Turnabout Is Fair Play

Image:  Facebook

As a Seattle Storm season-ticket holder, I went to a lot of games at Climate Pledge Arena this summer. A young lesbian couple usually sat in front of me. They were a physically affectionate duo, free to be their gay selves in the lesbian-positive WNBA atmosphere.

They must've sold their tickets for a game at the end of the season, because that night a straight couple occupied those seats, also busily caressing and kissing.

A heterosexual display at a WNBA game. I thought DEI was dead.

Twine Whine

Image by Raquel Candia from Pixabay

I'm interrupting this period of general American calamity to bring you my moment of specific lesbionic misery.

Three players on my WNBA team have now torn their ACLs and will be out for the season, before the season's even begun.

All right, it doesn't rate compared to the demise of due process, civil rights, and checks and balances. But I was relying on a strong Seattle Storm team to serve as my essential distraction from Trump World.

Those players' knees have no regard for my mental health.

Hoop and Hate

Image:  Facebook

If the New York Liberty win today's Game 4 of the WNBA finals, they'll capture the franchise's first league title, overcoming a resilient Minnesota Lynx team, the defensive player of the year . . . and homophobic death threats.

I don't think Vegas oddsmakers figured in the latter.

After Game 1 of the series, Marta Xargay, wife of Liberty superstar Breanna Stewart, received anti-gay death threats via email. The couple alerted the league, and the NYPD is investigating.

Minnesota beat New York in Game 1, in part because Stewart blew a free throw at the end of regulation, which makes me suspect the email is more likely to have come from Montauk than Minnetonka.

Social media abuse against WNBA players, much of it racial, rose this season. "Why is this happening? Because we are the most inclusive league in all of professional sports and I can say that with confidence. But there’s no place for hate," said Stewart.

Apparently receiving death threats against your family can focus a person, as Stewart had a monster Game 2. But as motivators go, that one purely sucks.