My experience in the United States was, that nobody really cares about basketball – well, girls basketball of course. If you are familiar with US television you know that there is national TV like ABC and pay TV like ESPN. If a sports event is really important, you will see it on ABC – like football or the NBA finals.
So what do you think? Where can you follow the WNBA finals? The deciding game 5 between the Detroit Shocks and the Phoenix Mercury? I am sure you know by now that it won’t be on ABC and you are right when you think they won’t show the girls on ESPN either. It is more important to see who makes it to the Baseball playoffs by winning the wild card race.
Now why should we in Europe care about the WNBA and the finals, if the mother land of basketball is not interested?
Over the past years the WNBA teams followed the NBA and imported more and more players to the three month long season in the US. Players from France, Greece and other European nations made it to the top league in the world. On the other hand every year the best WNBA players like Cappie Pondexter, Sue Bird or Lauren Jackson join the best clubs in Europe to make some big money.
As soon as you hear the word money you can be sure that they must be worth it. So somehow girls basketball can’t be that boring or bad, right?
I did watch every single playoff game that was on TV in the US and I must say it isn’t boring. The girls fight, the girls shoot and the girls run – especially the Phoenix Suns Mercury. Somehow it is funny that the girls team of Phoenix prefers the same system like the men’s team – run and gun! But they must have done something better since they are the WNBA Champions 2007 now.
If you should be interested in girls basketball make sure you follow the European Championship in Chieti, Italy starting soon. You probably won’t see any American WNBA stars but Phoenix game winner Cappie Pondexter for example will play in Italy this season.
So I don’t want to hear the US National Team complaining about to many games – these girls play 12 months a year to make not even 10% what an average NBA player makes.
Leave a Reply