Old-time sportswriter weighs in on Bueckers, Clark and the game
When the phone rang Monday night around 10, my son had a question. “Are you watching this crap?” he asked, referring to what he assumed would be my usual viewing practice — watching/suffering with the Boston Red Sox, who, at the time, were pounding the pathetic Oakland A’s (who maybe should be re-named the “F’s”).
“No,” came the reply from this old-time sportswriter. “I’m watching UCONN-USC. Women’s basketball.”
I would like to think that at my advanced age that’s a sign of wisdom. When I was growing up in New Hampshire, if someone had suggested I’d insist on watching two women’s basketball games instead of the Red Sox, I would not have seen that sea change coming.
Happily, and proudly, I can say now, my view of women’s sports changed once I started my career in the newspaper business. I always covered women’s sports (OK, I was a bit skeptical about women’s amateur golf, I admit), and took them seriously, even catching some crap from of my colleagues for assigning them to cover women’s games, too.
To me, a basketball purist who loved to watch the games the way the Boston Celtics always played, great passes, teamwork, hustle, smarts, it seemed to me that the women’s game continued to offer that style of basketball more and more as the years went on. I couldn’t care less if I ever saw another dunk. Or the other four players swing to one side of the floor so the man could work his stuff on the poor soul left to guard him, which seems to happen more and more in the NBA games I catch from time to time.
At its best, basketball can be the ultimate team game and the impact that one brilliant player can have, making all the other players better by their on-court presence is always fascinating. The two women players I got to watch that night, Paige Bueckers of Uconn and the amazing Caitlin Clark of Iowa — did exactly that; lift their squads to victory by finding ways to blend their own exceptional skills along with the talents and efforts from those around them.
What I loved about Larry Bird’s game, for example, was he made everyone else around him better. You can say the same for those two brilliant women athletes who led their teams to wins last night. I’ve been asking my friends, my lunch buddies, die-hard baseball and football fans, if they’ve been watching Caitlin Clark? To see a young woman thrust into a blinding national spotlight and handle herself with such grace and warmth off the floor and such unquenchable desire on the floor, such a brilliant player, you felt like you were seeing her sport move into a different era before your very eyes.
For Bueckers, finally back on the floor after some devastating knee injuries, she’s a silent assassin out there, leading a woefully shorthanded Uconn team with almost no bench help, none that play anyway, handling almost every minute at a breakneck pace, somehow, smartly holding it all together under the careful
direction of their legendary coach Geno Auriemma.
Nobody in the women’s game roots much for Uconn anymore. After 11 national titles, I get it. But when you have a team that had to cancel a game because they didn’t have enough eligible players due to injuries, finding a way to make it all the way to the Final Four, that’s a tribute to those young ladies and Auriemma’s coaching.
What I see in the women’s game and wish I saw more of in the men’s is teamwork, togetherness, unselfishness, a bond that you can feel, even watching
on TV many miles away. No showoff dunks or blocked shots up into the stands or midcourt poses. So when Friday night rolls around, when Paige squares off against Caitlin and the world shines a light on women’s basketball, there are those who’ll say it’s about time. Watching two of the best, players who learned so much from all those who came before and aim to surpass them, I say it’s just the right time. I’ll be watching. Hope you are, too. You’ll thank me later.