do these "draft do-overs" and say look at how silly people were to pass on Michael Redd, but realistically, there was no reason to believe he'd become this type of player.

It’s what made his decision to leave college in 2000 after his junior year a little surprising to me. Really, what good is an NBA shooting guard that can’t shoot? And it’s not like he was delusional – he knew he couldn’t shoot…or as he said, he had an “inconsistent” shot (“inconsistent” being code for “I say a little prayer every time I put one up there”).

Asked about the strengths and weaknesses the pro scouts saw in him, he said, "They liked my size. They liked my quickness for my size.

"Ball handling wasn't an issue. It's not that big a deal. The negative thing is shooting. They want me to be more consistent on that. But nobody's a great shooter going into the draft. You have to work on that."

What an attitude – either Redd had already looked into the crystal ball and seen his metamorphosis into an NBA all-star or he is just one of the most confident players ever to enter a draft.

Unfortunately, NBA GMs did not necessarily feel the same way on draft day – Redd was drafted 43rd by the Milwaukee Bucks and struggled to even get in a few games his first year playing behind perennial all-star (and one of my favorite players) Ray Allen. Fortunately, the Bucks stuck with him and we know the rest.

Anyway, I’m not saying Cirone is another case of Michael Redd -- she might not make a roster this year. But what I find interesting is that in this drafting process we never know as much about player as we think we know (even if we crunch a whole bunch of fancy statistics). Ultimately, we have no way to know how much a player’s desire, passion, and will power will influence their success in the pros. It would be great if we could find a way to identify every future Michael Redd, but in the meantime I think it’s worth just appreciating the story as the newest crop of WNBA rookies prepares for the season.

Lies, Damn Lies, & Statistics

I knew Michael Redd couldn’t shoot just from watching collegiate games. But for those of you who didn’t see him or can’t find highlight film of his misses, we’re talking about a shooting guard who shot 43.6% from the field and 31% from the three-point line. He was by no means a marksman.

But how does one go from that to world class All-Star shooting guard?

After being drafted #43 by the Milwaukee Bucks and going on to average 2.2 points per game on 26% shooting, I just kinda said oh well and moved on. Afterall, he and I are about the same age and I had just been accepted to the University of Michigan for grad school…so who cares about an unsuccessful Buckeye?

Then something somewhat miraculous happened – sometime between his first and second seasons he developed a shot. And a good one. He even became, like, a shooting threat. I thought yeah, whatever, fluke (by his 2001-02 breakout season fully marinated in Maize and Blue). But no – his career field goal percentage is about 45%. Though he has not repeated the 44% 3 point percentage of his second season, he has shot 38.6% for his career, well above what he shot his senior year in college.

Maybe he just likes the challenge of longer shots against more athletic defenders? Many people might attribute his improvement to playing behind Ray Allen his rookie season, who clearly has the most beautifullest jump shot in this world. Maybe he just has a chip on his shoulder after being dissed on draft day by the NBA’s evaluators and decision makers.

But it’s hard to deny that part of it is just the completely unpredictable intangible factors of hard work, desire, and pure passion.

The great thing about Michael Redd’s story just after a draft is that he completely defies our tendency to put players in boxes or assume we know what they are based on watching an always incomplete body of work or crunching a few vacuous stats.

Check Your Biases

So in light of my last post, I just want to make clear that I didn’t go through the effort of crunching all those stats because I think there is some perfect formula to understanding basketball performance. Further, it’s not like there’s some statistics vs. observation dichotomy where one can be privileged over the other.

To stat haters who only trust their own eyes, sometimes, even our own observations of players completely deceive us – NOBODY predicted Redd as an all-star. I like stats because I’m a basketball junkie, plain and simple, and it’s just one more way to try to understand the game. It's a nice complement to observation...and claims based on observation should be supported by stats.

Knowing that we cannot possibly predict the 2009 WNBA Michael Redd-like story, I wonder, who will be this year’s Michael Redd in the WNBA? The player we all thought we had figured out even though they had another agenda?

Not Quite the Arenas Story…

For those of you who are wondering whether this is the same as the Gilbert Arenas story, let me clarify the difference. Arenas’ fall to the second round was a bit of a surprise -- he was expected to go in the first round by many. Although there were question marks around him (particularly regarding whether he had the height to be a NBA scorer) it was clear he was a solid NBA player to most analysts. Sure, he’s a little quirky, but the guy could play ball and should have gone higher. And he showed what a mistake GMs made in his rookie season once my beloved Warriors figured out a way to get him on the floor.

So although the Arenas story might get more press (and even resulted in a new salary cap rule for the NBA), the Redd story is special because he’s a player who literally grew as a player and added to his game in the jump from college to pro.

Either way, it's also worth knowing that these stories of second round (or undrafted) gems are somewhat rare. Heather Allen and Paul Gearan wrote a nice article on DraftExpress.com looking at second round picks' success in the NBA. You're lucky to even get a rotation player out of the second round. It would be interesting for someone to do a similar article about the WNBA. Shorter drafts, of course, but I would assume that the results might be similar...

It probably has as much to do with the situation as it does the player's attitude, but it's even more unpredictable once you get past the first round or so.

I don’t know enough about Cirone to identify her flaws, but it seems like she was more overlooked as a result of playing for a smaller program than punished for her weaknesses… so could she be this year's draft surprise in the WNBA?

Three Questions I’m Pondering

So here are my questions for those who know the WNBA better than I:

1) Has there been a Michael Redd-like case in the WNBA (in which a player went from being a rather flawed college player to an effective pro)?

2) Who is this year’s flawed WNBA rookie who has a shot to learn from a veteran and vastly improve upon that weakness?

3) Who is this year’s second year player who like Michael Redd struggled with the glaring flaw in their first year but had time to develop behind someone else and have a potential breakout season?

Of course any answers one came up with to questions 2 & 3 would be pure speculation.

There’s no real way to predict a Michael Redd-like transformation. But isn’t that the fun of sports – speculating and then observing closely to find the unknown, unpredictable outcome? I think so…and it gives me something to ponder while WNBA rosters get settled.

Transition Points:

One caveat for the Redd story: I’ve often thought that when folks evaluate NBA rookies who came out early, they have to be given time to make up for the years lost in college to develop. In other words, since Redd skipped his senior year, we have to give him a grace year for the development time he missed out on. (This simply reinforces my opinion that most college players should stay four years.) Therefore, one could argue that Redd just matured, whereas WNBA players complete four years (usually) before coming out and are therefore more polished and less malleable once they come out. So it could be that we won’t really see many WNBA versions of the Redd story…but I thought it was interesting.

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What Does NCAA Point Guard Performance Say About Pro Potential?

If you’ve ever paid any attention to any draft in any sport, you’ve probably figured out that drafting is by no means a scientific process – people often make arbitrary decisions or use shaky evidence to justify decisions.

I would argue that there is no position more difficult to unscientifically evaluate than that of the point guard, a position that people struggle to evaluate to begin with. I think a lot of people have gut feelings about what a good point guard “looks like” but have a much more difficult time describing what a good point guard “does”, much less what differentiates a good point from a great one.

Along these lines, I find Chicago Sky coach Steven Key’s comments about his selection of Kristi Toliver over Renee Montgomery particularly interesting.

"We knew we might have the option [Toliver or Montgomery]," Sky coach and general manager Steven Key told the Chicago Tribune. "We all just felt Kristi on the next level had more of our style of play. If you put them head to head, the numbers are pretty much the same. I think Kristi has a little more of that drive, that oomph and the ability to create her own shot."

Key’s comments seem to embody everything that makes drafting difficult, especially when drafting point guards.

First of all, there really are no strong predictors of how well a player will make the transition from the NCAA to the pros. There are so many intangibles like work ethic, adjusting to new coaching styles (not to mention lifestyles) and how well a given player “fits” with their team, not to mention factoring in differentials in college competition between any two given players.

Second, it’s not as if there’s one way to play point guard – there are many styles of point guard play and the extent to which one is more effective than another depends as much on the system and one’s teammates as it does on a given player’s skills. So the team’s style of play becomes as important as the player’s style.

Third, as a result of the first two challenges, people resort to statistics, which are always misleading for point guards if you look at the basic points, assists, rebounds, and steals, and not much more clear if you make the step to assist-to-turnover ratio.

Last, when the statistics fail to help in evaluating a player, the next move is to focus on intangibles that aren’t only difficult to measure but difficult to even define (I’m not sure exactly what “oomph” is, though I might agree that Toliver has it…I think…).

So in trying to figure out how well Toliver fits with the Sky’s system, I decided to take on these challenges, which I will follow up on throughout this season (thus embedding motivation to write more frequently into my own analysis).

The question: what, if anything, does NCAA point guard performance say about a player’s potential to be an effective pro point guard?

Here’s how I tried to answer this question (acknowledging that this is not necessarily statistically sound):

1. I compared the senior year numbers of this year’s group of rookie point guards to one another using the point guard statistics that I used to rank WNBA point guards last summer.
2. I compared this year’s group of rookie point guards to rookies from the past.
3. I tried to identify patterns (not correlations and certainly no causal relationships) in college performance that might serve as indicators of pro performance.

Ultimately, I came up with the following response to Coach Key (which I would love feedback on from readers):

1. Toliver and Montgomery are not “pretty much the same” statistically as point guards.
2. Based on her senior year statistics, if history serves us well, Toliver might be a solid WNBA player, but might be more effective as a scoring guard than the type of player who can run a team.
3. Statistically, based on past performances of WNBA point guards, Toliver might not even be a better point guard prospect than Briann January (who was drafted #7 by the Indiana Fever).

So obviously, I’m violating one of my fundamental rules – I’m looking at statistics without really observing the players extensively. Nevertheless, the statistical story here is actually pretty intriguing.


1. Toliver and Montgomery are not “pretty much the same” statistically as point guards.

When Coach Key made the argument that Toliver and Montgomery are “pretty much the same” statistically, it’s likely that he was looking at basic averages (pts, rebs, asts) so it’s not that his claim was way off, though each player clearly provides different strengths:

Montgomery: 15.8 ppg, 6.03 apg, 1.93 rpg, 44% FG
Toliver: 18.4 ppg, 5.48 apg, 3.35 rpg 44% FG

Since we know that the basic statistics say very little about the quality of a point guard, it seems to make sense to at least attempt to compare the two as point guards since that is the argument being made (again, I acknowledge that there really is no way to evaluate a whole host of intangibles a point guard brings to the court).

So even if we are to start with assist-to-turnover ratio – a very flawed statistic – we see increasing separation between Montgomery and Toliver:

Montgomery: 1.99 a/to
Toliver: 1.34 a/to

But given the arguments against that statistic, it may serve us to move beyond assist-to-turnover ratio. And it sort of starts with the fundamental question of what it means to be a good point guard. Subjectively, you want someone who can handle the ball, get the ball to her teammates, run the offense, make good decisions with the ball.

Last year, I used a set of statistics to rank point guards, four of which are attainable for college players (descriptions and formulas available in the RB statistics glossary):

Points per zero point possession (p/zpp): how often is a player individually responsible for scoring possessions and non-scoring possessions? (in other words does a player make good decisions with the ball).

Assist ratio (ast rat): how often does a player create a scoring opportunity for others (as opposed to scoring or turning the ball over)?

Pure point rating (ppr): how well does a player create scoring opportunities for others?

Usage % (usg): what percentage of a team’s plays does a player “burn” – either scoring or turning the ball over? (can be a good indicator, along with the other statistics of whether a player is “ball dominant” or really moving the ball around)

So what happens when we look at those stats? We see that Montgomery and Toliver are actually different types of point guards.

Montgomery: 2.64 ppr, 2.11 p/zpp, 23.16% ast rat, 25.50% usg
Toliver: -1.03 ppr, 2.01 p/zpp, 20.12% ast rat, 25.42% usg

The number that stands out is the huge gap in pure point rating. I will confess it is not a perfect statistic (which is why I don’t like using it alone) but what we see here is that Montgomery was much better in college at creating scoring opportunities than Toliver.

We also see that there is a differential in assist rate, though it might be hard to put that in perspective without a comparison to other guards. So to help put that in perspective: last season in the WNBA, the average assist rate for the point guards in my top 25 was 26.82 as of August 3 (Sue Bird, Kelly Miller, and Lindsay Whalen were all about average). I don’t have the average for NCAA point guards, but neither Montgomery nor Toliver should have been expected to have a high assist rate in their senior year as they also did a considerable amount of scoring.

So if we take it a step further and apply the point guard styles framework that I created last year, Toliver is something of a scoring point guard whereas Montgomery is closer to being a distributor who can score. To summarize these statistics, they might both be good WNBA players, but Montgomery seems to be much better at running a team, which I argue is what the Sky currently need.

2. Based on her senior year statistics, if history serves us well, Toliver might be a solid WNBA player, but might be more effective as a scoring guard than the type of player who can run a team.

Yet despite the statistical evidence, Coach Key seems to have a different perspective on Toliver:

“Toliver is a true point guard,” said Sky General Manager and Head Coach Steven Key. “Our point guards in the past have done a great job for us but I think Kristi will make us that much more versatile and allow us to move Dominique Canty over to the shooting guard role as needed. Canty is very good at getting to the basket; adding Kristi and some shooting to the team will help create some space for our inside players in Sylvia [Fowles] and Candice [Dupree]. It’s a great selection for us!”

But how can we really determine whether Toliver will be effective at running a WNBA team? Or better yet, how can we determine whether she might be better than Canty, Jia Perkins, or KB Sharp?

Well, one thing we can do is compare her statistics to those of past college point guards…but I do that with an obvious caveat.

Clearly, college statistics are difficult to compare because players have vastly different schedules, play with a wide array of supporting talent, and are asked to do very different things within the system. For example, an argument could be made that Toliver was not very focused on creating for others because she was asked to score for Maryland. However, even with that caveat, I think there’s a convincing argument that college point guard styles do have some bearing on how a player will play at the next level.

So without further delay, here are the senior year statistics for the point guards from my top 25 in WNBA compared to Montgomery, Toliver, and the rest of this year’s rookie point guard class. As I’ve done with these stats in the past, I simply ranked them by category just to get a sense of their relative value, which by no means implies that there might be some objective standard.

Name	PPR	Rank	Pts/ZPt	Rank	Ast Ratio	Rank	Usage	Rank	Total
Bird, Sue	5.22	22	2.45	24	0.30	22	20.92	9	77.00
Mitchell, Leilani	4.46	20	2.06	16	0.30	21	25.97	18	75.00
Whalen, Lindsay	-0.38	11	2.40	22	0.21	12	30.88	23	68.00
Renee Montgomery	2.64	16	2.12	19	0.23	15	25.51	17	67.00
Taurasi, Diana	2.72	17	2.24	20	0.23	14	25.49	16	67.00
Miller, Kelly	3.31	19	2.49	25	0.25	16	19.70	7	67.00
Briann January	3.25	18	2.08	17	0.28	18	22.40	11	64.00
Sharp, KB	5.34	23	2.02	14	0.28	20	19.68	6	63.00
Wiggins, Candice	0.78	14	2.43	23	0.14	2	30.44	22	61.00
Johnson, Temeka	7.59	25	1.71	7	0.38	25	19.28	4	61.00
Shalee Lehning	4.51	21	1.66	5	0.38	24	20.28	8	58.00
Whitney Boddie	6.87	24	1.64	4	0.36	23	19.60	5	56.00
Harding, Lindsey	1.00	15	1.97	11	0.20	10	23.45	12	48.00
Perkins, Jia	-2.74	2	2.40	21	0.11	0	31.92	24	47.00
Johnson, Shannon	-2.95	1	2.08	18	0.13	1	34.06	25	45.00
Quinn, Noelle	-0.37	12	1.60	3	0.21	11	27.18	19	45.00
Kristi Toliver	-1.03	7	2.02	13	0.20	9	25.42	15	44.00
Sha Brooks	-1.51	5	1.75	8	0.20	7	29.24	21	41.00
Canty, Dominique	-3.11		2.05	15	0.16	4	27.76	20	39.00
Blue, Nikki	-0.83	9	1.40	1	0.26	17	22.06	10	37.00
Camille LeNoir	-1.25	6	1.70	6	0.20	8	25.40	14	34.00
Nolan, Deanna	0.24	13	1.99	12	0.18	5	18.89	3	33.00
Latta, Ivory	-2.43	3	1.81	9	0.19	6	23.98	13	31.00
Moore, Loree	-0.88	8	0.99	0	0.28	19	14.43	0	27.00
Brown, Kiesha	-0.47	10	1.86	10	0.14	3	17.72	2	25.00
Bobbitt, Shannon	-1.84	4	1.59	2	0.22	13	16.34	1	20.00

Here are the two patterns that seem to stand out:

First, having a college pure point rating above 2.5 seems to mean something. All of the point guards in the top of the list -- who are mostly initiators, distributors, facilitators, and highly effective “combo” guards – had relatively high pure point ratings. The exceptions are Whalen and Candice Wiggins who you may remember were also big time scorers in college (both with usage percentages of 30% and both among the most efficient scorers on this list).

Conversely, having a pure point rating below 2.5 does not bode well for one’s effectiveness managing a team. The exceptions are Loree Moore (ACL surgery before here senior year) and Shannon Johnson (who like Whalen and Wiggins was relied upon as a big time scorer for her team and had a usage percentage of 34%). Deanna Nolan did not really play point guard in college (as far as I know, given the presence of Coco and Kelly Miller) so it’s hard to hold her accountable for point guard statistics.

The lesson: if you’re going to have a low pure point rating, it helps to have a high usage percentage to demonstrate that you were relied upon as a scorer.

Second, the average assist ratio among this set of point guards is 23%. If you’re above that (with the exceptions noted previously) it seems like you’re in the company of playmakers. Fall below that, and it appears you’re in the company of shooting guards trapped in point guards’ bodies. Montgomery seems to be on the border, Toliver seems to be among the scoring crowd. Toliver might be a better playmaker than Canty, but neither (nor Perkins) appears to be the type of point guard you would want running a team consistently.

So there might be some hidden qualities within Toliver that make her able to manage a WNBA team, but the combination of college statistics she accumulated doesn’t seem to bear that out.

3. Statistically, relative to the past performances of WNBA point guards, Toliver might not even be a better point guard prospect than Briann January (who was drafted #7 by the Indiana Fever).

Would I draft Briann January ahead of Kristi Toliver?

If I was looking for a point guard to run my team, then yes – I would just trade down and pick up January. The odds are that a player with January’s statistical profile will be more effective at running a team than Toliver, if you take into account their statistics relative to others. Toliver might turn out to be a great player, but based on her college numbers, she seems destined to replicate what the Sky already get from Canty and Perkins at the point guard spot.

Again, a caveat: January and Sharp have very similar profiles, which means that Janurary may be nothing more than a glorified initiator. Really, Montgomery is somewhat hard to figure based on these statistics as well.

Furthermore, I realize I’m comparing across styles in this analysis. It’s quite possible that certain styles fare better than others. But there’s still an interesting little tidbit that may seem superficial but seems to stand up to a test of reason.

If you look at the total points in these rankings that I constructed, there are two gaps: Sue Bird and Leilani Mitchell were both pretty outstanding college point guards in a class of their own. There is a drop off and then a second tier between Whalen and Whitney Boddie. Then there is another drop off and a third tier between Lindsey Harding down to Shannon Bobbitt.

Given the caveats for Shannon Johnson, Loree Moore, and Deanna Nolan, is there really a point guard in that third tier that you would anoint as your starting point guard? Dream fans might point to Ivory Latta, but she has not proven herself just yet as a consistent (winning) starter at the point.

You may also be wondering, what about all the point guards with great college stats that just didn’t make it in the WNBA? Were there other anomalies?

I went through the first round of WNBA drafts back to 2001 and identified all of the players that came out of college as point guards and ended up playing point guard in the WNBA. Here’s what I found (in no particular order):

	PPR		Pts/ZPt		Ast Ratio		Usage
White, Tan	-4.95		1.90		0.12
Swanier, Ketia	3.09		1.62		0.33		15.52
Baker, Sherill	-1.32		2.44		0.15
Thorburn, Shona	5.19		1.53		0.32		21.35
Haynie, Kristin	3.81		1.82		0.30		23.98
Wright, Tanisha	-1.61		1.86		0.14
Jacobs, Amber	-1.52		2.07		0.22
Creamer, Molly	-4.28		1.92		0.17
Brown, Coretta	-1.56		1.71		0.21
Curtin, Allison	-4.27		2.00		0.16
Miller, Coco	0.62		2.20		0.15		23.34
Dales, Stacey	0.00		1.77		0.18

So while those with stats in that third tier seemed to maintain the third tier pattern, there does seem to be some variation in second tier players – most notably, Kristin Haynie, Ketia Swanier, and Shona Thorburn.

Swanier is an interesting case not only because she spent her rookie year on a very deep Connecticut Sun team that changed rotations a number of times, but also because she was not a full time starter in her senior year of college. When you look at her low usage numbers, it’s possible that she simply didn’t do enough statistically in college to evaluate her based on these stats. In any event, it’s hard to say she’s a failure yet.

I looked up the history of Thorburn and it appears that she had injury problems more than performance problems.

So that leaves Kristin Haynie. She is a major anomaly, even moreso than KB Sharp. There is nothing that really stands out in the statistics or her history in the WNBA as an explanation.

Wishing Toliver the Best of Luck

Regardless of whatever the statistics say, I do hope Toliver does well, if for no other reason for the sake of the Sky. I like them. I want to see them win. I have nothing against Toliver. It just strikes me that she might not provide the Sky with what they need.

I'll look forward to hearing more critiques and observations...

Transition Points:

I was unable to find turnover and minutes statistics for Ticha Penicheiro, Vickie Johnson, Becky Hammon, and Katie Smith, all players I had in my WNBA point guard rankings last summer. If anyone has any leads, let me know. I’d be curious.

Comparing Toliver’s stats to those of past prospects was interesting – the best player with a similar statistical profile seems to be Lindsey Harding whereas the bottom seems to be Amber Jacobs.

What, if anything, do these stats say about Shalee Lehning and Whitney Boddie? Not sure, but Bob Corwin seems to believe that at least Boddie has a shot at being a solid backup for the Monarchs, whereas Lehning might be caught in a numbers game.

Leilani Mitchell was an impressive college prospect. GMs really snoozed on her.

I chose to focus on senior stats because they're what jumped out at me. But here are some other angles I thought about taking: career statistics; the rate of change between years; strength of schedule; some way of figuring out how much the player contributed to team wins.

John Hollinger has suggested in the past that steals are a strong indicator of guard college to NBA success as a proxy for athleticism. I chose not to do that here, but it would be interesting to add to the mix.

Continue reading...

Kudos to Women's NCAA BB for Actually Graduating "Student-Athletes"

The other day I posted about how the WNBA's age limit is a good thing in terms of keeping basketball in perspective and making sure female basketball players stay in school relative to their male counterparts.

Tangentially related (though not necessarily related at all) is this report from the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport:

...the numbers in the 2009 Graduation Rate and Academic Progress Report re-emphasize the results of the smaller compilation. Sixty one women's teams (98%)graduated at least 50%, compared to 40 men's teams (63%.) 97% (60) women's teams graduated at least 60%, compared to 30 (48%) of the men's. Fifty women's teams (81%) graduated at least 70%, only 22 (35%) of the men's teams could point to similar results.

I think education is good. So this is impressive. Hope the women's side continues this trend.

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Curious About Kristi Toliver: Is She the Right Pick For the Sky?

So early on last summer I got really interested in seeing better draft coverage for the WNBA.

I was going to watch college games.

Crunch stats.

Do a WHOLE mock draft.

Then life happened...

I only watched a few games (few with any top prospects).

I didn't even bother with stats (thankfully, the Pleasant Dreams blog did do some last summer, which I find helpful).

Mock draft? Ha!

And then the unthinkable happened -- I was all set to do some cramming for the draft Thursday morning before my 11 o'clock PST meeting. Then the meeting got pushed to 11:30 PST...then 11:45...then I got there at 11:50...and the meeting didn't start until 12:02... in the end, I missed the entire draft....

So now I sit here two days after the draft almost completely clueless about the newest WNBA rookie class and lamenting the fact that I didn't have the guts to cancel the damn meeting ("Um, I'm sorry, but I really have to watch the WNBA draft right now. Can we put off the meeting about the grant proposal due Tuesday? Thanks!").

But what really sucks is looking around for post-draft analysis on the WNBA. Rebkell is probably the best source on the web for any of that (since the most knowledgeable WNBA fans -- knuckleheads notwithstanding -- are writing there). And kudos to WNBAdraft.net and Pleasant Dreams for managing to stay on top of the draft since the summer.

(If I'm missing someone's work please do let me know)

Anyway, what did catch my eye is the choice of my adopted favorite team: the Chicago Sky. I watched quite a few of their games last season and wrote a bit about them and what I thought they needed. So their pick of Kristi Toliver is a really fascinating commentary on what they thought they needed...as well as what they thought they already had.

So here's my tiny contribution to the WNBA draft blogosphere: a very, very surface level analysis of the Sky's first round selection of Kristi Toliver..

Why the Sky Fell...Out of the Playoffs

I'm not on the Sky's staff (obviously) so it's not like I think my assessment of their team is really the final word... but just from feedback I got from Sky fans last season here is what I can say:

1. The Sky never really figured out how to integrate Sylvia Fowles into the offense (despite an amazing Olympic performance) or use Candice Dupree and Fowles together effectively.

2. The Sky struggled in the half-court (click here for more) due to their inability to establish a consistent post game and inability of their guards to penetrate...

3. As a result, I referred to the Sky as a "perimeter-oriented" team because they would resort to passing the ball around the perimeter looking for a shot opportunity as their offense continued to stagnate. But as one Sky fan pointed out, that's probably an incorrect assessment -- they weren't really firing up a lot of perimeter shots and certainly weren't making a lot. Really they just were a team that was not very proficient at creating offense...which sort of circularly leads right back to point #1.

So what were the Sky's needs?

So to me the Sky were set at three positions: center (Fowles), power forward (Dupree), and combo guard.

Strategically, it seems like they needed to get the ball in the post more often and establish a post game in order to open up their perimeter game (moving the ball and forcing the other team to double down or get torched in the paint).

In addition, given the mobility of their bigs -- Fowles and Dupree -- an uptempo game could really help them keep opposing defenses off balance.

What I really thought this team needed to bring it all together was a pure facilitator that could push the ball, see the floor, penetrate in the half court, and distribute the ball to open scorers cutting to the basket or open on the perimeter.

Jia Perkins was much more effective at this than Dominique Canty, Quianna Cheney, or KB Sharp for the second half of last season...but she is still clearly ideal in the role of a combo guard scorer who can be a very good secondary ball handler.

OK so there are two ways I see to look at the Sky's needs:

a) They are so inept at establishing a post game that they should just resign themselves to being a perimeter-oriented team and add another perimeter scorer...

b) They should work to establish a post game because they potentially have one of the best one-two post combos for years to come and therefore should add a pure facilitator to get them the ball....

My choice? B -- find a facilitator and make teams stop the post threats. Their choice? Apparently A.

What Kristi Toliver might tell us about what the Sky are thinking...



Take this with a grain of salt as I have yet to see Toliver play a full game...

From everything I've read about Toliver, the Sky are planning to rely on perimeter scoring. What leads me to believe that? It just seems that Toliver is one of those scoring guards who can pass, but would generally look for her own shot first.

Again, I say that not having seen Toliver. Pleasant Dreams had Toliver ranked as their #3 prospect as of his early season prospect rankings (would be interested to see his updated numbers if he has the time to plug 'em in). So she could be a VERY good scoring guard.

But here's what I don't get -- unless she's a Becky Hammon type guard (who spends a good bit of time off the ball, by the way) is this really the type of point guard the Sky needed to get Fowles and Dupree involved in the offense? Was she really the best point guard available...much less the best player available?

What really troubles me is this list of weaknesses from WNBAdraft.net (points of concern in bold):

Lacks the basketball IQ to manage a pro team (in particular decision-making and knowing personnel); needs work on the defensive end, which stems from being too thin and not strong/quick enough to guard position; shot selection can be horrible at times; shoot first, pass second nature won't always work in the WNBA; handle can get sloppy and can easily be picked off by average college defenders; prone to high turnover numbers, compounding of mistakes, and losing composure (does not hide frustration well); commits bad reach fouls on defense due to lack of defensive fundamentals; lacks creativity in the half court (not a playmaker);

Doesn't a player like that seem like the opposite of what the Sky need? Aren't those the very problems Sky fans suffered through for most of last season?

Sure Toliver could grow as a player, this assessment could be completely off-base (it's almost impossible to predict college to pro success accurately 100% of the time) , and maybe her positives just outweigh the negatives.

I guess I need help seeing how Toliver was the best pick for the Sky. Would Renee Montgomery who was selected just after Toliver have been a better pick? What about the hole at the three position? If they really wanted Toliver that badly, couldn't they have traded down slightly, grabbed Toliver and something else?

In any event, it will be fun this year to keep track of Toliver and the Sky in the context of their bright future. Hopefully this squad can gel together and make some noise in the league this season.

Relevant Links:

WNBA offers female athletes a goal to shoot for
http://www.theday.com/re.aspx?re=b0fc7377-f3c2-4642-997f-b9d68735afa7


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What the NBA Could Learn From the WNBA: Staying in School FTW

Martin Johnson wrote a nice little piece for TheRoot.com about how the University of North Carolina men's team won the national title primarily on the strength of their upperclassmen...which is further support for the NBA to implement a higher age minimum, as the WNBA has always done. The result could be better basketball:

As a result, the sort of “veteran” teams that we’ve become accustomed to seeing cut down the nets on the first Monday in April, may become the norm throughout the NCAA. Building a winning college basketball program used to be equal parts recruiting talented players and coaching them into a unit. Since the mid-‘90s, it seemed that recruiting had begun to take on a dominant share. With the recent title teams and coming changes in the NBA, those veteran teams will become the standard across the board. When they do, the upsets that once characterized this tournament will return.

The response from women's basketball fans: uh, duh....

No matter what critiques one might have about women's basketball this is something that it has right already -- their players stay longer and it makes for the development of great teams rather than the fleeting excitement of great individual performances.

Nevertheless, I often go back and forth on this age minimum issue (especially when considering Darnellia Russell's situation), but you can't deny the results: as a fan, it makes for better basketball during one of the premiere basketball events in the U.S. -- March Madness. How can you argue with that?

So I wonder, having just witnessed March Madness and now looking forward to the draft, does anyone really believe that the WNBA should loosen their age minimum? If so, how?

I'm honestly soliciting thoughts on this rather than purporting to have something new to say about the issue... but I will just rehash some of the age-old arguments for the sake of discussion...

The Phenom Factor

I would call you foolish without reservation if you said that LeBron James was not ready to go pro. Ditto for Greg Oden...Kevin Durant...the list goes on. The latest in that line of players who has absolutely nothing further to gain from college basketball is clearly Blake Griffin, who announced that he's making the jump to the NBA yesterday.

So would the WNBA cave or bend their age requirement with a player like Brittney Griner coming through the pipeline...or having already watched Maya Moore play around with college kids all season?

Clearly players like Chamique Holdsclaw and Candace Parker have argued that staying in school was a good decision...so I don't know how much clamoring for a change there really is. And honestly, if Parker and Holdsclaw are ok with it, there aren't really many other college players in the world who should have a problem with it.

But is it fair to confine a player of Griner's obvious talent to the NCAA?

Why the Phenom Factor *Should* Not Matter for the WNBA?

People love stories.

Plenty of people have done research on that... but really, I think we can all agree on that.

Women's basketball needs a narrative that will "legitimize" it to people who have doubts, draw them in, and keep them coming back.

Those narratives should start by watching the players develop a college legacy -- from the recruitment stages, to the growing pains of losing in the early years, to winning championships in their later years. It gives us something to hold on to. Something to look forward to...and builds upon long-standing college allegiances to build pro allegiances.

Furthermore, it goes back to developing a narrative about what a female athlete *is* before even trying to move forward with marketing a professional women's game. We have to shift the narrative of what it means to be a female athlete if we really want to see women's sports take off in this country.

So then...

Why Not Scrap the Age Minimum and Start Creating Those Narratives With Younger Players?

Simple answer (to the completely absurd hypothetical question I've made up to set up the rest of my post): It's just plain silly to send messages about a glamorous career in sports to kids who have not even lived away from their guardians yet. In fact, it borders on irresponsible, reprehensible, immoral.

OK... strong words... (perhaps you can tell the recruiting industry bothers me).

But when I see stories about sixth grade phenoms who are ranked as a member of next decade's recruiting class, I almost want to vomit. I mean wasn't there a great movie documenting how corrupting these elusive Hoop Dreams can be on players, family members, and coaches? Was that not convincing enough? Why do we continue to want to perpetuate this cycle of setting kids up to be crushed?

And though the NBA can not be held responsible for some opportunistic wanna-be who feels the need to make a living ranking sixth graders in basketball, part of what keeps this insane recruiting industry sinking to new lows is the large amounts of money in the promised land at the top, in the NBA. The easier it is to get to that promised land -- meaning you don't have to pretend to take four years of classes seriously -- the easier it will be to legitimize the idea that someone should be tracking kids as early as sixth grade. So although I don't blame the NBA (or the NY Times) for creating this basketball mythology, I think that sending a message from the top that there is more to life than basketball (*gasp*...I can't even believe I wrote that) is valuable.

So I will come to a tentative conclusion about the WNBA age requirement: if women's basketball wants to avoid this race to the bottom of convincing kids who still watch Saturday Morning cartoons that "Basketball is Life" then the age requirement is one way to keep things in perspective. This is a game, kids should enjoy as a game, and hopefully continue to see it as a ticket to getting a top flight education rather than a gambling on the fragility of a professional basketball career.

I reserve the right to change my mind tomorrow... ;)

Transition Points:

For anyone who really wanted to Free Brittney Griner from the horrific tyranny of a college education, then consider the Brandon Jennings plan -- go play in Europe and get your money until you're eligible to play pro in the U.S. Call me crazy, but I happen to think Griner made the right decision by choosing education... but how long before a female baller decides she's better off bolting to Europe for a few years?

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What Difference a Year Makes: Why Ahistorical Analyses of Sport Perpetuate Misrepresentations of the WNBA

If you pay attention to women's basketball, you've probably heard about that March ESPN the Magazine article that included a cover photo of a pregnant Parker.

Of course, this led to some commentary about the state of the WNBA, female athletes, and marketing. The WNBA even made a good move by posting an interview with the editor of ESPN the Mag to get some insight into the thinking behind the article. But there were two articles in the last week or so that really caught my eye.

Of course, there weren't really any new arguments added to the discussion... really just people rehashing the same old arguments in new packaging.

However, the big difference this time around is that given all the media attention given to Parker and the Olympics last year, speaking from a place self-imposed ignorance about the WNBA no longer carries much credibility. Parker's arrival on the national (and international) sports scene last summer was one of those special moments in sports history that even the below-average lunkhead male would have had a hard time just ignoring. This does not mean we suddenly have a whole lot of enlightened, gender-conscious WNBA commentary...it's just a new sort of ignorance I guess...

So that's progress, right? Maybe people are watching and now making "grounded" critiques of women's sport? Eh...partially. What really bothers me is how people insist upon accounting for the WNBA's struggles by scrutinizing the athletes rather than thinking through the business of sport. What we end up getting is these analyses that exist within an historical vacuum and lead to conclusions that don't really add up when you try to re-situate them in reality.

Call me crazy, but I just happen to like arguments that are based on some form of real evidence... so here are some of the thoughts I jotted down.

Framing is Everything

First, before jumping on the easy critique bandwagon, ESPN the Mag should be applauded for putting a female athlete on their cover in the off-season. It is not necessarily unprecedented, but let's admit it's rare, especially for team sport athletes.

Second, I think getting to know these athletes as people is a valuable endeavor, so the ESPN article was good in that respect as well.

So the positives aside, what has obviously attracted attention about the article is the discussion of Parker's cup size in the opening paragraph.

Regardless of where you fall on the spectrum of critique of that opening paragraph, I think it's the perfect time to ask a question: beyond WNBA.com's question of what was the thought process behind putting Parker on the cover, I wonder what was the thought process behind how they would present Parker to the world.

So going back to the issue of getting to know the athletes, here's what I think we have to consider: if Parker herself brought up this issue of cup size, then it's not so much a question of a sexist double standard to mention it -- it occurred in the interaction and is therefore something worth accounting for in the description. My question is why frame the article by sexualizing Parker given that this is a sexist society? Couldn't that have waited for a few paragraphs?

Editor-in-Chief Gary Belsky claimed in the WNBA.com interview that they put Parker on the cover because she ESPN the Mag "...is a magazine that makes its living by predicting the future and looking forward." OK, fair enough. But wouldn't it have been neat to start looking forward by trying to shift the way we think about female athletes rather than going through the same routine of interpolating them through a beauty standard?

Rather than looking forward to a time when we appreciate female athletes for being female athletes, the framing of the article simply reinforced the way we already see female athletes. But it's almost as if even in the process of trying to move forward in representing female athletes, we get tripped up by the same old narrative.

We can't blame ESPN the Mag for that -- I don't think anyone has the "right" language to talk about female athletes yet. But at the very least, we need to work to find ways to anticipate the consequences of certain framing decisions and work to mitigate them. Where better to start than our professional wordsmiths? I'll look forward to seeing what ESPN the Mag does the next time a female basketball player graces their cover...and hopefully we won't have to wait too long.

Framing Sets the Stage for How We Discuss Women's Sports

So anyway, moving beyond the context of the ESPN the Mag article, here's another problem with how we discuss women's sports: since we don't really have a good way of discussing or understanding female athletes without blatantly objectifying them, we instead try to compare them to male athletes.

I think I've ranted about the tendency to compare female athletes to male athletes before, so I won't go deep into it. But I think this tendency along with our lack of familiarity with seeing female athletes in the public eye leads to these strange ahistorical arguments.

There was a March 31st article in an Illinois State school newspaper (ok, I know... I'm not going to expect too much from a student newspaper) with the headline, "There's no stopping it...men's sports are better than women's sports". The author claims to be taking a balanced approach to understanding why women's sports -- like the WNBA -- are struggling by essentially saying the following:

It is not that people do not want to watch a sporting event that showcases all women, it is that people would rather spend more time watching (who they by and large consider to be) the best.

It is not that people do not want to watch a sporting event that showcases all women, it is that people would rather spend more time watching (who they by and large consider to be) the best.

Next, it is the level of difficulty. Many people watch sports to see spectacular plays that they could never actually perform themselves. This typically happens more frequently in the men's game.

Whether it is basketball, football, baseball, etc., people want to be entertained, and a "highlight reel" play has a greater chance of happening at a men's game.

Women's sports, while also performed at a proportionately high level, tend to place a much greater focus on the fundamentals of its game (or at least that is what is advertised).

So while execution may, in fact, be equal to or possibly greater in the women's game than the men's, it can become boring. And the major networks cannot afford to televise boring.

Then in the next paragraph he presents an argument that I find quite important:

Brand loyalty is also a major reason behind the masses preferring one game over the other. Although, both the men and women played their first official game in the same year (1892), their major league equivalents (NBA and WNBA) saw the men's game evolve into a televised program long before the women. So to expect fan and media coverage to drastically even out, even though the WNBA did not start until 1996, seems a bit unreasonable.

So here's the contradiction and the reason I think situating these arguments historically helps a little.

Essentially his argument is as follows:

People like to watch the best play a given sport.

People like to watch the best because they make spectacular plays.

Men are more likely to make spectacular plays than women.

Women are comparatively boring and therefore difficult to market before they're boring.

But then he acknowledges that the WNBA has only been around since 1996...exactly 50 years after the NBA (founded in July 1946). If we buy his argumentation, we might be led to the assume that people immediately took to the NBA because it was spectacular. But that's not true at all.

If you look closely at the development of the NBA (or the NFL...or NHL for that matter) the trend is much different than that. In the beginning, people thought the NBA would never compete with more popular sports like boxing (yes, boxing!) and baseball. Once the NBA got past that initial hurdle of becoming a viable sport, it hit a slump again in the 70's which some people associate with an increase in black players along with owner corruption. It wasn't until the Bird-Magic rivalry of the 80's that the NBA really took off.

So why is this important to consider? There was a time when the idea of professional basketball being marketable was laughable. There was a time when the idea of black professional basketball players was laughable. It's not like people watch sports purely because they are spectacular. By most accounts, the ABA definitely had the NBA beat in the "spectacular" category. In the end, it comes down to people buying into the narrative a sport presents.

Until we find ways of presenting legitimate narratives about female athletes and female team sports, they will continue to remain unmarketable because people are simply too steeped in thing about women as sex objects. The NBA found gold by doing two things: 1) embracing the good fortune of having a bi-coastal, bi-racial rivalry between Bird-Magic and 2) deciding to market individuals rather than teams. People connect with stories. They talk about stories. And they get addicted to stories. It just so happens that the stories that work best are those that resonate with people's existing sensibilities...not ones that challenge their pre-existing ways of thinking about the world. That's quite a hurdle for women's basketball to overcome...

"The Pimping of Candace Parker"

So given the need to create new narratives, can we blame "Team Parker" and the WNBA for going along with this ESPN the Mag story...especially prior to knowing that Parker's C cup would take on a prominent role? I say no.

There was a pretty good article at the Bleacher Report last week with the headline "The Pimping of Candace Parker". In it, the author claims the following:

This transitions to the second point—women's sports are "foreign." It can be seen as different or foreign from men's sports. Trying to sell the WNBA to men who are used to seeing rim-rattling dunks, no-look passes, ankle-breaking crossovers, and backboard-pinned blocks is similar to attempts at sell soccer to the football-crazed United States.

Agreed. But then he concludes with the following:

However, the selling of these leagues are doomed to failed thanks in part to the difficulties in expanding its audience to include a male demographic who have a hard time buying women as athletes or their leagues as comparable to male leagues.

The desperation to sell women's professional athletics in the United States must resort to the unfortunate pimping of its talented (and beautiful) athletes, such as Candace Parker. Unfortunately, there are not enough Johns out there to buy the product.

For the record, I agree with most of what the author says... but I think the conclusion could be refined. Both male and female athletes are "pimped". The difference is that within the definition of masculinity is included some notion of physical prowess and dominance. That simply does not yet exist within the "feminine mystique" that most people have bought into.

It would be hard to establish that Michael Jordan as "basketball player" is not intimately tied to our implicit understandings of Michael Jordan as "male". He's a physical specimen and dominated the NBA for years.

The difference is that within the context of society we understand these as unproblematic attributes of maleness. The challenge then is not to sell women as athletes separate from their gender but to learn how to include "female athlete" within our entrenched understandings of femininity. That is going to take time and conscious effort on the part of those who write about and frame news about female athletes.

It's not a failure of the athletes. It's not necessarily a failure of the WNBA in the way they're "pimping" their athletes. It's a matter of finding a way to integrate the narrative of a given sport within the epic social narratives we've already accepted. That will be harder for women's sports because we as a society do not yet accept women as athletes. But we cannot pretend that anybody has ever accepted a professional sport purely on its "merit" of being "spectacular".

The problem the WNBA faces has as much to do with sexism as it does with the fact the we have become a hyper-consumerist society that buys in order to establish and reinforce our sense of self. Instead of continuing to make arguments about whether women are spectacular enough to be accepted as athletes -- meaning we would need more Parker-types who can dunk -- I think we need to start thinking about developing a language that helps us embrace athlete within our notions of femininity.

And perhaps that will allow us to find other ways to frame articles about female athletes other than discussing their cup size...

Update: Responses to this post from other blogs

New Rethinking Basketball Post
http://atlantadreamblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/new-rethinking-basketball-post.html

On Ginobili's Injury and Candace Parker's League
http://fruithoopz.blogspot.com/2009/04/on-ginobilis-injury-and-candace-parkers.html

Relevant Links:

Female Athletes: Be pretty, but not sexy. Or pregnant.
http://contexts.org/socimages/2009/04/21/female-athletes-be-pretty-but-not-sexy-or-pregnant/

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Michelle Obama, Lisa Leslie...and Clair Huxtable.

How cool is it that Lisa Leslie was invited to stand with Michelle Obama in inspiring black girls in DC's predominately black Anacostia High School to reach their potential as leaders?

This is not necessarily important in terms of pure basketball news, but I think once again highlights the political importance of the WNBA.

Way back in the 80's, Clair Huxtable (aka Phylicia Rashad) was easily one of the most prominent black female role models in the mainstream. She was damn near perfect -- a brilliant lawyer, who didn't take anything from her husband, and simultaneously managed to keep the household together despite Cliff's aloofness...

While I fully recognize the harm of the black superwoman image in pop culture, Clair also represented a "black career woman", something I would argue society still struggles to comprehend today. Although the Cosby show was not perfect -- it was clearly more of a black middle class fantasy than a representation of how much progress the "average" black family was -- and Clair sets up these ridiculous expectations for what it means to be a successful black female professional, Clair Huxtable was as important a figure as any in pop culture.

This is what makes Michelle Obama so important -- the mainstream no longer has to draw upon fantasy to find images of strong, intelligent, black women who do not define themselves by their families, even if they choose to take care of them.

So when I saw that Michelle Obama, Phylicia Rashad, and Lisa Leslie -- among others -- have come together to encourage young girls in the predominately black DC public schools to see themselves as leaders -- however they may choose to do so -- I was even more enamored with Michelle as a black public figure. She has fully embraced this role as a public figure role model and making a huge statement in her willingness to connect DC's local issues to a broader national agenda.

The significance of this event is not only that Michelle Obama is a relatively powerful black woman using her position to make a statement, but also that she would even visit Anacostia High School, a "failing school" in DC that most national politicians would just ignore...and really aren't expected to do anything beyond that.

How many even first ladies (or presidents for that matter) even know where Anacostia High School is way down there at the end of the green line, let alone are willing to go? Even for the leftists out there who see Mr. Obama as too centrist for their liking, this represents a powerful commitment to doing something different while occupying the White House.

But what's more is the group of black women she assembled for this event:

The group included Grammy Award-winning singers Alicia Keyes and Sheryl Crow, actresses and sisters Debbie Allen and Phylicia Rashad, actress Fran Drescher, Olympic gymnast Dominique Dawes, WNBA star Lisa Leslie Lockwood and Mae Jemison, the first black woman to travel into space. Also participating were Gen. Ann Dunwoody, the first woman to achieve the four-star rank; actresses Alfre Woodard, Kerry Washington and Tracee Ellis Ross; and Debra Lee, president and CEO of the parent company of the BET cable network.

She didn't just grab political friends, or doctors, or entertainers, but is communicating a clear message that there are multiple ways to be a successful black woman.

Lisa Leslie's involvement is what caught my eye and her willingness to embrace her role as a black female role model is also impressive. However, when we put her in broader context of this group Michelle Obama has assembled, I think we understand a bit better how important the WNBA is in the context of women's history month; it's not just about equitable access to professional athletics in society, but part of a broader movement in shifting how we see black womanhood in this country.

So while the message of individual responsibility and hard work is problematic and I know as well as anyone that speaking engagements will likely not end up changing DC Public Schools, I applaud Obama, Leslie, Rashad, et al. for making this effort. And I am particularly impressed by Obama's recognition of herself within a historical continuum of black women who push to expand the boundaries of black womanhood.

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Should the NCAA Slash the Women's Tournament to 40 Teams?

Once the NCAA Women's Basketball Tournament starts tomorrow, March Madness will be in full swing.

Of course, if you ask the "average lunkhead male" about that, they would probably tell you that in fact March Madness was in full swing as of yesterday when the Men's tournament started.

But not so if you believe Martin Johnson who writes for The Root.com.

If you accept Johnson's claim that the women's tournament is easily the third best college sporting event behind the men's tournament (definitely best in all of sports) and college football (despite the ridiculous BCS system), then March Madness isn't truly in full swing until we get the men and women going.

So if we start with that premise, then why shorten the field as Johnson suggests?

While the games are worthwhile to the devotees of the sport, they don’t recruit casual fans by commandeering their attention to drama....the women’s tournament would do itself a favor by slashing the field to 40 teams. The top two seeded teams in each of the four regionals would get a bye into the round of 16, and the other 32 teams would play on Saturday through Tuesday for the right to join them at the regional round. A smaller championship tournament would heighten the drama of the regular season and the conference tournaments. The bye weeks would make top seeds even that much more valuable, and the first round would feature more quality matchups. In other words, there would be much more drama that is accessible to the average sports fan in the preliminaries of the tournament, and it would ramp up an even larger audience for the big events down the road.

I don't read this as slamming the women's tournament as much as an argument for how to increase the game's popularity among the average lunkhead males out there: showcase the best and the fans will pay attention.

Do I agree? Not sure... I see the argument. I was also talking with a friend the other day about the idea of changing the men's tournament with a little round robin system instead of the current brackets because it's entirely too long... don't know if I like that really either.

Bottom line is this: March Madness is the most exciting sporting times of the year and the women get no pub... would Johnson's suggestion change that?

Transition Points:

Haven't posted in a while, but something that's caught my eye is the state of black coaches in women's collegiate basketball. Of particular interest to me is ex-WNBA'er Tia Jackson who coached the University of Washington Huskies team to a last place finish in the Pac-10. The question of whether she'll be ousted keeps coming up...and whether she deserves to be, I think it brings up an issue worth discussing -- why are there so few black female coaches in NCAA women's basketball?

My picks for the tournament this year: On the men's side I have to pick with a caveat -- if Ty Lawson's foot doesn't prevent him from playing, I go with UNC. If not, Louisville. On the women's side...Maya Moore...'nuff said.

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The Cost of Equity: How Will Title IX Ever Overcome the Football Problem?

In an attempt to actually keep my promise of posting once a week, I'm gonna post a little something that caught my eye a few days ago.

Normally, I would just leave Title IX stuff to the Title IX blog... but this story was so interesting to me because the discourse around these decisions to cut costs in an economic downturn is fascinating (for lack of a better word) to me.

In an article describing Arizona State's decision to drop it's men's wrestling and swimming teams, I found the following quote that made me stop in my tracks:

Arizona State men’s swimming coach Mike Chasson is the latest victim of this numbers crunch.

“I think Title IX has been incredibly important, but basically it gives universities an excuse to drop men’s sports,” said Chasson, who also coaches the women’s team. “That’s the bottom line.”

I feel for Chasson here. I understand that it must suck to have lost his team. But what I find interesting about this type of discourse is it pretends that men are under attack when what is really happening here is the correcting of long standing inequality in sport.

There's really no need to belabor this point -- it's been made over and over again. However, as long as men feel entitled to their sports even at the expense of women's sports, we're going to have a huge problem navigating the politics of Title IX...unless of course this was addressed at the level of federal oversight... by a new administration...

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Return from the “Glades of Gafia”

It’s been a long time, but I’m back from the "Glades of Gafia" and ready to re-engage the WNBA world.

I’ve thought about writing regularly again for a while, but something hit me the other day that lit a fire under me and pushed me to finally sit down and do so (read on to find out). Not the daily madness that consumed my life this past WNBA season… maybe weekly. But certainly more than every six months.

I’ve actually got a ton of story ideas scattered around my desktop and in my email that I just didn’t post, so in the next few weeks you’ll be seeing some of those: an update on Darnellia Russell, a response to a few anti-WNBA articles around the web, and (since it’s the off-season) other random sports-related thoughts I might have. In other words, I didn’t abandon the WNBA…I just took a break.

WHY you may ask did I take a break? And why am I gonna get writing again?

Gafia is not an exotic vacation spot… though that would have been nice (see the Pleasant Dreams blog for an explanation of this concept). But a brief synopsis of my own personal Gafia follows. The top 5 reasons I took a break and the top 5 reasons I’m returning to action.


Top 5 Reasons I Took a Break

5. WNBA News is Scarce: Blogging about the WNBA requires me to find news about the WNBA. During the WNBA off-season, news is just plain scarce. I will be the first to confess I didn’t put quite the work in that say Pet does over at the Pleasant Dreams blog…but still…it’s tough in the off-season.

4. The NBA: My first love is NBA basketball. Once that started up, the WNBA just fell off the radar for me. That’s fair, right? It’s the WNBA off-season. And with the dawn of a new NBA season comes the chance the fortunes for my favorite NBA team might change – with each new season there’s a chance, albeit minute, that my beloved Golden State Warriors will break out of their eternal slumber and make some noise in the NBA.

That dream has been shattered for weeks now…so my cognitive load has thus decreased.

3. Graduate school: I returned to graduate school in the fall. In graduate school they make you read a lot. And when I was reading all this crazy theory stuff, it was kinda hard to continue focusing on WNBA basketball, especially considering reason #5 above. One thing you do a lot of in grad school is write and use a lot of unnecessarily big words. Just doesn’t fit well with blogging about sports…

2. I moved: Due to going back to grad school, I moved. This is what caused the initial interruption way back when around WNBA finals time. I spent weeks on a friends inflatable mattress before finding a place. During that time, the WNBA – already in full off-season form – was just the furthest thing from my mind. A stronger man may have made it work…I just couldn’t

1. Health Problems: Won’t go into it, but I had some health problems over the last few months. With all that happened – the move, re-adjusting to grad school, etc – the blogging was just a casualty. But now things are better, I’m back in the swing of things, and ready to go at it again…so…

Top 5 Reasons I’m returning

5. I met another blogger: I met another sports blogger this past weekend. We were talking about basketball, I checked out his blog, things were pretty cool. And after we parted ways I thought to myself, “Damn, blogging about basketball is kinda fun.” It’s not about money (I don’t make any from this) or fame (WNBA players don’t get fame, why would a blogger?) it’s just fun to interact with people about basketball. Basketball is life. There’s nothing better. (See Bill Walton’s foreward in the Tao of the Jumpshot)

4. The Warriors suck: They just do. I don’t think I have to go into that. But you know what…I will.

If you’ve followed NBA basketball for the last 20 years at all you know the Warriors suck. If you haven’t followed them for the last 20 years you can infer that they suck – you probably haven’t heard of them or have any idea where Golden State is. Why would you?

Let’s put it this way to make it relevant to the WNBA: the Warriors are the NBA’s Washington Mystics – they are totally mismanaged, their personnel transactions often defy logic, and just when you think they might get better or they actually make the playoffs, players leave. They suck. But I’ve been a fan my entire life. I have fond memories of watching David Wood, Todd Fuller, the disaster that was Mike Dunleavy, and the tragic loss of Gilbert Arenas. So I don’t abandon them until they really piss me off. They accomplished that this season. I’m done till the draft…at which point they will inevitably botch the pick (although they NAILED it this season with Anthony Randolph…not that they play him or anything). If you ever want to hear more about my frustration with that franchise just write… I won’t take up any further space with them for now.

(I should clarify what I mean by "done" – it means I still watch with great disdain for the franchise)

3. I like writing: I was never especially good at writing at school, but I just like to write. I’m better in email than in person, better on IM than phone, and better on blog than radio (which I have briefly tried in my lifetime). I don’t know why I like it… but it’s fun. It’s relaxing. It’s a chance to get all the tangled up thoughts in my mind out in the open and thus understand them better. Grad school only serves to complicate and tangle up thoughts. Basketball is therefore the key to liberation…or something like it.

2. March Madness: March is coming up which means I’ll probably get a chance to watch a few of the top draft prospects on TV. Nothing like watching a player live to put the stats in perspective. Last summer, I lamented the lack of coverage on WNBA prospects…then I proceeded to “gafiate” (that is just such a cool word). Anyway, in the coming weeks I will take a look at players when I can and see what I think.

1. I have a favorite team: I definitely have a favorite team this season. And therefore, the upcoming summer has me excited. I will try my hardest not to abandon this team. And stick with them for a full season. But it’s much easier to follow a sport when you got a team to follow. I’m sure you can figure out what team that is…

OK…so now you know a little bit more about me and what makes me tick. Or maybe you don’t know that much more – in the end, it all comes down to basketball.

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