WNBA enjoying an all-time high
With the selection of Caitlin Clark first overall and a star-studded draft that also included Stanford center Cameron Brink, Tennessee standout Rickea Jackson, South Carolina center Kamilla Cardoso, and LSU trend-setter Angel Reese, the WNBA is enjoying unprecedented popularity.
Clark’s Indiana Fever will play 36 games on national television, and their road game against the Washington Mystics has just been moved to Capital One Arena, home of the Wizards. Reese and Cardoso, once fierce rivals in the Southeastern Conference, will be teammates in Chicago, while Brink and Jackson will help rebuild a once-proud Los Angeles Sparks franchise.
The future is bright, with players such as Paige Bueckers coming in next year, and Southern Cal’s JuJu Watkins and Notre Dame’s Hannah Hidalgo toward the end of the decade.
“If we didn’t do what we did in the bubble in 2020 to have a season, I’m not sure we’re at this moment with these household names coming into our league, because there might have been nowhere to play had we been out of the sports landscape for 20 months,” commissioner Cathy Engelbert said. “We certainly wouldn’t have the momentum we all have in women’s basketball.
“I’m thrilled that we have household names coming in. We need to market around that. In fact, one of the things we did for the first time ever was we did a media ad buy from the Sweet 16 into the [NCAA] final. It was an investment in bringing that NCAA viewer into the WNBA, and we hadn’t done it before.”
Engelbert has boosted the league’s marketing model since taking over. The on-court product has never been better and now there is an influx of players with established brands.
Because of NIL and the soaring popularity of college basketball, players such as Clark, Reese, and Cardoso come into the WNBA as known entities. By comparison, this coming NBA Draft will be filled with lesser-known names, unknown international prospects, and one-and-dones.
“We’ve increased our marketing budget significantly for this year to capture just that, and I think we’re already seeing the returns on that,” Engelbert said. “We had 98 percent positive sentiment on this ad campaign. I mean, that’s the W. We’re really excited about that.
“Just continuing to have our player marketing agreement with players that we’re paying in the offseason to market on behalf of the W. We’re trying a lot of different things now that we have some of that financial capital and human capital, because you need human capital, too, to grow. So we’ve been able to hire a lot of people in our marketing group, and we had very few when I came in. We have a chief marketing officer now and we have the power of the NBA brand, too, helping us market. It’s all shaping up to continue to take these household names and build new household names.”
And it’s only going to get better. “I just want to step back and say how blessed I feel to be in women’s basketball because it’s not just this class, it’s next year, the year after. I mean, Juju Watkins and Hannah Hidalgo, Kiki Rice, Paige Bueckers. The list goes on,” Engelbert said. “I feel very blessed that we’ll have a long run at marketing household names and building rivalries in this league.”
Layups
The NBA coaching carousel is spinning, and it could affect the Celtics. The Nets made the first move by hiring Kings assistant Jordi Fernandez, considered one of the top head coaching prospects, for their position. He edged former Bucks and Hawks coach Mike Budenholzer for the job. There are at least two remaining openings. In Washington, the Wizards are expected to begin a search after Wesley Unseld stepped down and Winchester native Brian Keefe took over as interim coach. And in Charlotte, Steve Clifford stepped down to accept a front office position. Celtics assistant Charles Lee is a top candidate for the Hornets job. Charlotte also has interviewed G League Stockton coach Lindsey Harding, the former Duke star who has become a fast-rising coach. Detroit, San Antonio, Portland, and Toronto, all of which finished in the lottery, are set in their coaching positions. The Pistons, however, are hiring a new president of basketball operations after owner Tom Gores apologized for their franchiseworst 14-win season. Troy Weaver will remain general manager but will work under the new hire. The Pistons have failed to meet expectations in recent years and waived former lottery pick Killian Hayes during the season. Gores has promised the fan base a major step forward in the coming years . . . The NBA named its 36 officials for the playoffs and Ashley Moyer-Gleich became the first female official since Violet Palmer more than a decade ago to be assigned to playoff games. The NBA chooses playoff officials on a grading system and Moyer-Gleich is considered a fast riser . . . The Hawks will have some decisions to make this offseason about the future of the Trae Young-Dejounte Murray pairing. The consensus around the league is the Hawks are a better team without Young and should move the All-Star guard in the offseason. All of the Hawks’ core is signed beyond 2023-24, so they will get no cap relief this summer. Moving Young will be difficult because he’s owed $138 million over the next three seasons. And while he led Atlanta to an improbable appearance in the Eastern Conference finals three years ago, the club has not had much recent success, losing in the first round of the playoffs last year to the Celtics and then getting blown out of the Play-In Tournament by the Bulls. Young is a defensive liability and the question is whether he can be the best player on a contending team.