Home-Court Advantage? WNBA Teams Still Booted from Arenas During Playoffs

Home-Court Advantage? WNBA Teams Still Booted from Arenas During Playoffs

By Tamryn Spruill Every year, a WNBA team or two loses its home arena during the playoffs: the time of year a team needs familiarity and consistency most. This season, the No. 5 Phoenix Mercury will play their first-round single-elimination game against the No. 8 New York Liberty at Grand Canyon University (GCU) Arena because of what the team is calling a "scheduling conflict" at the team's home arena. But WNBA teams getting booted from their home courts is nothing new. A university arena is not the same as a professional one, especially for the Mercury, who pride themselves on the facilities they’ve installed for the team’s myriad working mothers. GCU is only a 20-minute drive from the Mercury’s usual home court, at the Footprint Center, so their X-Factor fan base is likely to turn out in droves. But close proximity to a substitute arena isn’t always the case. In 2018, the Washington Mystics were booted from Capital One Arena and forced to play three playoff games at Charles E....

Layshia Clarendon Leads the Fight in the War Being Waged on Transgender Americans

Layshia Clarendon Leads the Fight in the War Being Waged on Transgender Americans

By Evan Cooper Emerging as a force to be reckoned with against gender identity discrimination, Layshia Clarendon, the WNBA’s first openly trans and non-binary player, is “at the forefront of the league’s groundbreaking social justice efforts and is tasked with engaging community conversations, advocacy and education on important topics surrounding social justice.” For all of their grassroots efforts in challenging policy and culture around gender in sports, Clarendon has been nominated for the Muhammad Ali Sports Humanitarian Award. Yet, in the same breath that we celebrate the joy of gender euphoria for countless people challenging the gender binary, we must band together and fight the intentional harms caused to our transgender, non-binary and gender non-conforming siblings.  There is no federal law that classifies transgender people as a protected class, requiring protections from very real discrimination and the dangers it provokes. We are left to our own resources to maneuver...