The entire salary cap number of a women’s basketball team is less than what one bad NBA player gets paid. Yet men still seem to resent the WNBA a disproportionate amount.
Why do men hate the WNBA?
In my experience, the average male sports fan regards most female sporting competitions with a sort of benign disinterest, which ranges from “I’ll watch if I’ve already seen this week’s episode of Ice Road Truckers” to “Wait, is the one who posed in Maxim playing?”
(Note: women’s beach volleyball is an exception to the latter, as I’m pretty sure they’ve all appeared in at least one of the lad mags.)
The WNBA, on the other hand, inspires venom. Outright hatred. And for no particularly good reason.
Why is that?
Back when the league made its debut, the general aversion to the WNBA was due in large part to marketing overload. NBA fans were bombarded with a constant stream of commercials pushing the league and its unbearable slogan, “We got next.” Now, if my unscientific research (mostly, watching comments on Twitter) is any indication, men are conditioned to hate any commercial that is played and re-played during every commercial break of a sporting event. So for the first few years of its existence, the WNBA was basically the AT&T “flash mob” ad, Franklin & Bash, and K-A-R-S for Kids all rolled into one.
I’m convinced that a large portion of the hatred that still bubbles up from time to time is held over from those original ad campaigns, even though they haven’t been nearly as in-your-face in years.
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Then there’s the lockout. The NBA’s lockout has now lasted longer than the Biblical downpour that caused Noah’s flood and shows no signs of abating. Now, let’s apply the logic I learned in 10th-grade math to the situation:
The NBA funds the WNBA.
The NBA is in lockout because it claims to be losing money.
Therefore, the lockout is the WNBA’s fault.
Right? Wrong. The biggest problem with that logic is that the WNBA’s budget is basically a rounding error on the NBA’s balance sheet. The salary cap number for an entire WNBA team this season is $852,000. Eight-hundred-and-fifty grand. That’s it. That’s significantly less than the Knicks paid Bill Walker in 2010-11. Add up the salaries of every player in the league, and you’d still only get about half what the Orlando Magic and Washington Wizards paid Gilbert Arenas.
Then, there’s the “inferior product” argument. That goes a little something like this: “Why would I want to watch a game played below the rim by players who can’t dunk?” And there’s some validity to that objection. But you could say the same about men’s college basketball as compared with the NBA. Or college football as compared with the NFL. Or minor-league baseball, or MLS Soccer as compared to the EPL. Why does women’s basketball get all the “inferior product” heat?
I think we’re too close to the issue.
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Have you ever played basketball against women? I have, many times. My high-school crowd included a couple of pretty good female ballplayers, both starters on their school teams. I, on the other hand, was charitably offered a “manager” position when I tried out for the freshman squad.
My buddy Jim was probably the best player on our CYO team. I was the seventh or eighth man, mostly responsible for fouling the opposing team’s best guy. But when we played against the girls, we dominated.
We were six-to-eight inches taller than them. Forty or fifty pounds heavier. And playing with the women’s-size ball—as we usually did when matched up against the girls—just made things easier, because the smaller ball wouldn’t slide awkwardly off our hands when we attempted finger-rolls or hook-shots. Their only advantage? The amount of time we’d spend making dumb jokes about playing shirts vs. skins.
(Don’t judge. Every male teenager that has ever played hoops against female teenagers has made that joke at least once.)
Those games left us with the lasting impression that relatively lousy male basketball players could beat pretty good female players of equivalent age.
For what it’s worth, that lesson applies well beyond my friend Karen’s driveway hoop in Farmingdale, New York. No less an authority than Pat Summitt—the legendary coach of the Tennessee Lady Vols—is one of many women’s college basketball coaches to use male students as practice players, on the theory that scrimmaging against bigger, stronger opponents helps to prepare her team better than a standard intra-squad scrimmage.
We may not have the same basis for comparison when talking about women’s tennis or golf or soccer. In hoops, we have first-hand knowledge. And I think that makes all the difference.
—Photo twodolla/Flickr
I am a tennis player. I was ranked top 40 in Australia but not good enough to make a living . I beat a current top 10 womens player 6-0 6-0 regulary in training for her even though I don’t personally train anymore and haven’t for 8 years. Mens tennis fights for pay rises based on revenue but then only gets 50% because the women get them aswell even though its making 3.5 times less money. The womens tour is chased by about 4x less people. They dont train as hard and they suck. Every man that was close to… Read more »
It is all about disinterest so let’s not use the word hate and play into the victim nonsense. My son played football with a guy who played on the Louisville men’s CLUB baseball team, not the varsity baseball team so no scholarship grade athletes. Not basketball players so no 6’10” guys dunking from the foul line. And this men’s club basketball team challenged the then women’s NCAA 2013 final four team to a game. Anyway, long story short they beat the women’s final four team by 60 points, somewhere around 80-20. So let’s see the NCAA women’s champions play the… Read more »
WNBA sucks mainly because the NBA sucks. Basketball fans will hate this I know but it’s true. The NBA is so plagued by weird rules and such long drawn out affairs that it’s become worse than baseball. At least with baseball you’re outside on a warm summer evening with a hot dog and beer. …and the timeouts! sheesh …and the coaches being on the rules committee. …and on and on. Oh and I forgot to mention…I’ve never seen a basketball dances that didn’t look like Goofy they just can’t do it.
Less we forget the fact that by the time anyone would think to turn on the wnba game of the week, basketball season is over. We’ve already seen a full ncaa season and been through march madness, a full 82 game nba season and another two months of playoff basketball. Even sex gets old after a while and with football season around the corner, bad basketball is the last thing I want to watch.
Would you rather find $5, or have your local WNBA team win the National Championship? I’d rather find $5…
I can’t even think of what the closest WNBA team to me even is. Give me the five bucks, please.
Men’s college basketball is by leaps and bounds better than women’s basketball. The players actually have a shred of explosive athleticism, jumping and running, as opposed to the women, who despite their emphasis on fundamentals, make many more errors than the men do. The women’s game is ugly and downright hard to watch. No amount of advertising would make me interested in it.
Maybe the perceived “hatred” comes from theTitle IX debate. The unfairness to male athletes which has resulted from Title IX would make anyone resentful to a league that is propped up by the NBA for its
survival.
wnba is the most boring sport in the world ¡¡¡
The general lack of athleticism, proliferation of layups, and lack of exciting plays creates a boring back and forth when compared to the NBA. It isn’t a fair comparison because female athletes have nowhere near the physical abilities of even division 1 men’s collegiate basketball.
I disagree with your comparison of the WNBA and mens college basketball. College basketball has guys who can get their HEAD TO THE RIM. Boys High School basketball is proably a more appropriate comparison, but then again even high school has had guys like Lebron James with verticals in the 40’s. Not a single player in the WNBA even has a vert in the 30’s lol. The WNBA is around the same as boys junior high basketball in terms of athleticsm, and even then their are more junior high boys than can dunk than WNBA players. Why do people hate… Read more »
Interesting to see what responses are posted and what aren’t. Ah, well. ignorance is bliss.
As for the claim that “the number of people who truly hate the WNBA enough to log on to a blog virtually are non-existent.”
You don’t follow the league, so how on earth can you make any such claim?I know follow the wnba and read the message boards and the vitriol posted after articles on the league. Just ask Christine Brennan.
There are hundreds of million of basketball fans worldwide. How many hate the WNBA enough to logon to a message board? 100? 500? 1,000? Compared to hundreds of millions, that equates to about zero percent.
Here ya go: Stop Blaming the WNBA for the NBA Lockout – False accusations. http://www.slamonline.com/online/other-ballers/womens/2011/07/stop-blaming-the-wnba-for-the-nba-lockout/ When the NBA lockout officially hit last week, sportswriters across the country immediately began casting blame on the WNBA, calling it “money-bleeding” and a “bad business venture” that ultimately contributed (somehow) to the hundreds of millions of dollars the NBA is losing (supposedly) on an annual basis. Nothing new. We’ve heard it before. And we’ve proven how false those statements and accusations are. Time after time. ALSO, just open your eyes re: boys reaction to the W: WNBA: Why All the Hate? http://bleacherreport.com/articles/219099-why-all-the-wnba-hate ALSO: I… Read more »
“I don’t watch the NBA. I’ve seen it on TV and I’ve attended a Knicks game. It sucks. ”
How hypocritical of Helen to claim that men hate women’s basketball (without any evidence that 100s of millions of men care enough to hate it) when she hates men’s basketball. And, even those who hate it hate it because they believe it is of poor quality, which is why it doesn’t draw enough fans to make a profit, even after more than 10 years in existence.
She just defeated her entire argument.
I think the WNBA should exist. Women should get to play pro sports too, and anyone who wants to eliminate it is just being petty. But… It sucks. Yes, I’ve watched it. I’ve watched it on TV and I’ve seen a game in Conn. in person. It’s very, very boring. Now please don’t mistake that with saying they have no talent. On the contrary, they are very talented. They could whip me and everyone I know. I played against women college players growing up and they wiped the floor with me. They’re good, very good. But they suck compared to… Read more »
The NBA funds the WNBA. The NBA is in lockout because it claims to be losing money. Therefore, the lockout is the WNBA’s fault. I’ve never heard that before. Or at least I’ve never heard it from actual NBA fans nor have I heard it on the little bit of ESPN radio I listen to (I just finished spending 2 years driving a used car in which by some odd twist the only station that worked was ESPN Radio). No less an authority than Pat Summitt—the legendary coach of the Tennessee Lady Vols—is one of many women’s college basketball coaches… Read more »
Wait…so the WNBA isn’t for PROFESSIONAL women basketball players? So, if a woman automatically does sports, it is no longer valid compared to men’s sports? That’s what I’m getting when you basically dismiss the WNBA as not being professional when I clearly thought it was the professional version of basketball for women, as per the -NBA suffix.
Nowhere did Daddy Files say or otherwise indicate that the WNBA are not professional basketball players. He’s said that professional women’s basketball simply doesn’t compare well to professional men’s basketball. He only emphasized “professional” in reference to how professional women basketball players are better than most people he know at it, but he went on to emphasize that they don’t play better than their professional male counterparts. By the way, even the development leagues are “professionals,” in that they’re paid to play the game. But nobody generally thinks about the D-League to when referring to “pro basketball”–because the NBA dominates… Read more »
Honestly, I don’t know even WNBA teams that operate with “the fundamentals” better than Coach Popovich in the NBA.
A quick response to Eric: No doubt, there’s plenty of indifference going around — which is just fine by me. But you’re being deliberately obtuse if you don’t see the outright hatred that’s out there, too. I cover the game, I know. Check out the blog posts written by men about the W. google WNBA and NBA lockout and you’ll see sports writers who are pointing the finger at the W. Read many of the comments on stories written about the W or women’s college basketball and if the insulting, homophobic vitriol spewed by people angry and threatened enough to… Read more »
Helen, Sure, there are crazies out there who hate every sport (e.g. baseball), team (e.g. the Yankees), and league (e.g. the NFL, WNBA, etc.) but compared to the (what? 100s of millions) pro basketball fans, the number of people who truly hate the WNBA enough to log on to a blog virtually are non-existent. Also, it’s just as legitimate to say that the WNBA relies heaviily on the NBA for its funding as it is to say that the Dept. of Educaiton relies on the federal government for its funding. Both have a financila impact on the funding organizations, albeit… Read more »
Helen, your logic was terrible. If men watch college men’s sports, it’s largely to get a glimpse of FUTURE professional players of the professional leagues. Esp. now in this era of “one-and-done” athletes who spend a year in college and soon get drafted professionally. Sports are a young-people’s industry, where the best years are short and fleeting. People want to watch players develop as soon as possible. It didn’t take NBA stars like LeBron James (who didn’t even go to college) or Allen Iverson or Kyrie Irving to become stars–they were stars coming into the NBA. Though, college basketball interest… Read more »
Correction: “…doesn’t mean they still WON’T smoke the pants off the best of women’s sports…”
The writer of this story doesn’t know much about what basketball fans think, male for female. There is no evidence for his statement that: “The WNBA, on the other hand, inspires venom. Outright hatred.” He is mistaking indifference for hatred. The average pro basketball fan, male or female, doesn’t hate the WNBA anymore than they high school javelin competitions. They are indifferent. They don’t care. I have never heard any basketball fan (and I know hundreds of them) ever mention the WNBA as being at fault for any problem in the NBA. In fact, they don’t mention the WNBA at… Read more »
Yes, there is evidence that the WNBA is hated outright. run a twitter search on wnba and watch as everyone direspects the players.
Why would anyone respect an organization that has to be subsidized by the NBA due to a level of play that can’t generate even enough girl and woman spectators to pay its way. And using guilt to get company’s to buy advertising because it couldn’t be justified on a business rational doesn’t inspire respect. It is time to have the WNBA champions play the best boy’s high school team and the women’s NCAA champions play the best boy’s 9th. grade team. The outcome with address and answer this question based on the best framework. The relative level of athletic prowess… Read more »
Brittany, I’m 4 years late here, but the truth’s still the same today:
Don’t confuse Twitter trolls as representatives of sports fans everywhere. Platforms like Twitter attract the worst, to the easiest targets.