NYC Women’s Basketball Team Makes Championship Push
New York City sports fans are watching with growing anticipation this week as their two baseball teams – the Yankees and the Mets – march toward a World Series showdown. Setting aside why a contest between two teams from the same country, much less the same city, would be called a “world” series, this would be a once-in-a-generation occurrence so we get the hype.
At the same time and with much less fanfare, another New York City sports team, the New York Liberty, now stands one win away from securing its first-ever Women's National Basketball Association championship after a come-from-behind victory last night. In our August print edition, we wrote about the Liberty’s quest for an elusive first championship, its adoring, queer-heavy fanbase and asked whether, amid the soaring popularity of women’s basketball, the WNBA was en route to becoming the sports equivalent of a cool, bohemian neighborhood that gets discovered and then gentrified. For the full story, see below.
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The WNBA is Experiencing a Surge in Popularity… but Does its Fanbase Want It?
By John Tarleton and Ariana Orozco
It was the closing minutes of a hard-fought Sunday afternoon basketball game at the Barclays Center. The crowd of more than 10,000 fans chanted their team’s name — “Lib-er-ty! Lib-er-ty! Liberty!” — as they waved teal-colored towels with the image of the team’s beloved mascot Ellie the Elephant.
“They are rushing too much when they don’t have too,” a fan said, shaking his head after another Liberty turnover.
With 1:31 left in the fourth quarter, Sabrina Ionescu, one of the team’s stars, drove to the basket and sank a floating jump shot over a taller opponent to give the Liberty a one-point lead over the Washington Mystics. The Liberty pulled away in the last minute. When the final buzzer goes off, the crowd let out a roar to celebrate their team’s 93-88 victory, its seventh in a row.
The WNBA, now in its 28th season, is surging in popularity thanks in part to its most famous rookie Caitlin Clark (more about her later), but also due to many years of patiently nurturing the most progressive and LGBTQ+-heavy fan base of any professional sports league in the United States.
“There’s so many queer people here,” said Alysaa, a queer white woman in her early 30s. “It’s literally the biggest queer block party in Brooklyn.”
“This is my first year being a season ticket holder,” Alyssa added. “I’d been to a few games over the years with friends, but then obviously everything with the NCAA this year — it just exploded.”
For Rylee and her son Robby, it was their first WNBA game. She said they were inspired by the media coverage of this year’s NCAA women’s college basketball tournament in which Clark carried the Iowa Hawkeyes to the finals for a second year in a row only to come up one win short.
“My son loves basketball, but I want him to love all of the sport — not just when he sees men playing it,” Rylee says. “He goes with his father to NBA games, so the WNBA is my territory.”
No one dunks in the WNBA or plays above the rim. To score points, the women have to constantly move around without the ball and set each other up with nimble passes.
“It’s like male and female gymnastics in that way,” Rylee explained. “It’s the same sport, but we’re testing different skills.”
For Amiri and R.J., a pair of teenage basketball fans, affordable tickets are part of the draw.
“I don’t have school anymore, and this is cheaper than the NBA,” Amiri said. “Shit, this is cheaper than cornbread.”
“I think it’s really important to support our women,” R.J. chimed in. “We got mothers, sisters and they can play, you know?”
The New York Liberty was founded in 1997 as one of the WNBA’s eight original franchises.
The team was owned by New York Knicks owner James Dolan, and it played at Madison Square Garden. Dolan eventually lost interest and banished the team to White Plains, New York, where the Knicks’ developmental league team plays. In 2019, Joseph Tsai, owner of the Brooklyn Nets, the NBA’s other New York City franchise, bought the Liberty and moved it to its current home at the Barclays Center.
Landing in the heart of Brooklyn allowed the team to rebuild its fanbase. In 2021, the team rolled out Ellie the Elephant, the team mascot who has 100,000 Instagram followers and whose latest dance moves inspire intense Reddit debates among fans about the identity of the person underneath the costume.
“Obviously this is a huge queer space,” said Gabby. “It’s nice that you know like 40 people every game. All of your friends are here. You know you can be here and be yourself.”
“They don’t just tolerate us; they embrace us,” Gabby’s friend Merit said of the WNBA.
Gabby, Merit and a third friend, Miller, have been season ticket holders since 2021. They described watching the team end a string of losing seasons that began during their exile years in Westchester County and then make it to the finals last year before falling to the Las Vegas Aces. They have also enjoyed watching the queer-friendly scene around the team grow.
When Caitlin Clark’s name comes up, they roll their eyes. They acknowledge that Clark, with her long-distance shooting and razzle-dazzle passing, is talented and that she brought millions of new fans with her when she entered the league this year. But, they add, it’s impossible to ignore that Clark’s popularity is fueled in part by her being straight and white in a league where most of the players are Black and many are openly queer.
“There were so many great players before her.” Gabby pointed to A’ja Wilson, a two-time league MVP with the Las Vegas Aces who does not have any corporate endorsement deals. “That was definitely partly because she’s Black, queer and more masculine,” Gabby said. “Everyone is like, ‘[Clark] saved the league; she saved the league,’ when we don’t need saving!” Miller said.
The WNBA is experiencing its highest attendance in more than 20 years. Demands for the jerseys of Clark and her top college rival Angel Reese have contributed to a 236% increase in merchandise sales. And the league recently concluded a new 11-year, $2.2 billion television deal worth six times its prior contract. It remains to be seen if the league will go the way of a hip, low-rent neighborhood that becomes gentrified and loses the qualities that made it special.
After a month-long break for the Olympics, the Liberty’s regular season resumes from August 15 to September 19, followed by the league’s playoffs. The team starts the second half of the season with the best record in the league (21-4) and, its loyal fans believe, a good chance at winning its first-ever championship.•
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We aren’t so obsessed with sportsball that we’ve taken our eye off other important news.
On Monday, The Indy’s Amba Guerguerian was on the spot when more than 200 members of Jewish Voice for Peace and their allies were arrested Monday morning blocking the entrance to the New York Stock Exchange as they protested the profits that weapons makers are reaping from Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza. Meanwhile, Eric Stenzil reports from West Harlem about Columbia University’s next land grab in West Harlem and the community backlash against it.
Jewish Voice for Peace Stages Mass Civil Disobedience Against Gaza War Profiteering Outside NY Stock Exchange
By Amba Guerguerian
West Harlem Pushes Back Against Columbia’s Latest Manhattanville Campus Expansion
By Eric Santomauro-Stenzel
Vox Pop: With Three Weeks to Go, New Yorkers Share Their Thoughts on the Presidential Election
By Luce Miyar-Mullan
On Tuesday’s Indypendent News Hour on WBAI-99.5 FM, John Tarleton and Ariana Orozco spoke with New Yorkers who are participating in swing state door-to-door canvassing for Kamala Harris as well as a worker-organizer from Starbucks Workers United. We also spoke with Andrew Tilson, executive director of the Workers Unite! Film Festival which begins this Friday at Cinema Village Theater and runs through Oct. 30. You can listen to all the fun here. We’ll be back on the air on Tuesday from 5-6 pm on 99.5 FM and streaming on wbai.org. For more about the film festival, see the promotion below and check out their website.
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