We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from. To learn more or opt-out, read our Cookie Policy. The game was also a look at the next generation of the year-old league. It was also another sign of how openly out players are among the shining stars of the league.

Those are insane numbers. No one denies that. And it makes the WNBA players who defend the controversy sound uneducated. Because I heard a bench player gets paid more than … nvm. The male athletes are bigger, faster, stronger, jump higher, etc.

So it was kind of this interesting place because it was just this unspoken thing. Everybody knew it, but nobody really talked about it. It would take a decade for the culture to shift in a meaningful way, and almost two decades for the WNBA to become the most socially conscious and active professional sports league in the country.

The league is seldom considered newsworthy enough when we see things like the creation of a superteam in Washington, with Elena Delle Donne and the Mystics, or when an epic WNBA finals between the Minnesota Lynx and Los Angeles Sparks goes down to the final seconds of an elimination game. But a player asserting all the most vicious stereotypes about the league? Of course, it concerns me if any of our players do not have a positive experience and I hope that anyone who feels uncomfortable would reach out to me or others in the league office. But in the absence of guidance from the league, a funny thing happened. Or has them s , not players in a safe.