Valkyries: 12-13, 9th place
The Golden State Valkyries continue to be amazing and you should watch them. They are on Amazon Prime on Thursday 4:30 pst. But if you aren’t watching them, may I recommend watching the Minnesota Lynx and Napheesa Collier as she puts together what is sure to be an MVP season - best offensive player, best defensive player, leader on and off the court. Or watch the Phoenix Mercury with the deadly Alyssa Thomas, also having a record breaking season. Or even watch a few moments of the Dallas Wings with rookie Paige Bueckers who is an outstanding rookie, which is another way of saying she plays like she’s been in the league for years. And with that, let’s shift to basketballish topics. Because a lot has been happening in the basketball adjacent world.
The most consequential news in my sphere is Jordan Poole being traded from the Washington Wizards to the New Orleans Pelicans. This means that I’m watching the Pelicans next year instead of the Wizards just when I had grown to truly love and mostly look forward to watching all the young players in D.C. As for watching the Pelicans? Well…I have some opinions. The Pelicans are a team I have mostly not liked, entirely because of Zion Williamson, who is kindly called mercurial and more appropriately called unreliable because of his long history of injuries.
But then a stroke of great fortune happened. Kevon Looney, 10 year Golden State veteran, the moral compass of the Warriors, accepted a contract with the New Orleans Pelicans. While this is a loss for the Warriors, in rebounding, playoff toughness and leadership, it is a huge gain both for me and for Jordan Poole. Jordan Poole and Kevon Looney go way back. They are both from Milwaukee. Looney is a few years older, so Poole grew up idolizing Looney. When they were on the Warriors together, Looney definitely played the role of big bro to Poole. There’s this pic from the first time Poole came back to play in Chase Center.
What you can’t see in this pic is that this hug is so big and so long between these two that Poole gets dragged by his tiptoes for a bit - this is the hug of family. While Poole has been great for the Wizards and a great vet for the rookies, he has not had a vet for himself (until the last few months of this year with Marcus Smart and Khris Middleton). So, the Pelicans it is.
The Warriors have made no off-season moves since everything depends on what happens with Jonathan Kuminga. There are a lot of complicated contracts and salary caps involved, so if you are interested in this, listen to any recent episode of Warriors Plus Minus - every single one of them this summer has explained this situation in depth. The main point is that as of now, the Warriors have not done a single thing to make their team better and the team needs to get better. There is no new center, no new shooter, they have not re-signed GPII, so stay tuned.
And then there’s Klay Thompson. Of course, I heard the rumors and followed them. Of course I saw the pictures on Instagram. But when my dad asked if I heard about Klay, I knew this had become common knowledge. The publicly reclusive introvert is dating Megan Thee Stallion and more importantly doing it on social media. By her side at her gala, making tiktoks on a golf course or doing a joint workout or going spear fishing. In my experience of Klay, he has not been public with girlfriends - he famously ended a relationship because she posted a pic of them on Instagram. This is new territory for Klay. It looks good on him.
While I’m on the category of frivolous and enthralling, let’s talk about the Studbudz takeover of the WNBA All Star Weekend. The Studbudz are Minnesota Lynx teammates Courtney Williams and Natisha Hiedeman.
Williams and Hiedeman started streaming on Twitch. They promised that they were going to stream for 72 straight hours during All Star Weekend. Then Courtney Williams was named an All Star and it upped the stakes even more. I had zero intention of watching the stream. Instead, I started watching Thursday night and probably watched 6 hours a day, maybe more. Every night, they were still out and about by the time I went to sleep and they were up well before me. They were hilarious, funny, sweet, and gave a inside look on the players of the W. Thursday night was the Orange Carpet - everyone all dressed up and in one room, where we saw the WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert dance with the Studbudz to Knuck If You Buck. I mean…Adam Silver would never…can you even imagine Adam Silver dancing?
Friday was the Skills Competition and then more after parties where the event of the night - probably the best event of the whole weekend - was Azzi Fudd’s party which was packed with W stars, college stars and 16000 watchers on Twitch. But the most amazing sequence of events was Saturday night after the All Star Game. Courtney and T are prepartying in the hotel room with friends and family members and having a pretty good time. They go to a party where they are hassled at the door to get in, there’s an enormous line and when they get in, the vibe is wrong. (Who hasn’t had a moment where the party you went to was not as much fun as the preparty at your place?) Courtney is ready to give up and go home but they decide to go to the Sports Illustrated party. They arrive to a cluster of W stars standing outside, leaving because the party is emptying out. The music is bad. Williams is now determined to turn the night around. She says she’ll go to the DJ and get them to change the music. She gets right in the DJ’s ear. She is on him. Insistent. The bad DJ who is playing bad music at a bad party? Is Diplo. The man who in the past 24 hours had already DJ’ed in the Hamptons, flew to LA to see the Backstreet Boys and was now in Indianapolis. Williams has no idea who Diplo is. Diplo has no idea who Williams is or that she has thousands of people watching. I’ll let Williams tell the rest of the story (from Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe’s podcast).
Everything the Studbudz did was cinema and made it abundantly clear that the WNBA is the better league as a group.
A few conclusions about All Star Weekend:
Basketball is the last thing on the players’ minds
The All Stars (and many other players) have significant media and brand responsibilities while they are there. Williams was booked in non-stop media on Friday, and not always in interviews. Lots of it was filming 30 second spots for IG or TikTok where they had to play some game or answer trivia questions - it was relentless
The W players know each other and like each other and get along well despite rivalries on the court
If the league wants the basketball to be better at the All Star Game, they must change how the players are compensated and what is at stake. All Star players received $2575 to appear at the game, with no difference for winners and losers. In the NBA, players on the winning team get $125,000 and the losing team gets $50,000 each.
Pay the players.
I’m writing this on the last day of Disability Pride Month, while multiple mass disabling events are escalating and it feels endless, the way that disabled people are simultaneously personally responsible for becoming disabled and also responsible for solving the problem and fixing the systems while being forbidden to say that the systems are the problem and the latest executive order talks about institutionalizing the mentally ill and we know that the definition of mentally ill would include most of us, by which I mean you too and talking to a friend tonight I said if I were ever honest when people asked how I was I would include that I’m constantly in a stage of fury at how the world actively conspires to disable people so that it will feel easier to abandon them and Gaza and Sudan and Congo and Covid are mass disabling events and can you call something an event when it is continuous and did you know that people’s disability claims are denied because they are seen smiling in public and if you apply for disability you should assume that a private investigator is outside your door to see when you leave and how often and whether you were smiling or not while you were out and Imani Barbarin’s upcoming book is called “If I Were You, I’d Kill Myself” and I laughted when I saw that title because I can’t tell you how many times someone has said that to my face, sometimes meaning it as a complement and in spite of their words, I have always been on the side of living, never once been in doubt, and when I mention that it’s Disability Pride month, someone always says, why would you be proud to be disabled and my only response is to stare at them hoping my eyes can burn their ableism out or failing that, their vocal cords and to be clear, this isn’t a rant, but simply the foundation on which I stand, or the reality I have to hold or the Both/And of life.
Adrienne Rich says it better.
All that said, the Disability Cultural Center in San Francisco opened its physical space this month, (the virtual space has been open for a year) and they are a joy and a delight and a constant lesson in accessibility. Another world is possible and sometimes it exists.
The Timeout Books (the books I read during commercials and halftimes)
I haven’t been reading during games - I’ve been knitting and taking an online drivers ed class to lower my car insurance, so here’s a picture of Josh Jackson and Katie Holmes instead.
A Game At A Time Spotify Playlist (the songs that run through my head while writing this)