Geno vs. "the Nation of Cowards": What Auriemma's comments tell us about racial dialogue in the U.S.

Far more interesting to me than Geno Auriemma’s initial comments about the racial stereotyping of Stanford and Connecticut women’s basketball players is the ongoing commentary about the “incident”.

Of course, there have been many different reads of Auriemma’s comments on race…which is pretty much what he anticipated with the opening line of his statement:

I know this is going to get played out the wrong way. But I'm going to say it anyway. And I know I'm going to get criticized for this.

But what has caught my eye in the current political environment (you know, people think we’re all post-racial now that we have a black president) is the way race is talked about in response to Auriemma’s comments. However, rather than critique others and make a negative argument of how not to talk about race, I was in the process of writing a piece about what I thought we could learn from this latest Auriemma episode.

Then I saw a Sunday article by Casey Gane-McCalla on Huffington Post about Auriemma's comments that I think is worthy of our attention:

The problem with stereotypes in sports is that they often lead to general stereotypes. If you say "white men can't jump," why not "Black men can't read defenses"? And if Black men can't read defenses, maybe they can't read books either?

Sports stereotypes have a real effect in the real world. Most employers are not concerned with employees' natural athletic abilities, so stereotypes of African-Americans being athletically superior for the most part do not help Blacks in the real world. However, the stereotypes of whites being hard working, disciplined and smart are helpful to them in finding employment.

The problem is not that Auriemma “inserted” the issue of race into an otherwise racially neutral social context – race does have an impact on how we see athletes. Nor is the problem that he detracted attention away from the success of an outstanding University of Connecticut team (as described nicely by the Women's Hoops Blog). Race is there like it or not and it’s worth talking about.

The problem in my opinion is actually perfectly phrased by Phil Sheridan of the Philadelphia Inquirer (although I’m not entirely sure we agree with his conclusion):

Honestly, I think we often fall into this trap of blasting anyone who tries to address racial issues. It is OK and even necessary to discuss the role race plays in various situations and circumstances. The problem here isn't that Auriemma decided to "go there." The problem is he apparently got himself lost on the way.

So building upon Sheridan’s comment, I want to extend Gane-McCalla’s argument and suggest that in addition to the harms of stereotyping on society, Auriemma’s comments and the ensuing responses demonstrate a fundamental difficulty that we in the U.S. have with talking productively about almost all topics regarding race – whether it be the significance of having a black president or the “achievement gap” in education or gang violence and police brutality.

Are we a “nation of cowards”? Not quite. But we do still have a long way to go when it comes to racial dialogue on the path to challenging racial injustice.

The U.S. is a Nation of __________ (???)

Just to be clear, I am not advancing the argument of Attorney General Eric Holder by calling the U.S. “a nation of cowards” in all matters of race.

Aside from the fact that I found the comment to be politically unproductive, I think it may even misrepresent the problem we’re facing regarding racial dialogue. What’s worse is that it may have even done more harm than good in terms of moving race relations forward – antagonizing the nation that you’ve been appointed to lead in some capacity is probably not the best strategy for moving people to action.



Instead, I would identify a different problem and an important consequence:

First, contrary to what Holder states, I think we do talk about race quite a bit, but in a number of coded and implicit ways. This is essentially what Auriemma has alluded to…or really should have alluded to more clearly – implicit racial stereotypes shape how we describe and talk about athletes (and people in the real world) everyday. A very simple point.

Second, racial discrimination, racial stereotyping, and structural racism have differential consequences on men and women that cannot be ignored.

When we consider the dearth of mainstream black female role models in our society, the way we discuss and portray female athletes therefore has “a real effect in the real world” on how we think about black women. Moreover, considering that the WNBA is the most prominent and well-established professional sport, the way black female basketball players are portrayed and perceived takes on more significance than I think some people grant it.

So consistent with Gane-McCalla, I am going to just state up front that the way we apply racial stereotypes to athletes does indeed matter. Second, I think it’s important to continue this conversation as a lens or platform with which to understand issues of race in broader society.

But sticking to women’s basketball, once again I think this goes back to that issue of narrative creation and maintenance – what are the narratives we are presented about black female athletes and how does that affect how we understand women’s basketball generally and the WNBA in particular?

Not Just a Matter of Finding Examples, But Thinking About How We Describe Those Examples…

I first read about Auriemma’s comments on Jayda Evans’ blog. Given that Ms. Evans is quickly becoming one of my favorite writers, I almost just accepted her thoughts about Auriemma’s statement:

I mean, as far as the color divide on toughness goes, hello, does Auriemma have Alzheimer's? While I'm not going to say former UConn PG Sue Bird (Seattle) is the toughest beak on the block, does he remember Diana Taurasi (Phoenix)? What about Svetlana Abrosimova (Connecticut)? With the Storm, I'm drowning in tough "white" examples from Michelle Marciniak to Lauren Jackson, so it's ludicrous to spend much time on the subject.

And my first thought was yeah, I agree – and she even forgot Janel McCarville and Lindsay Whalen!! (I assume they were somewhere in that body of examples she was drowning in.)

But then as I thought about and read more about the story, I began to disagree with the notion that it’s “ludicrous to spend more time on the subject”. In fact, I think it’s the perfect time to discuss race.

At issue here is not whether there are examples to counter the stereotype, but how people perceive others through the lens of these stereotypes. We do hear these stereotypes often in sports. Auriemma is not just making that up, although it is unclear exactly what he was responding to in that moment.

And even in this world in which we can find plenty of examples to contradict our stereotypes, stereotypes carry with them quite a bit of inertia – they are extremely hard to break once they are established. And as long as they go unspoken and thus unchallenged, they will continue to persist and influence the way we think.

Michel Martin describes this phenomenon nicely in her story last month on NPR in response to Holder’s comments:

Is this active hostility, fear, resentment of blacks? At one time, sure it was. But right now, maybe it's more likely unchallenged assumptions you've forgotten you have — the store clerk who assumes the black woman can't afford the dress she's trying on, the law firm hiring partner who just assumes the black kid made it through Harvard on a wing and a prayer, the cop who just assumes every black motorist is a gangbanger in training.

In other words, even when we don't think we're talking about race, we sort of are. It's not that we don't talk about it.

Leaving these subtle forms of stereotyping unchecked will do nothing to move this country forward in terms of race relations. And as I think Gane-McCalla and Martin point out, they happen all the time in our daily life – whether we are talking about sports, at work, or even among friends. If we believe that challenge racial discrimination is important, then finding ways to unearth and challenge these assumptions is of great value.

But how on earth do we do that?

Petrel from the Pleasant Dreams Blog made a great comment on Chantelle Anderson’s blog post, “The choice between sports and sex appeal” that addresses the issue of stereotyping and the trouble with combating them (it’s comment #47):

One of the common putdowns of women in sports is "women ballplayers are ugly" - and how do you fight someone's loaded personal opinion? Trying to prove that you're pretty is just playing the same game - "I'll show you!" To some men out there, "female" and "athlete" are contradictory terms…Posing has the power to break the All Female Athletes are Ugly stereotype - if you look at Lauren Jackson's photos and still think she's ugly, there's no help for you but opthamology. Anything that expands the boundaries of what a woman can be - athletic, attractive, intelligent - is a good thing. Posing not only highlights the "attractive" side, but throws positive light on the "athletic" and "intelligent" sides as well.

Although the problem Petrel and Chantelle are pointing out concerns gender, I think a very similar argument can be applied to matters of race.

The problem -- that I think Petrel rightly pointed out -- is that if you directly attack the stereotypes, you are essentially playing on the turf of the ignorant. It’s similar to the argument George Lakoff makes in his book, “Don’t Think An Elephant” – if political candidate 1 presents platform X and candidate 2 presents a counter platform of anti-X, candidate 1 has already one because they’re controlling the discourse (which is what the Republicans had mastered in the past eight years).

This is why it’s even more difficult to undo these racial stereotypes when race and gender meet – already it’s hard to imagine an athletic and intelligent woman. It has to be doubly hard to imagine an athletic and intelligent black woman. And likewise, in broader social interactions, black women are routinely facing more barriers than their black male counterparts – it’s hard to simultaneously fight racism and sexism…and not always at the same time.

And yet the only way to break a stereotype seems to be to provide frequent and substantial evidence that changes the way people see patterns that create the stereotypes. So hmm… how do we avoid that bind?

Breaking the Inertia of Our Entrenched Stereotypes

It does seem like the first thing to do is call out a stereotype for what it is…

Obviously, Auriemma attempted that.

And obviously, it didn’t go over so well.

However, what I think we should pay attention to is that it’s not like it was blatant white supremacists coming out of the woodworks to lambaste the guy.

Most of the critiques that I read have been of a different nature – color-blind dismissals of race discussion.

Color-blindness is what might inform a comment such as the following in response to a pretty good article about Auriemma’s comments from Uncle Popov on Bleacher Report:

I would say that hardly anyone thinks of race when they are watching Tiger Woods and Venus Williams, two of the most visible black athletes in history.

And of course if nobody is thinking about race when they watch sports – or politics for that matter given that the heads of both major political parties are black – then there can’t possibly be an appropriate time to discuss race. Especially in this post-racial society we live in (please someone explain to me how a post-racial society is even possible). Race just becomes nothing more than a distraction, as described in the following quote:

Is it time to talk about race in college athletics? No, not really. What purpose would it serve? What territory are we supposed to be driving towards by noticing that there’s only one white guy playing meaningful minutes in this Final Four game between Michigan State and UConn, and he’s not even from America? That’s a fact. So what?

So one of the primary problems then with confronting racial stereotypes (much less than discrimination or structural racism) is that many people don’t even think there’s a problem to begin with, as nicely summed up by Uncle Popov:

Nevertheless, it is much easier to generalize and it happens so much that we tend to overlook it and not think about the consequences of doing so. It is as though we have naturalized these labels and do not critically challenge the notions of the "gutsy" white player or "naturally gifted" black player. It tends to be accepted unproblematically.

These generalizations fuel some people's longstanding beliefs about what type of players can play which position or in which sport. This was part of the central thesis of my previous article on race in sports.

And what’s worse, is that in the current climate, if I do accuse you of having these assumptions you don’t think you have, you assume I’m calling you a racist…and that’s a whole separate (though obviously related) matter. The very acknowledgement of race becomes completely taboo.

It’s a sort of strange paradox – it’s politically correct to denounce racism, so it’s incorrect to be a racist, so it’s easiest to prove one is not a racist by not talking about or ignoring race, which means that when confronted with a situation in which race cannot be avoided we simply go silent.

Race talk thus becomes the territory of extremists – those dangerous black radicals pumping their fists and threatening to occupy a state capital near you or those evil hooded Ku Klux Klan guys who are looking to burn a cross on someone’s lawn. Either way it supports two completely false beliefs: race is a thing of the past and people who discuss it are some hardline wingnuts trying to shove some racialized agenda down your throat.

Yikes!

So let’s bring it back…

Really, it’s not about going around calling people racists or proving to people how stupid they are. It’s about finding a way to clearly represent the world so that we discuss it on some sort of common ground and begin to make well-reasoned arguments about how to collectively move forward and (hopefully) create a better, more just society.

Ultimately, anti-racism is not even about talk (which is why these discussions about implicit biases and stereotyping usually annoy me)…it’s about action of some sort. And ideally, collective, targeted multi-racial action that critiques the elements in society (institutions and people) that maintain racial inequality and presents alternative ways of existing as a happy community.

(That feels so much better.)

But we can’t even reach the fantasy world of a racially just society unless we can talk to one another and respect one another as human beings, who are different but ultimately have a stake in each other’s success.

So I argue the problem here is not that race is a distraction that should never be brought up, it’s that race is a “distraction” because we have no language to collectively discuss it or listen to it in a productive way.

To take the point further, what incentive is there for a white person – particularly a rather privileged white male – to talk about race anyway? (Whole other discussion – see George Lipsitz’s “Possessive Investment in Whiteness” – decades and decades of white supremacy create a whole system of white privilege and maintaining that system often becomes a motive at the expense of non-whites, whether intentionally or not)

This tangle of complexity summarizes why most people won’t even venture into that feared territory of race talk.

Auriemma did…and did so with a disclaimer…because he knew there was no way to clearly communicate anything about the topic as a white man without getting himself into trouble. So he fumbled through a discussion of the issue and tried to end with a joke about how the West Coast is full of pansies to sort of relieve the tension. Which of course made his point even harder for some people to decipher.

Um…ok…so…?

Resolving Race Talk Dilemmas in U.S. Sports…and How That Might Push Racialized Assumptions

Mica Pollock has described this strange paradox of not talking about race but always talking about race in her book “Color Mute: Race Talk Dilemmas in an American School”. Gloria Ladson-Billings summarizes the main argument nicely in the Foreward to another book, “Courageous Conversations About Race: A Field Guide for Attaining Equity in Schools”:

Race is the proverbial “elephant in the parlor.” We know it’s right there staring us in the face—making life uncomfortable and making it difficult for us to accomplish everything we would really like to do—but we keep pretending it isn’t.

We do not know what to call each other or if we should call each other anything that has a racial designation. But Pollock demonstrates that even when we avoid talking about race, we are talking about race; that is, even in our avoidance of the subject, we are engaging it.

Ladson-Billings goes on to present us with a kernel of insight that sort of explains why talking about race is relatively important:

…in a study of teachers teaching early literacy (Ladson-
Billings, 2005), my colleague and I observed teachers regularly talking about students’ failure to read without ever mentioning race. Almost all of the struggling students were Black or Latino. It was not until six months into the project that teachers recognized the salience of race in the students’ achievement. At this point, we were able to deal honestly deal with the students’ academic issues.

So let me try to make the leap here: if we cannot talk about black women in the sphere of a basketball game, it will be a whole lot more difficult to talk about black women in society at large. In recognizing the salience of race in everything we do and that it has “real effects in the real world”, we can start to honestly deal with the huge elephant in the parlor that Auriemma wanted us to pay attention to.

But why bother placing so much weight on sports? Can’t we just enjoy the game? Why does someone always have to make it about race?

Sports are not some panacea of facilitating race talk, but it’s a contained context in which there are some very clear racial undertones. There’s no reason not to talk about race in sports as a pre-cursor to the much more significant problems we face. Why not check our assumptions on something so small if it could pave the way to eliminate general stereotypes?

And a Brief Response to Eric Holder…

So if we’re color mute as a society, then we can’t possibly be cowards, as described nicely by Michel Martin:

I have been thinking a lot about what Attorney General Eric Holder said in his now-famous Black History Month speech, that we are a "nation of cowards" when it comes to race. But I wonder whether it's really that we are just comfortable. Cowardice requires consciousness — a conscious awareness to choose not to do something you know you should do.

But what if you don't know?

And that’s exactly where I would argue we are – we simply don’t know what to do (and many whites – not to mention non-whites -- are never encouraged to know). Those of us that do know what to do get sick of dealing with those poor saps who don't have it figured out yet...which is (again) a whole separate problem of the self-righteous anti-racist that must be addressed with equal tenacity.

Auriemma’s comments and the responses demonstrate our struggle with finding ways to talk about race in public. The question, as described by Martin, is what we do about it:

I think if we are honest with ourselves, we can admit that we all do it. We make assumptions, and we don't bother to test them because we don't have to.

So now the question really does become one of moral courage and, yes, cowardice. What are we prepared to do to break free of untested assumptions? What hard questions are we prepared to ask ourselves? What are we prepared to do to know what we don't know?

And these are questions that extend well beyond basketball and manifests itself in national politics…even after we have elected a black man president, as described by Barbara Crosette of the Nation just yesterday:

Would an American delegation bearing a message from Obama have made a difference? Critics will say no. Nicole Lee, executive director of the Washington-based TransAfrica Forum, has long argued that the United States belongs at the Durban review. In a message in March asking advocates of American attendance to write to anyone and everyone in Washington, she recalled the comment by Attorney General Eric Holder that Americans are a "nation of cowards" when it comes to discussing race.

What she wrote then still rings true: "The decision to boycott the Durban Review Conference not only underscores the difficulty that we have discussing race, but it also potentially undermines the solid progress made by groups and governments around the world that have worked hard to address racism and intolerance. And, unfortunately, for many in the US it raises questions about the racial lens through which this administration develops and implements policy."

Real effects…in the real world…on real people.

Transition Points:

The intersection of race and gender is complicated. Race x Gender x Sexuality?!?!? Shiver-me-timbers! Yo, head for the hills! I’ll leave that to folks like Chantelle Anderson.

Big props to Uncle Popov on Bleacher Report for managing to cite Edward Said, Marion Young, and Skip Bayless in one article. I wonder what a discussion would be like if you put those three in a room together?

Is this just a knee-jerk response to some knee-jerk palaver after the Women’s Final Four as DWil suggested would come out about this situation? Eh, possibly. But why should folks be expected to end this discussion? I say keep it going…

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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?

Continue reading...

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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