News of the Mercury’s win in Game 3 despite Brittney Griner’s injury-related absence appeared on the SportsCenter ticker forty minutes after the confetti fell and the championship trophy was awarded. ESPN’s coverage was a short video montage made up primarily of photographic stills.

ESPN’s delayed and infuriatingly paltry coverage of the 2014 WNBA Finals championship game inspired my decision to pause my career in academia and tip off one in sports journalism.

When the NBA moved the All-Star Game from Curry’s hometown of Charlotte in protest over North Carolina’s discriminatory HB2 law, the athlete had little to say–until this article quickly went viral, tallying more than a million views (the most in site history).

Golden State Warriors star Stephen Curry issued the more inclusive statement after the NCAA also withdrew events from North Carolina in protest of laws violating the human rights of trans people. “I’m all for equal and fair rights and treatment for everybody,” Curry said.

Swish Appeal, a women’s basketball site, hired me as editor-in-chief. That made me the first woman, Black woman, and queer woman to hold the position.

I spun the messy Twitter thread into an article about WNBA players competing overseas in the offseason to supplement their salaries, and the potential dangers they face when those countries are run by fascist or dictatorial regimes. Editors at several publications either did not respond to the pitch or declined to publish it.

The Los Angeles Sparks announced the hiring of Derek Fisher as the team’s new head coach.

“[A] consistent column focusing on the WNBA is not something I want to pursue right now,” he also wrote in response to my email calling on the publication to increase coverage of the women’s league and at minimum greenlight a column. I clapped back at his response.

The sentence I wrote was not the one that was published. The Athletic editor changed “tender” to “soft” – apparently unaware of the term “tender-headed,” thus, my very very intentional use of the word.

Statistics and other details in this article became national talking points.

The WNBA and WNBPA announced a new CBA that includes provisions for retiring athletes to access post-playing coaching, front office, and media opportunities.

In my article on Zia Cooke, the freshman phenom of the South Carolina Gamecocks, the Athletic editor deleted this quote from the athlete’s mother. I argued for the sentence to be reinstalled.

The police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in 2020 changed the cultural narrative. My reputation for longform reporting on complex issues popularized me with editors. I would spend three seasons reporting solely on social justice issues, and violence. As of 2024, I have not fully recovered from the toll this triggering work took on my overall health.

The WNBA extended to me the great honor of writing the exclusive that debuted the features of the league’s season of social justice advocacy.

Originally slated for 2022 publication, this project has faced many setbacks, from publishing industry stuff to personal tragedies and hardships. I remain thankful that my editor and agent have not given up on COURT QUEENS, an unlikely acquisition. And without Toni Morrison’s famous ethos, I would not have mustered the derring-do to write a first-of-its-kind book on the WNBA.

Judges’ comment: “This commentary picks an intriguing subject — two WNBA athletes who skip a season to pursue social justice work — and delves deep into their motives while putting their actions in historical context, with references to John Lewis and Lincoln at Gettysburg. Great work.”

The decision was a slap in the face to Black women who bore the brunt of the WNBA’s social justice season. It also exposed flagrant media bias and the shortcomings of white allyship, which I spoke to Dawn Ennis about in her reporting for Forbes.

The Sun in its promotion of Jones’s standout season riffed on the iconic Cover Girl ads. The Athletic editor in 2019 removed the cosmetic company’s name from one of my articles, confirming my previously unstated theory that the media covering the WNBA lags two to five years behind the work I’ve attempted to publish.

By the end of the year, satellite imagery and other sources showed Russian forces enroute to Ukraine accompanied by missiles and other weapons of war.

The New York Times reported that Brittney Griner was arrested in a Moscow airport enroute to play for UMMC Ekaterinburg during the WNBA offseason. After the Times‘ report, it was revealed that Griner had been in detainment for three weeks. Those in Griner’s circle, from the league to her management team, thus, were abiding a potentially costly silence.

Lauren Manis, a third-round pick in the 2020 WNBA Draft, did not make a team’s final roster cut and began her professional playing career in Hungary: a country ruled by strongman Viktor Orbán. The team fulfilled its promise of housing players by placing them in a forest campground.

Players who dedicated the 2020 WNBA season to social justice initiatives – #SayHerName, in particular – were suddenly silent on Brittney Griner. I recognized they were probably scared to make a wrong move. But I also knew through researching this topic for years – for articles that editors declined to publish — that silence would not help Griner. After gaining clearance from a WNBA spokesperson, I started a petition and began saying Griner’s name – as a civic duty motivated by a sense of moral obligation.

Red Bull needed to delay publication of this feature pending Ogunbowale’s safe return to the U.S. from Russia, where she had been playing in the WNBA offseason. She played in Kursk, for the Dynamo, a city in Western Russia less than 100 miles from Ukraine by car. Amid Russia’s preparations for war, Kursk’s geographic proximity to Ukraine was a relevant detail that had to be deleted prior to publication to fit the words on the magazine’s printed pages.

UNFINISHED BUSINESS, an Alison Klayman film (Motto Pictures, 2022) debuted at Tribeca Film Festival. The film’s theatrical run began at Brooklyn Academy of Music in May 2023. Its television debut was on Mother’s Day, on ESPN. Itnow streams on  Amazon Prime.

Sports reflect society. In the WNBA, Black women historically have been kept on the bottom rung