Caitlin Clark Is the Rightful Winner of the 2021 ESPY Award for Best College Female Athlete

Caitlin Clark Is the Rightful Winner of the 2021 ESPY Award for Best College Female Athlete

By Tamryn Spruill When Paige Bueckers accepted her 2021 ESPY Award for Best College Female Athlete, she notably dedicated the honor to Black women in sports and beyond who systematically and routinely face unprecedented levels of discrimination and erasure.  But it was Bueckers, not another female athlete, who brought the award home that night.  Even before the 2020-21 NCAA season, Bueckers had been pegged as the next big phenom to play for the storied UConn Huskies. The No. 1 overall recruit out of Hopkins, Minn., Bueckers was expected to be Breanna Stewart incarnate, only in guard form. So, with the storyline decided, ESPN as the primary leader of sports conversations, focused on Bueckers to the exclusion of all others, just as they did with Sabrina Ionescu in 2019-20.  Bueckers is an immensely talented basketball player, but she is young, unseasoned and not WNBA-ready despite last season’s chatter indicating otherwise. Beyond that, she did not dominate for the Huskies or...

Digging into USA Basketball’s and the WNBA’s Blind Loyalty to a Bird and a Bull

Digging into USA Basketball’s and the WNBA’s Blind Loyalty to a Bird and a Bull

By Tamryn Spruill USA Basketball’s announcement of the roster heading to the Tokyo Olympics next month set off a firestorm on social media and beyond about decisions many consider to be dripping in favoritism towards players who came out of the Geno Auriemma’s Connecticut program; Auriemma served as head coach of the USA Basketball women’s national team until 2018, when Dawn Staley took over. And now, with Sue Bird, 40, and Diana Taurasi, 39, chasing their fifth gold medals dating back to the 2000 Sydney Olympics, USA Basketball and the WNBA are eagerly pushing this narrative while choosing to gloss over the facts of: a) Bird’s and Taurasi’s beat-up, aging bodies and the liabilities they potentially pose for Team USA’s quest for a seventh consecutive gold medal and b) the players not named Bird and Taurasi who yet again have been edged out of an opportunity to represent the U.S. on the world stage. The complaints are not just about age. Sylvia Fowles, for example, is 35 and playing...