A Patriot Is Not a Weapon

I'm sorry I haven't been around at all, dear readers (if I had any). I did, in fact, write about Olympic basketball, a bit: a USA basketball player primer and a post about Team Spain. I also wrote about the WNBA brawl and made an analysis-free picture post. I've got a few more non-basketball posts at the Ladies... here. The offseason kills me bad. We're working on a NCAA preview, so I'll link to that once we get started.

Regarding this post, I can't seem to phrase what I'm trying to say correctly, but I'll work on it in future. I started writing it nearly a month ago and just finished it tonight.


A reporter on CNN held up Sarah Palin's high school basketball championship ball, and my heart dropped.

I'm generally happy with anything that brings basketball to the fore. But, in the way that a fan/player brawl does a league few favors, Palin's basketball experiences invite comparisons that I, personally, have no desire to hear.

I've read many people question why, if Palin was so good in high school, did she not play in college? This question, and this sudden interest in women's ball, reveal a lack of understanding of one of the largest and deepest disconnects between men and women in this country: athletics.



I'm not speaking in terms of play; a direct of comparison of men's and women's basketball is a subject for another post, but suffice it to say that the top levels of both can be comparable in skill and enjoyability. No: the difference lies not in the athletes themselves, apart from the obvious; the difference lies rather in how the two groups are treated.

A skilled female athlete, basketball or otherwise, can do well in high school. She can gain power over herself in a way few high school girls can, and power over others in a way few of those girls do: a high school's fans, after all, are guaranteed. And the most socially powerful girls in a high school generally are athletes in some form or another. But there is no prestige waiting in the higher levels for a moderately skilled female player, whether in soccer, softball or, more to the point, basketball. A woman that stars at the highest college level - UConn or Tennessee, still - will receive as much media coverage as a player for a small mid-major; if she's lucky, she may even get as much air time as a mid-level professional golfer.

Put simply, there is no reason for a woman to play college ball but for love of the game.

The pro prospects are poor. The odds of making it to the WNBA are, simply by virtue of the number of teams, a third of the tiny number that the NBA can offer. Once there, the women can aspire to reach the upper middle class, and perhaps have their games broadcast on national television two or three times a season. The only money and prestige to be had are in far-off lands, playing on the dimes of Turkish shipping magnates and Russian oil billionaires. Money is money, and there's lots of it for skilled women players overseas, but what American really wants to be a hero to little Russian girls everywhere? Basketball is America's sport, and that WNBA Logo is red, white, and blue. But it lacks the weight of its older brother, and there, then, lies the crux of the matter.



There are ways - not many, but several - for young women to gain power in this country. All of them are valid, and the means to gain power are always complex. For all but a few, perhaps three women at a time, that power does not and can not come through sports. That is the deepest difference, not talent or skill or drive or even watchability, between men's and women's sports in this country: fame. Fame, and the power it brings; fame, and the power to bring it to oneself, and the power to keep it.

No. If a woman is attractive, intelligent, and athletic, she is far more likely to use mostly the first route than the second or third to gain fame, and therefore power. And well within her rights to do so, and understandable; after all, as I said, women can only easily become powerful in a limited number of ways, and the power of attraction is the easiest of them all to gain.

Which brings us back to Sarah Palin, and the choice to play or not play basketball at the four colleges she attended to gain her BS degree in journalism. She is not, of course, an ideal example of this phenomenon; there was no WNBA then, and presumably even more stigma attached to being a female athlete, so her case isn't directly comparable to a modern player. It's also, presumably, difficult to maintain an athletic career during a tumultuous academic career. However, she is an excellent example of the beauty-intelligence-athleticism triptych (though the second may be in question, and the third is only partly verified). She initially chose beauty over intelligence, in her brief but seminal turn as an Alaskan beauty queen; it can be argued that, once she actually started a career, it played the largest role.

Famously, Michelle Robinson's brother Craig told her that a person's character could be judged by what kind of player they were. So, when she got serious with young Barack Obama, she asked her brother to play a game of pick-up ball with him, and the rest is history. A person's character can be revealed by how they play basketball - but a person's character is also revealed by the choices they make.



Any woman can be beautiful, or at least focused on her own appearance. It's a peculiar aspect of our current society: that women are allowed to be beautiful and sexual in a way that men generally aren't, yet, at the same time, they can not not be beautiful. To balance the two impulses - to desire and enjoy being pretty, while chafing at the societal need to be - is a daily fact of life for most American women. To be intelligent, to be talented, to be beautiful; all are valid, and matter. Yet all of us, man or woman, are people first, and attractive and sexual beings second - a fact that should not have to be stated.

But as we watch Sarah Palin flounder prettily in the national limelight, that long-ago choice to gain power via her skills of attraction, not her intelligence or her athletic skill, takes on new meaning. And as questions about her judgment justly arise, those early choices - to trade being an athlete for trying to become a sportscaster, to trade skill with a ball for hunting with an assault rifle and a helicopter - may reveal more about her character than they would for most young women.

Where Are The Songs of Spring?

It's been a while, I know. I'm not dead, at least not all the way. Two reasons I haven't been here much - one, I've been outstandingly busy, moreso than I've been in my life; and two, I've sadly found little transcendence in this year's playoffs. The East has been a swirling nexus of suck, outside of - oddly enough - those Scrappy Pistons and Sixers. The Suns were bounced from the first round, but more importantly, they are not the Suns we knew. The Nuggets were nothing they were supposed to be, and now they may not be much of anything at all. The old order is failing, and the new is forming its own path; in the meantime, we have the Celtics and the Cavs going seven games, and unjustifiable first-round sweeps.

Where, truly, is the inspiration? Where can one invoke the sublime where there is none? It is springs like this that reveal the lie of ascribing meaning to a game, a team, a player, a series. At least, that is what I am desperate to disbelieve. Perhaps I, and others as basketball fans, were spoiled by Golden State; maybe we were misled into expecting high creation, grand opera - Philip Glass, perhaps - at every basketball game. Maybe we were made to have our hearts broken by loss - Nash - and frustration - Melo. But, maybe next year's Rookie-Sophomore game will shake the word, metaphorically speaking. Maybe, or maybe undeniably, the future will answer every question and satisfy every need; the future will bring us new blood and new ways of seeing, maybe new ways of being. Yet, now, this year, my only hope resides in the New Orleans Hornets.

I have waited too long to write as much as should be written about this team. In 24 minutes of basketball, they will either be into an epic matchup with the Lakers, or out of the playoffs - and if it's the later, maybe so will I. But I believe. Despite it all, damnit, I believe.

My belief may have to wait. But in the meantime? Candace Parker had herself an epic game of historic proportions. Or maybe it was an historic game of epic proportions? Either way, it was an epic game, or at least an epic second half. And, even as just the opening game of the season, it was played with more desperation and desire to win than, say, six of those Celts/Cavs games. It was amazing. I'm glad I, at least, will have great basketball to watch this summer, even if most people will only see what they play in Beijing.

(As an addendum to this: oh, fuck you, Tony Kornheiser. I used to like watching PTI. But then, professional women's basketball is "a cute little summer league" and Parker's historic game was "nice". I can't even muster up anger over this, just sadness and disgust. No wonder people don't like you, Tony Kornheiser. My irritation has been building, but this caps it. You're a sad example of your generation. And you, Wilbon, if you like women's basketball so much, how about you stop talking about the "ugly uniforms", and start defending its validity as a sport against an old bag like Kornheiser? I think that question answers itself.)

"Any Girl Can Be Pretty. It Takes A Real Woman To Play Basketball."

That's what my neighbor said to his baby sister while we were watching the women's Final Four games two days ago. At fourteen, my neighbor, Bill, is 6'4" and averages fifteen and eight per. His sister, Sarah, is four, adorable, and clearly well on her way to breaking hearts in a few years. If the height of her mother, aunts and brother is any judge, she's also on her way to being over six feet tall. And there's nothing Bill wants more for her than to be the next Candace Parker.

Obviously, this kid Bill and I both love basketball - he's one of the few people I can watch, talk about, and play it with. His coach wants him to watch college ball, but we both prefer the pros, and we both love women's basketball. Though it would be tempting to say so, considering his age and maturity level, he doesn't actually like it for the cute tall girls (although I'm sure that's a part of it). Rather, he likes it for the same reasons I do: that it's like watching four guards and a small forward play, that at its best it's fast and lethal, that they beat the everloving crap out of each other with nary a foul to be called. In fact, we spent a lot of the summer watching WNBA games and telling Sarah about the players and the game. I love women's basketball, and the nearest teenaged boy to me loves it – so, I wondered, why do so many people not like it? Or, more often, not care?

The first impulse of a basketball fan, in this case, would be to wonder what the women's game lacks in terms of the men's. Well, dunks, obviously. Though a few college and pro women can dunk, one could count them in single digits – not a plus if one is a big fan of people smacking the rim with their hands. So yes, there's that. The women are shorter than the men – see the above bit about four guards and a forward – and generally a little less athletic, as it is in, you know, life. The rules aren't quite the same; the women's pro game is a bit shorter, the shot clock is longer, the ball's an inch (!) smaller. But other than that, what else is different? Ultimately, not much.



At the highest level, the shooting percentages between the men and the women are essentially the same. You'll see as many high-pressure threes, last second shots, beautiful fadeaways, and as much violent play – remember, no charge circle in women's ball. You'll see a lot less flopping, since there's not really a point to it; the refs rarely call fouls in most cases anyway. With fewer teams, there's harsher competition, with little difference in talent and skill between the team with the best record and the team in last place. No. There must be some other problem going on here.

Now, I am admittedly young, but I've had little occasion to worry about misogyny in my life. I never had to; I've always been the type that people dislike based on me, not on my genitalia. But as I get older and have more experience with people I don't know, a lot of things have come to disturb me about the perception and treatment of women in our world. Although the treatment of women is important to me, it's a topic for another day; instead, I will here concern myself with the perception of women, in media, culture and everyday life, in regards to basketball.

Most sports fans are, obviously, white males. Conveniently enough, most of my friends have been white males, and sports fans since I was about fourteen, so I have some experience with the general mentality we're talking about here. I hesitate to generalize about any group of people, particularly when they make up a lot of my potential audience; it's a habit I dislike in others, and not one I want to cultivate. So when I talk about sports fans from here on, please assume it to indicate the negative majority, the most but not all, if you will.

This is what I think is the main reason for such disproportionate disinterest in women's basketball: it's simply too difficult to develop interest in the game when a viewer is preoccupied with the fact that the players are girls. That's an oversimplification in terms, but it's what I think is true; the average sports fan watching is thinking not about the game the women are playing, but instead about their faces and hairstyles and tattoos, their femininity or lack thereof, their attractiveness or lack thereof, the probable lesbians in the stands, whether the players are lesbians, whether it makes him gay to think the players are hotter than the cheerleaders...it's no wonder the average viewer can't concentrate on the game.



Therefore, I think the problem lies not with the players, not with the game, and not even with the aforementioned average fans. Rather, I think the blame belongs with the usual targets in matters such as these - nebulous entities like mass media, cultural norms, and social and familial influences. Our entire lives, certain things are sublimated into our collective consciousness: what women should be like, what men should be like, what is important in life to both or either gender. These ideas and implications are easy to name. Men should be strong and hard-hearted, and funny, and simple minded. They must be single-minded, too – nothing is more important to a man than sex, am I right? Preferably with women. You don't want to appear at all feminine. No homo, man. There's not much worse than being girly. And women – there's nothing more important, more vital, to a woman than being pretty. For a lot of girls, it's their greatest goal in life. For most of the rest, it's something that hovers in the back of the mind, a worry that never quite goes away – do I look pretty? Do the people around me think I'm attractive? Girls are soft, sweet, and pretty, or they kind of fail at life. Yet, at the same time, femininity is still a negative for men, and masculinity a positive for women: She's got real balls. She thinks like a man. He's such a pussy. What a little bitch that guy is. As my friend succinctly and effectively put it: "It's good to love vagina. It's terrible to have one."

I should make it clear that I think these unfortunate "facts" of life are degrading and limiting for men and women both, and created as much by women as by men. I also think that they are the cause, directly or indirectly, for the general lack of interest in women's basketball, and women's sports in general. Think about it – what are the most popular women's sports? Yeah. Tennis and figure skating. The ones with miniskirts and make-up and, don't forget, white girls. Don't get me wrong, I like girls in miniskirts and make-up plenty – more so than the purely heterosexual among us, I'm sure. But before I go into a digression I'll regret, let me make my point: women that are strong and skilled and focused on something other than romance – masculine, in other words – are easier to digest when they are placed in a feminine and girlish context. It's easy to admire a girl's athleticism and speed when you have the opportunity – are invited – to also admire her legs and ass and upper chest. It's a bit more difficult to perform the necessary compartmentalization when the girls are dressed the same as the boys, and play the same game as the boys, and are strong, tall* and muscular and don't have flowing tresses and legs bare to the crotch. Without this compartmentalization, the average viewer can't watch the game; he, or she, can't separate the players from the game, because there is too much dissonance between the way the players as women should be and the way the players are.

All these pictures are of Candace Parker because one can't talk about the sport, and its relations to feminine ideals, without talking about Candace. Or rather, one could let pictures say their words instead. The WNBA draft is later today, and Candace will be picked first by the LA Sparks. Ask yourself: do the media, and maybe you, care about her so much because she's possibly the best to ever play the game? Or because she's that talented and also quite gorgeous? Maybe it's okay for a girl to play better than most men, but only as long as she's also prettier than most women.

I've been wanting to write this for a while, but was inspired to do so today because of the juxtaposition of two things that happened on Tuesday: the women's NCAA championship game, and this post over at Deadspin. I like basketbawful and Matt, and I know it's humor – but something about incredibly talented women playing basketball at the highest college level, combined with those five inexpensive young ladies as the only mention of women+basketball on Deadspin. . . well. It made me want to create the big teal deer you see before you. Hey, you know? Here's a hot basketball player.



As a brilliant writer once said, "BOOBS. BOOBS! HOLY SHIT BOOBS." Lauren Jackson boobs, to clarify.

*Maria Sharapova is 6'2".