RebKell's Junkie Boards

[QMcCall3]

[Sass]

What a great bunch of responses so far. That's what I do love about this board, is the sheer number of fans and thus the variety in experiences and perspectives.

Red, I am going to send for that report - thanks for the link.

pilight, I hear where you're coming from. Just so you know, my question wasn't in the spirit of justifying our fanhood, but just asking what is it about this side of the game is more appealing than the men's side. Listening to men's bball fans talk about their teams and women's fans talk about theirs, I hear very different things. Just trying to get a better hold on what those differences are.

So far you all are far more egalitarian about the game than many men's basketball fans are. I still run into so much blatant bias against women's basketball - more than there should be for the late 00's, in my opinion.

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More high school team allegiances than can be believed
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He's the greatest of the greater
get it straight - he's great
- Run-DMC

[shotclock off]

Well, when I first started watching women's bball, I have to admit, I was repulsed. It wasn't an instantaneous love affair. This is why I have some sympathy, although fleeting, with people who express disgust with the women's game. That's just how I felt. To me it was slow and awkward, with lots of missed shots played by weird, misshapen, ugly looking women. Sorry to be so brutal, but that's how I felt.

Then for some reason, I watched a little more next year. My eyes must have gotten a little used to seeing really tall women cause they didn't look so bad. Then I noticed they were playing really hard. There was nothing delicate about it. That kind of amazed me. The sheer competitiveness intrigued me. Then I noticed that, at times, they could play really well. Over time, certain players grew on me and I kept coming back.

There is still way too much sloppy play for a professional league, it's a rare game that all four quarters are good, but at least part of that is due to exhaustion and scheduling. There aren't too many sports that the players don't get an off-season. With a sport as intense as bball, that's going have an effect. The first month of the WNBA season is actually what should be happening in training camp, if there was one. IMO, this is the most important thing they need to fix, the product itself, then you can figure out how to market it.

Ultimately, basketball is basketball and I've seen the play improve tremendously from the seven years ago I tuned in accidentally. For example, point guards have gone from being dribble machines that stay in the well defined role of setting up plays and that's it, to players that can set up other players, shoot a jumper, drive the lane, fake and pass out etc. A much more fluid and complicated role. Posts like Brunson are replacing the old posts that were slow, lumbering beasts. We're in another era of change now. Seeing incredible team chemistry combined with the increased athleticism and increased bball IQ is what keeps me excited. Dunking and the like is just the icing, not the cake.

BTW, I don't watch or care about college bball at all.

[QMcCall3]

[24duzitall]

[there are a large amount of gay women there.....and you can't tell by looking because a huge amount of gay women are drop dead gorgeous.....



wow, who knew?

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RIP my sweet boy Indi...my grumpy old man Charlie...precious Oliver and my sweet girl Faith

[Sass]

[Tiffany Jackson=future]

[MuneravenMN]

My Dad took me to both men and women's college games when I was younger and I learned early to appreciate both types of play. But the NBA has pretty much lost me as a fan. That whole Seattle Sonics debacle pretty much sealed the deal on how I feel about the NBA: The fans mean nothing to the NBA. It's all ego and money now.

In the WNBA the fans still matter.

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Winning takes talent; to repeat takes character.
--John Wooden

[QMcCall3]

[Str8_Butta]

[BCBG25]

Having experienced women's basketball boom in Brazil in the early 90's and watching legends Paula and (Hall of Famer) Hortencia Marcari win Pan-Ams and World titles was all I needed to get hooked.
Also, being almost 6 feet tall and not very good at volleyball, I had to do something with my spare time (and height), so I picked up a basketball and learned how to play.
The first I heard about the WNBA was when they toured Brazil in 1998 and I was interested at first, but only got into it in 2000 after attending my first ever Liberty game. I've always liked men's basketball, but watching the women play is somehow more fulfilling as a fan and former player.

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Kings of the World!

[jersey_stupka]

[PeachBasket]

I've always been a hoop junkie. I grew up listening to Johnny Most on the old Admiral desktop radio. Soon the addiction spread, to college and local HS hoops. Sometime in the late 80s, I pick up the paper just before the western Mass HS tournamnt begin, the Parade AAs have just been named. One of them is this kid I'd been reading about for a while, Travis Best at Central, so I decide I definitely have to get down to the tournament to check out Best. But the article also mentions a girl, a sophomore at the tiny little HS I graduated from, also a parade AA. I recognized her last name, had to be the kid sister of this guy who played at Southwick High a few years before, a 6-10 kid, so she came from a family with size. But Jason certainly wasn't on any AA lists, he wasn't even the best player on that SHS team, so I figured I'd go down to the tournament early to root for the Southwick girls and see why Jason Lobo's kid sister was a Parade AA. Uh, yeah. She in fact did have game. (Needless to say, so did Travis Best.) Anyway, after that tournament I made a point of getting to several Southwick gbb games the next two years. Here was someone that was going to put Southwick and SHS on the map, at my first love basketball, so who cares that she's a girl? It was natural to continue to follow her career after she went off to UConn, and this is where the cycle started to close for me. First I noticed that UConn played the kind of disciplined, fundamentally solid basketball I'd grown imagining in my head to Johnny Most's call, the kind of basktball Red Auerbach taught and that was conspicuously disappearing from the men's game in the era of the Detroit Bad Boys and Being Like Mike. Then I noticed it wasn't just UConn, but all the better wcbb programs played good sound fundamental bball, and my primary loyalty flipped at that point from mbb and the Celts to wbb andthe Huskies (though I admit this NBA season was a bit special, ahem). Along came the ABL, and the Blizzard played about 5 games a year at the Springfield Civic Center, which was about two blocks from where I lived at that time. Now I'm comfortably settled in as primarily a wbb fan, it fulfills my hoop junkie jonesing much better than the thoroughly kobefied NBA game ever can now.

[auntie]

My parents went to UCONN and still live in Connecticut. They started watching the Lady Huskies on CPTV during the R. Lobo years. My mom kept on talking about her and the game. I watched the NCAA championship and the Olympic championship games.

The day of the first Liberty home game I was a little depressed, so my husband suggested we go to MSG and to see the game. (Those were still the days when Knicks tickets were hard to come by.) We stood in line for a really long time and got seats way up in the rafters. And I got hooked. (My husband only partially regrets taking me to the game.)

I love women's basketball because it is a team sport. I like the WNBA because it is small enough to know something about most of the players. I watch some NCAA ball and it is fun seeing players I watched when they were in college. And UCONN is my team since I went to a Division III school with an excellent academic reputation.

Although I want the WNBA to do well, I do hope that it doesn't get too big and becomes harder to follow.

So I guess you have figured out that I am a straight woman. I am 49, white, Jewish and childfree.

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A woman's place is in the paint--Another artist for Liberty.

[CRASH]

[squints]

I don't really remember but my dad told me I was watchign a knicks game when I was about 4 years old. My dad told me that in a few months you would see girls playing basketball on tv just like the Knicks and I guess that was all I needed to hear.

[jaye]

[An_nic]

I just love the game of basketball. I can't stand to watch the NBA but absolutely love the college game and started to really follow that after Tenn. went back to back in the 90's (yes, Sass I was once a Tenn. fan). I needed something to fill the void in the Summer and found the WNBA, which I follow more than college ball sometimes.

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"To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift." - Steve Prefontaine

"Our greatest fear is not that we are in adequate, our greatest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure." - Nelson Mandela

[Queenie]

I wasn't really into sports as a kid. I mean, I watched playoffs and shit- my earliest sports memories are of an interrupted Knicks game in 1994 and the Yankees-Mariners series on NBC at some point.

My mom, on the other hand... Rangers season tickets, tailgating at Giants Stadium, three generations of pinstripes- sports runs in her blood. And when she heard about the WNBA, it was something she wanted to support, both as a sport and as a cause. I was a hard sell. (Stop laughing.) She made me watch the first game in 1997. She brought me to the first game at the Garden. And the magic happened.

Maybe it was the fact that they won. Maybe it was Timmsy. Maybe it was the teamwork. Maybe it was the brunette Rebecca-never-Becky whose jersey I received as a gift ten years ago. But by 1999 I was following things enough to suggest matchups (I suggested two games to her, the Utah game where Venus Lacy bitchslapped Debbie Black [because I was sure Utah was going to get its act together with the talent they had picked up], and the Houston game where Coquese Washington came up big [because, hello, Houston]), and by 2000 we had season tickets.

And then I found a family of sorts. The Garden is my summer home; the Usual Suspects who hang around it are the cousins and distant relatives I never had. The WNBA, and then college ball (yeah, I went in reverse from the usual, discovering the college game because OMG I neeeeeeeeeeded a fix in the winter), brought me into new communities. It got me one of my best friends, and good friends all over the country and the world. It got me a boyfriend, because I'm one of those women who got picked up at a Liberty game.

Though I've only been on the court for fan events, and the jersey I wear has someone else's name on it, I consider myself a Libkid as much as the thirteen on the roster, because I've grown up with this team, and this league. And someday, whether it's a daughter of my own blood or a neighbor kid, I hope to raise a Libkid of my own and tell her the stories from the beginning.

Demo data: middle-class white female, college educated, New York born and raised, and, as it were, draft class of 2006.

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Ardent believer in the separation of church and stadium.

[NYL_WNBA_FAN]

My first game was Charlotte vs. NY in '97, about ten games into the season. I had a grad class and got to the game late. I've never been late to a game since. First thing I saw was Spoon taking the ball and going all the way with it. I was hooked right away. The thing that separates women's ball from men's ball in my opinion is the execution required to succeed. Yes, execution is required in any type of basketball, but the women need it even more because they are less likely to be able to create their own shots without the benefit of lots of teamwork. That's why I like it so much. Every possession is a chess match in women's basketball, especially the WNBA. The talent is more evenly dispersed than in college, and usually teams can put 4 or 5 players on the court capable of doing at least some scoring. It leads to a wide variety of decision making based on matchups and how to exploit them to your advantage.

Besides the cerebral part of it, there's also the connection. Especially with the Lib since their history has been primarily about teamwork and hard work. The Lib normally field high-character teams. They're really easy to like. Willis has even grown on me as a result of what has evidently been work that she has put into it. It sounds a little sappy the way I put it I guess, but it really is a special thing. The way the players sacrifice for each other. The way that the bench players regularly cheer on the starters at their actual positions. This connection is just missing from other sports. Hockey is my second favorite sport, and compared to the WNBA, it's a distant second. I was so crushed when the Lib lost to Detroit in the playoffs last year that I couldn't move off my couch for about 30 minutes. Not even so much that they lost....but that it meant there wouldn't be any more games for a year. It's so much more than just a game...at least to me.

Oh...and...ear infection this week. Bad enough to barely make it out of bed Wednesday. But definitely nowhere near severe enough for me to even consider missing the game last night.

[Sass]

OK, there's identification, attachment, the love of team play. Great answers and great stories so far, y'all.

QMcCall3, there is a lot to tease out, isn't there.

Thanks to those who gave me their demographics. I will probably PM those of you who didn't and get that info from you in confidence.

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More high school team allegiances than can be believed
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He's the greatest of the greater
get it straight - he's great
- Run-DMC

[eclair]

[mercfan3]

My grandparents and father watch "the girls" (uconn) and I sat down and watched a game when I was 12...and I've been a fan ever since. (My first team I wated was the 2002 undefeated Uconn team) My favorite player at the time was Sue Bird, and so I followed her to the WNBA.

I watched women before I watched men, so I actually prefer "their game"

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“Anyone point out that a Donald Trump anagram is ‘Lord Dampnut’”- Colin Mochrie

[scullyfu]

i used to play at junior college waaay back when. i wasn't a very good dribbler, but i could play the defense, i was one of those ankle-biter types.

i went to one storm game in 2001, storm vs. sparks. omg, it was so bad, the sparks cleaned the floor with the storm led by a tall, lanky, brunette kid from australia. it was the only game i went to that year.

when sue bird was drafted in '02, i knew the name and her reputation, so i started going. i was amazed by what that young woman could do with a basketball! then to watch her and lj team up; it was phenomenal.

but, i must say, the one game that stood out for me that first year, was once again a sparks game. i bet sass and eclair can remember the situation. it was the mix-up between marciniak and byears.

mm on the floor after getting stomped on by tot jumps up and just gets in her face and had to be restrained by her teammates. well, i was hooked from that moment on. the balls out intensity and guts of that wee girl from ut was addictive. here were women who just played with all their heart and soul. they truly were athletes. they were getting banged up, sweating profusely and they didn't care. they were doing what they loved. who could possibly resist that?

and, of course, over the years, i've had the pleasure of watching lj and sue grow and development their games. there have been plenty of ups and downs, but that's just part of the game.

last year my vacation was built around the storm's eastern swing. i saw some terrific basketball as well as meeting and hanging out with a number of the new york contingency. its been said before, but the community of women's bb is a welcoming place. we all share a common bond that allows us to have a safe place to start with each other; it makes a real difference and allows us to discover and open up to people who share our interests, no matter where we all live.

to sum up, i just enjoy all aspects of the women's game: the commraderie, the physicality, and the chess game that is basketball.

sorry, sass, didn't mean to be so long-winded.

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i'll always bleed Storm green.

[CRASH]