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      As W.N.B.A. Players Call for Expansion, League Says Not Now

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      Many players and fans want bigger rosters and more teams, but the W.N.B.A. said it can’t “expand for expansion’s sake” without the money to support it.On Oct. 17, Lexie Brown became a W.N.B.A champion. She and the Chicago Sky defeated the Phoenix Mercury to win the first title in franchise history. Yet, four months prior, Brown was sitting at home wondering if she would ever find her way back into the league.Brown expected to play for the Minnesota Lynx during the 2021 season, but the Lynx waived her on April 17. Days later, she arrived in Chicago for training camp.“You have to deal with things like that,” Brown said. “Keep your mental, stay professional, stay ready for your number to be called.”The Sky cut Brown at the close of training camp in May, signed her again, cut her again, then signed her for the remainder of the season on June 14.“It’s been a very hard last few months for me personally,” Brown said in June, “but I think that Chicago is where I wanted to be. And even though it took a lot of nonsense for me to end up on Chicago, I’m really happy to be here.”The hassle can pay off — Brown did win a championship, after all — but it can take its toll.Each season, players are caught in a revolving door of contracts for 144 W.N.B.A. roster spots. Many people inside and outside the league believe now is the time to expand team rosters or teams in the league, or both. With only 12 teams and 12 roster spots on each team, the W.N.B.A. is harder to get in, and stay in, than the N.B.A., especially with most players’ contracts not being guaranteed. The relatively low salaries also push players to make tough choices about when and where to play.The W.N.B.A. is seen as the gold standard for women’s sports leagues because of the level of competition and many of the benefits players have gained through collective bargaining. But Nneka Ogwumike, the president of the players’ union, is among those striving for more.“I like where the league is now as far as people garnering attention around it,” said Ogwumike, a 10-year veteran forward for the Los Angeles Sparks. “I don’t like where it is with rosters, number of rosters, number of teams. And it’s not to say that, you know, it’s anyone’s fault. It’s just, like, we want to see growth.”‘We need more teams’Nneka Ogwumike, the president of the players’ union, helped secure higher salaries and other benefits during contract negotiations but also wants to see the W.N.B.A. add teams.Ashley Landis/Associated PressOgwumike led the players’ union as it reached a landmark collective bargaining agreement that took effect in the 2020 season and will last through 2027. The agreement introduced a team salary cap of $1.3 million, an increase of 30 percent. Many saw it as a step in the right direction regarding pay equity. But it also illuminated another concern.“The $300,000 increase in the salary cap was not significant,” said Cheryl Reeve, the head coach and general manager of the Minnesota Lynx. “It was highly lauded that we were doing better for the players. And, yeah, for the supermax players, there’s separation now.”The minimum player salary for 2020 increased by about $15,000, to $57,000, and the supermax for veterans rose by about $100,000, to $215,000. The figures increase each year.Teams that are looking to carry experienced players to make a deep playoff run now must play what Reeve called “salary cap gymnastics.”“I’m doing far more general managing during a season than you want to do, and that was brought on, in our case, by injuries,” Reeve said.The Lynx signed Layshia Clarendon to a contract for the remainder of the 2021 season on July 2 after three hardship contracts. The game of catch-and-release was necessary for Minnesota to remain within its team cap as the Lynx dealt with injuries and other player absences.Clarendon started the season with the Liberty, and had tweeted on the season’s eve, “My heart breaks for players getting cut (yes, it’s part of the business) but particularly since there are ZERO developmental opportunities.”Seven days later, after playing three minutes total in one game for the Liberty, Clarendon became such a player after being waived by the Liberty.That opened the door for the Lynx. To alleviate the burden caused by player injuries, the W.N.B.A. can grant hardship contracts for teams with fewer than 10 active players. Each replacement for an injured player requires a new, prorated contract from the salary cap. Teams often must choose between cutting injured players to free roster spots or keeping them and competing with fewer active players.Terri Jackson, the executive director of the players’ union, said the union had “made our position known” about adding injured reserve spots and expanding rosters during the last round of contract negotiations, but could not agree on terms.Ogwumike said the players wanted to create a more “robust league.”“I think the ideas are there,” she said, adding, “but, most certainly, we need more teams.”‘Not enough for me to survive on’Diana Taurasi sat out the 2015 W.N.B.A. season to rest after playing for a Russian team, UMMC Ekaterinburg, which paid her $1.5 million.James Hill for The New York TimesTo that end, some within the W.N.B.A believe a developmental league is a logical evolution.The N.B.A.’s G League is a proving ground for unsigned players and also a way for developing players signed to N.B.A. teams to get playing time. Each N.B.A. team can have up to two players on two-way contracts who split time between both leagues. Teams can also call up other G League players on short-term contracts as needed if they have the roster space.Jacki Gemelos, a Liberty assistant coach and former W.N.B.A. journeywoman, said “an extra two roster spots would be huge.”“I would have been that 13th, 14th roster spot player that maybe is not necessarily good enough to make that 12 but a good culture piece,” Gemelos said, adding that the spots could be for “a specialty player, like a knockout shooter or, a really, really tall big player if you need it for certain games or even just for injury purposes.”In her brief W.N.B.A. career, Gemelos played 35 games for three franchises. For players who don’t catch on in the W.N.B.A. or who hardly see the court, there have long been few avenues to get more playing time without going overseas. A new domestic league, Athletes Unlimited, which will begin its five-week season this month, is now an option. But for most players, international leagues are their best opportunity to play, and to get paid.Even most of the highest-paid W.N.B.A. players go abroad to compete for European clubs and national teams during the off-season, and sometimes instead of playing in the W.N.B.A.Minnesota’s Napheesa Collier is one of many players who play for international teams during the W.N.B.A.’s offseason to make additional money. She played in France last year.David Joles/Star Tribune, via Associated Press“If I’m not making that much in the league, if it’s not enough for me to survive on during the year, I’m going overseas and having the summer off,” Lynx forward Napheesa Collier said on the “Tea With A & Phee” podcast she hosts with Las Vegas Aces forward A’ja Wilson.As a result, many overseas players arrive late for W.N.B.A. training camp, leave at midseason or miss the season entirely, especially in Olympic years. In the 2021 season alone, 55 players arrived late to W.N.B.A. training camp, and about a dozen players missed their home opener, according to The Hartford Courant. In the future, this will cost players 1 percent of their salary for each day they are late and full camp pay for those missing all of camp. The league wants players to stay in the United States, to minimize disruptions to the W.N.B.A. season and to reduce injury risk, but for some that is a difficult decision.A top-tier player can earn $500,000 to $1.5 million for playing overseas. Diana Taurasi sat out the 2015 season after winning a championship with the Phoenix Mercury in 2014. “The year-round nature of women’s basketball takes its toll, and the financial opportunity with my team in Russia would have been irresponsible to turn down,” Taurasi wrote in a letter to fans.Taurasi’s Russian team, UMMC Ekaterinburg, paid her W.N.B.A. salary, $107,000, according to ESPN, plus her $1.5 million overseas salary to sit out the six-month 2015 W.N.B.A. season.In 2021, Taurasi led the Mercury to the W.N.B.A finals despite an injured ankle, for a max salary of $221,450.‘Don’t expand just for expansion’s sake’Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said that the league would expand “down the road” but that it didn’t make business sense right now.Phelan M. Ebenhack/Associated PressReeve, the Lynx coach and general manager, said she preferred franchise expansion over roster expansion, especially since the answer, either way, is more money.“We need a greater commitment as a whole from the N.B.A. and the N.B.A. owners,” she said. “We need a greater commitment financially. We need greater investment. This league has been far too long about, you know, the revenues and expenses matching, don’t lose one dollar. And that’s not how you grow a league.”When asked for a response to Reeve’s comment, W.N.B.A. Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said: “I disagree with that. I have a track record of building businesses and growing businesses, and that’s what we’re doing here.”Engelbert said she was proud that the W.N.B.A. is the longest-standing women’s domestic professional league (among team sports) and of the financial commitment of the N.B.A., including having the W.N.B.A. as part of the brand identity.“Quite frankly, I don’t think that we could be around if the N.B.A. hadn’t been so supportive over the years,” Engelbert said.The N.B.A. owns 50 percent of the W.N.B.A., and five N.B.A. owners — of Phoenix, Brooklyn, Indiana, Minnesota and Washington — also own a W.N.B.A. team outright. Engelbert declined to comment on the operating budget for the W.N.B.A.When asked about providing more support, an N.B.A. spokesman, Mike Bass, said in an email: “The N.B.A. has provided enormous financial support to sustain the operation of the W.N.B.A. for the past 25 years, and our commitment has never wavered. We’ve seen exciting growth for the league under Cathy’s direction and are confident in the ability of league, team, and player leadership to continue that growth.”Engelbert said she also knows there are “inequities in the system” regarding viewership for women’s sports leagues.“All signs and symbols point to league growth, but we’re not even close to having the economic model the players deserve,” Engelbert said.Since becoming commissioner in July 2019, Engelbert has focused on economics and the experiences of players and fans. She has brought on more investors, such as Amazon as the sponsor of an in-season tournament with a prize pool of $500,000 for the two finalists. While that has increased player compensation opportunities, as has a provision for marketing deals, it does not address the underlying concerns about limited roster spots and better pay for players overall.Engelbert said expanding the league is “part of a transitional plan,” but not now.“If you want to broaden your exposure, probably need to be more than 12 cities in a country with 330 million people,” Engelbert said. “We’re going to absolutely expand down the road, but we don’t just expand for expansion’s sake until we get the economic model further along.”Ogwumike hopes more financial commitments from sponsors will lead to the players getting what they want — bigger rosters and higher salaries — to keep the most prominent players in the W.N.B.A.“These last two drafts have shown there’s a league sitting at home, and so we have to do something about that,” Ogwumike said, referring to the number of talented players who are not drafted. “I think that it’s really just the onus is on ownership, investment, people wanting to pump more into women’s sports. We have players that are ready to be a part of this league.” More

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      Seimone Augustus Found Her Voice Long Before Coaching

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      The first time Seimone Augustus realized what she was capable of wasn’t when, as a 14-year-old, she landed on the cover of Sports Illustrated for Women next to the question, “Is She the Next Michael Jordan?”When Augustus, a W.N.B.A. legend who retired this year after 15 seasons, reflects on the moments that made her understand her potential, she thinks of the stands at Capitol High School in Baton Rouge, La. She led the team to back-to-back state titles, scoring 3,600 points and losing just seven games in four years.The school is at the center of the predominantly Black neighborhood where she grew up, a neighborhood she described as close-knit and full of “a bunch of people that you would never know who helped make my game the way it is.” With each win, though, the crowds that gathered to see Augustus play at the Capitol gymnasium started to look different.“The same white folks who, had we seen them driving down the street a year ago, would have been hitting the locks with their elbows and zooming through were suddenly embracing coming to the gym, wanting to experience whatever it is that they experienced while watching me play,” Augustus said.Only then did Augustus start to realize the kind of change her preternatural abilities on the court might enable her to push for off it. “I think it hit me then,” she said. “It was just a melting pot of people, the most beautiful scenery I’ve ever seen in my life.”Augustus ran practice drills with Sparks forward Nneka Ogwumike in July.Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesAugustus’s legacy as a player — a women’s basketball pioneer, a three-time Olympic gold medalist and the cornerstone of the four-time champion Minnesota Lynx, one of basketball’s great dynasties — isn’t in question. But she is also one of sports’ most forward-thinking and undersung activists. Now, as an assistant coach for the Los Angeles Sparks, Augustus is working to help her players find the same solace and freedom that she did on the court and find ways to use their influence to advocate for themselves and their communities outside basketball.“How can I make this a safe space for you to just feel free and express yourself through basketball?” she asks them.Basketball has long served as that kind of refuge for Augustus.“Just being me was hard, to be honest,” she said, explaining that she was bullied in high school. “Every day walking down the hallway it was like: ‘She’s gay. She’s gay.’”Augustus’s parents and family supported her, but others were hostile. “You had parents coming up to my parents and saying, ‘Because your daughter is gay, she’s got my daughter feeling like she’s gay,’” Augustus said. “People I’ve never met in my life are blaming me for something that their child is now choosing to express.”At the same time, Augustus was racking up almost every accolade a high school basketball player could hope for — and trying to consider how the racist legacy of the Deep South community she grew up in would shape where she chose to play in college. Louisiana State University, her hometown school, did not employ a Black professor, Julian T. White, until 1971. “The whole recruiting process, I had so many people that were like, ‘Do not go there,’” she said.Ultimately, she decided to attend L.S.U. anyway: She wanted the chance both to stay close to home and to build a winning program instead of joining an established powerhouse like Tennessee or Connecticut. “I had a lot of elderly Black people that said, ‘Just to step on this campus was a lot for me, and I did that for you,’” Augustus said. “I think it helped give them a release. Like, at least we’re at peace enough to be able to enjoy this moment.”Those experiences laid the groundwork for Augustus’s transition to public-facing activism, which demanded self-assurance and sensitivity. Her first foray into advocacy was fittingly personal: She came out publicly in the L.G.B.T.Q. magazine The Advocate in May 2012, detailing her relationship with, and plans to marry, LaTaya Varner, who is now her wife.Augustus’s profile had never been higher, given that she had just led the Lynx to their first title, in 2011, and had been named the most valuable player of that year’s finals. But the decision was still risky. It would be years before the W.N.B.A. started a leaguewide L.G.B.T.Q. pride program, in 2014, and the timing was crucial since Minnesotans would vote on a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage that November.“That was like the first time I actually stepped out and used my voice,” Augustus said. “I felt like I was at a place in my life where I was ready to be open with people. I don’t think it was a big surprise, but for the people that needed it, it really helped them. I had so many people that came over, like, ‘I was able to tell my mom after 40 years.’”She continued to speak to the news media about the issue, telling her own story as a rebuke to the proposed Minnesota amendment. It was defeated, and same-sex marriage became legal in all 50 states soon after Augustus and Varner were married in 2015.“When she came out in 2012 and then started doing so much intentional work in Minnesota around marriage equality, we saw Seimone and then other players within the W.N.B.A. kick off conversations that became really reminiscent of the athlete activism of the ’60s,” said Anne Lieberman, director of policy and programs at Athlete Ally.Those conversations were never more influential than in 2016, when the stars of the Lynx — including Augustus — began to publicly support the Black Lives Matter movement. They spoke out against police brutality and wore shirts during warm-ups that bore the movement’s slogan in the wake of the police killings of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling before Colin Kaepernick, for the same cause, made waves by taking a knee during the national anthem at N.F.L. games.For Augustus, both killings resonated deeply. She had spoken out about racial profiling by the police in suburban Minneapolis in 2012, where Castile was killed four years later; the corner store where Sterling was killed was the same one where she used to buy snacks when she was growing up in Baton Rouge.“Obviously, we’ve all been stopped by the police before,” Augustus said. “My dad has been in town in Minneapolis and gotten stopped by the police. That could have very well been my father or cousin or uncle or anybody.”The W.N.B.A. fined players for wearing the shirts, before rescinding the fines after player and public outcry. Four Lynx security guards, all off-duty police officers, walked out during a game in response to the players’ actions.“​​We had cops walk out on us and leave the Target Center wide open for people to just — if they wanted to come in and do something to us, we didn’t have anyone there to protect us,” Augustus said. “Because we wore T-shirts. Because people don’t want to be held accountable for their actions.”In the wake of George Floyd’s murder last year, the W.N.B.A. more proactively encouraged player activism as a part of its identity — four years after the Lynx first took a stand. “Now it’s like, ‘We’re celebrating you!’ And we’re like, ‘Uh huh, you’re celebrating now, but in years prior, it was kind of hard to get you to embrace it,’” Augustus said.Sparks Coach Derek Fisher said Augustus “played the game with a flair and a confidence.”Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesShe still remembers meetings where the league, she said, tried to goad players into wearing more makeup and skimpier uniforms, and how in her first years of playing it was the players with husbands and children who seemed to get all the publicity. “They would say, ‘We don’t have a cool factor,’ and I’m like, ‘We cool, what are you talking about?’” Augustus said. “It’s insane the conversations we had to have.”In an emailed statement in response to Augustus’s comments, Commissioner Cathy Engelbert cited the emphasis on L.G.B.T.Q.+ rights by the league’s Social Justice Council, which was established last season.“The W.N.B.A. has long been one of the most inclusive and welcoming sports leagues in terms of its commitment to players and fans,” she said, adding, “Today, that commitment continues to grow with countless demonstrations of inclusivity and with an understanding that there will always be more work to do.”Augustus has always prioritized the game itself, and that’s no different now that she’s a coach. But the seemingly effortless way in which she has integrated fighting for herself and her community into her basketball career seems likely to rub off on her protégés.“She played the game with a flair and a confidence that would tell you that she wants to be the loudest person in the room, but she really doesn’t,” Sparks Coach Derek Fisher said. “She just wants to help people get better and serve others.” More

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      The W.N.B.A.'s Seattle Storm Are Winners. The City Should Fully Embrace Them

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      Inside the arena, Seattle Storm fans bring the passion. Outside, the city has yet to fully embrace a team that has won four W.N.B.A. championships.SEATTLE — What do I have to do around here to buy a cap that reps the best team in women’s basketball?That’s what I was thinking last week as I walked the streets of downtown Seattle, home of the W.N.B.A. champions, the Storm.In sports paraphernalia shops, I hunted for a green-and-gold Storm cap, a T-shirt, or maybe a replica of the team’s new black jerseys, anything that would show off my love for one of the premier teams in sports.What I found were stores filled with Seahawks, Mariners and Washington Huskies swag. I saw eager customers buying caps affixed with the ice blue “S” that represents the Kraken, the new N.H.L. team in town. The Kraken’s first game isn’t until next month.Each time I asked for Storm merchandise, I was met with bewilderment and surprise. One salesperson suggested Storm gear would surely sit untouched because of the demand for Russell Wilson jerseys. Another told me she could sell me a Storm bumper sticker, but she wasn’t sure where it was.Disappointed, I drove to a nearby suburb and found a sporting goods store in a mall. Here my question was answered with this:“Who are the Storm?”A series of championships has still not generated broad support outside core fans.Lindsey Wasson for The New York TimesIn their 21 years of existence, the Storm have been remarkably consistent. They hold four W.N.B.A. titles. The first came in 2004. The last in 2020. As the league heads into this season’s playoffs, which start this week, they are once again among its top four teams and stand a good chance of repeating as champions.Leading the reigning champions are three athletes of remarkable distinction. Jewell Loyd is an offensive spark plug with a game fashioned after Kobe Bryant, who was one of her mentors. Breanna Stewart, the league M.V.P. in 2018, is possibly the best player in the women’s game. Sue Bird, one of her sport’s few breakout stars, has spent her entire professional career in Seattle.These three women helped the United States win the gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics. At the opening ceremony, Bird carried the American flag in the parade of athletes.That’s who the Storm are.And yet in the stores I visited last week and on the streets of a city that touts itself as deeply progressive, I saw nothing to indicate that Seattle has a W.N.B.A. team, let alone passion for one.Merchandise is a metaphor, a signpost of something else: cultural capital. They don’t call all those hats, shirts, jerseys and sweatshirts “swag” for nothing, and the prevalence of it — or, in this case, the lack of it — speaks to something profound.The signal sent when gear is so hard to find and so rarely seen? Women remain an afterthought, which hits especially hard for a team sport played predominantly by Black women.The players notice.“You don’t see us repped as much as we should be,” Loyd told me, still sweating after a hard practice last week. “It is almost impossible to find a jersey. We are like a hidden gem. To put all of this work into something and we are not seen, what else do we have to do? We’ve won championships here and brought value to our city, and yet you can’t find a jersey?”Storm guard Jewell Loyd is one of the team’s stars.Lindsey Wasson for The New York TimesThere is nuance to this story, though. True, in its 25th year, the W.N.B.A continues to struggle for hearts and minds. But after last season, when the league burnished its reputation for excellence and solidified itself as a leader in the fight for social justice, it is also making inroads.While viewership for most sports is declining in an era of cable television cord-cutting, the W.N.B.A.’s national broadcast ratings are on the rise. Player salaries are climbing, too, and several of the league’s stars feature in national advertising campaigns for large corporations. Eight players signed deals recently to represent Nike’s Jordan Brand, a number once unthinkable. In a first, one enduring star, the Chicago Sky’s Candace Parker, fronts the popular NBA 2K video game.The league has also successfully courted backing from companies such as Google, Facebook, AT&T, Nike and Deloitte, the professional services firm helmed by Cathy Engelbert before she moved to the W.N.B.A. in 2019 to serve as its commissioner.When I interviewed her last week, Engelbert spoke of the need to change and amplify the league’s narrative. She hailed the devoted, diverse, youthful and socially progressive fan base. She wants the W.N.B.A. valued in new ways that go beyond old metrics like Nielsen ratings.When I mentioned I rarely saw Storm gear in Seattle, my hometown, she hardly seemed surprised.“We need to do better” at marketing and telling the league’s story, she said. If that happens, sales of merchandise will rise, along with overall popularity. “I mean, everyone should know who Sue Bird is,” she said. “She happens to be one of our household names, but we don’t have enough of them.”The commissioner also singled out the importance of selling the game by highlighting individual stars and the intense rivalries among players and teams, akin to how the N.B.A. grew when Magic Johnson and Larry Bird came to that league.The Storm’s Sue Bird is one of the sport’s best-known celebrities.Lindsey Wasson for The New York TimesOne such rivalry, between the Storm and the Phoenix Mercury, was on full display on Friday night.It was Seattle’s final regular-season game. Both teams had qualified for the playoffs, but much was on the line, including bragging rights between two organizations that have a history of epic clashes. More important, the winner would also get to skip the postseason’s first round.At that game — played 30 miles north of Seattle because the team’s typical arena is being renovated — I finally found rabid fans wearing their Storm swag. Caps, T-shirts, socks, face masks, sweatbands. A few fans donned green-and-gold shoes with player autographs. Some wore the uniforms of Bird, Loyd and Stewart from the Olympic team.Before 6,000 spectators instead of the 2,000 typically at the Storm’s temporary home, the teams put on a showcase of flowing, fast-paced basketball. Despite being without Stewart, who is nursing a foot injury, Seattle came out firing. Loyd hit a barrage of midrange jump shots and deep 3-pointers. On her way to a career-high 37 points, she scored 22 in the first quarter.The Storm won, 94-85, delighting a boisterous, fun-loving crowd. It was easy to feel the team’s intensity and to see how its firm base of loyal and diverse fans powered the W.N.B.A.But outside of such fans, away from its arenas, the league mirrors society and its inequities. All you need to do is walk the streets of Seattle and shop for a Storm cap to see that. More

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      Breanna Stewart’s Golden Journey to Motherhood

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      “I went from one emotion to the next,” the W.N.B.A. star said. “From winning a gold medal to realizing, OK, I’m going home, and my daughter is going to be born in less than 24 hours.”Breanna Stewart is ready to tell her secret.She kept it for months: During the first half of the current W.N.B.A. season, as captain of the Seattle Storm; in Tokyo this month, as she led the United States to Olympic gold in women’s basketball.Only a few close friends, which included a pair of teammates, knew of her and her wife’s private joy.“We just wanted to share this with a very close circle,” she told me last week, referring to herself and her wife, Marta Xargay. “Just to have this special time in life to ourselves for a while.”Many consider Stewart the greatest female basketball player of this era. Now they can also call her a mom.Stewart and Xargay’s gestational surrogate carried an embryo that had been seeded in one of Stewart’s eggs. Four days after winning a gold medal and most valuable player honors at the Tokyo Games women’s basketball tournament, Stewart experienced a moment that she said could compare with nothing else: the birth of her first child. “It took my breath away,” she said. “The most important moment of my life.”The no-fanfare birth of Ruby Mae Stewart Xargay is a story of love and family in the modern age — without limits. It shows how female sports stars are pushing past tradition and finding a level of power that extends to every aspect of their lives.“This is about controlling my own destiny,” Stewart told me. “It’s about making decisions that fit me, fit my family and where we want to go, where we want to be, and not waiting.”Though still rare, having children and returning to competition is not new for the best female athletes. In recent years, a small number of mothers, about 10 or so, have played in the W.N.B.A. each season.But Stewart, 26, and in her prime, is helping chart a new course. Having missed the entire W.N.B.A. season in 2019 because of an Achilles’ rupture, using a surrogate afforded her the chance to keep her career going without another interruption.She is now the most prominent player to become a mother since the Women’s National Basketball Players Association championed a trailblazing labor agreement that set a new template for how sports leagues should treat women. Formalized in 2020, that labor deal did not just increase leaguewide salaries. It also ensured full pay for maternity leave, boosted access to child care and provided significant financial support for child adoption, surrogacy and egg freezing so that players can have children when the time is right.Stewart during the gold medal game of the Tokyo Games against Japan.Doug Mills/The New York Times“I’ve always known I wanted to have a family, always wanted to be a younger mom,” Stewart said. “It will not be easy, but why can’t I be the best player, a mom and have a child in the way we have done?”Stewart pulled this off in what for her is typical fashion — carefully and tactically.In 2017, her second year as a pro, she revealed in an essay that she is a survivor of sexual abuse endured in her childhood, using the public disclosure to advocate on behalf of other survivors. As an emerging star in a predominantly Black sport, Stewart had not spoken out much on matters of race. But starting last summer, after listening to her peers and getting involved in protests in the Seattle area, she began speaking loudly for Black justice.For a long time she was quiet, too, about her relationship with Xargay, a now-retired Spanish basketball player with whom she had fallen in love while the two played on a Russian Euroleague team in 2019. But in May, Stewart posted to social media a picture of their engagement. The couple married on July 6 in a small ceremony atop their downtown Seattle condominium, details Stewart had not made public until now.Stewart and Xargay decided they wanted a child in the summer and fall of 2020, as they huddled together through a W.N.B.A. season played in a bubble in Bradenton, Fla.When the season finished, they interviewed surrogates and searched for the right sperm donor. Using an egg frozen during Stewart’s 2019 rehab, the pregnancy took hold. Then there were months of Zoom check-ins with the surrogate and her Idaho doctors.All the while, Stewart had to keep her focus on basketball, which proved particularly challenging in Tokyo. So long as the baby didn’t come early, birth would be induced just after the Games.Stewart said she had to compartmentalize as never before. “When it was game time at the Olympics, I focused fully on the game,” she said. “When I was off the court, I could think of Marta and the baby.”In keeping with her private nature, Stewart was quiet about Ruby to her fellow members of the U.S. national team. She told me that only her Storm teammates and close friends, Jewell Loyd and Sue Bird, knew what was going on behind the scenes. Bird is a founder of TOGETHXR, the media company for which Stewart filmed a documentary about her surrogacy journey.“I went from one emotion to the next,” Stewart said. “From winning a gold medal to realizing, OK, I’m going home, and my daughter is going to be born in less than 24 hours.”What a week she would experience. The gold medal mission accomplished, Stewart flew home with the team, arriving in Los Angeles on Aug. 8, a Sunday. From there she boarded a private plane to Boise, where Xargay and the surrogate waited. Last Monday afternoon, at the Birkeland Maternity Center, in Nampa, Idaho, Stewart and Xargay watched Ruby slip easily into the world.The brown-haired girl’s wailing shrieks filled the room. She weighed 9 pounds 4 ounces. “I was in shock, seeing a baby being born in front of me,” said Stewart, who stands an angular, broad-shouldered 6 feet 4 inches. “I felt like crying. I also just felt the love that was in the air.”Stewart cut the umbilical cord. Soon, she and Xargay held Ruby for the first time. They laid their baby on a bed. They placed the freshly won gold medal at Ruby’s side.On Thursday, Stewart was back to basketball. She flew alone to Phoenix, where the Storm played the championship game of the W.N.B.A.’s inaugural Commissioner’s Cup, a midseason tournament featuring the teams with the best records from the league’s two conferences. Stewart scored 17 points, missing just two field-goal attempts, and the Storm defeated the Connecticut Sun, 79-57.When the game was done, she pulled her team around her in the locker room.“I just wanted you guys to know that Marta and I had a baby,” she remembered saying to a sea of stunned faces. “It was like, ‘Wait, neither one of you are pregnant, so how can that happen?’”As she explained, her teammates showered her with hugs.Stewart told me she would miss only two Storm games to bond with Ruby and to rest. When the Storm play the Liberty for the second time this week on Friday night, she will be there.There is no slowing down in professional women’s basketball. The top players go from battling through W.N.B.A. seasons in America to months spent overseas, seeking to maximize their earnings while still in their prime.It is a grinding treadmill Stewart has been on since she left UConn in 2016. She will not stop. Only now she will have baby Ruby along for the ride, and no more secrets. More

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      Alex Rodriguez Joins Ownership Group for Timberwolves and Lynx

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      Rodriguez and Marc Lore, an e-commerce billionaire, have a pathway to controlling ownership of the professional Minnesota basketball teams in two years.Alex Rodriguez, the former Yankees star, and Marc Lore, an e-commerce billionaire, officially joined the ownership group of the N.B.A.’s Minnesota Timberwolves and the W.N.B.A.’s Minnesota Lynx on Wednesday, after their purchase of a limited stake in the teams was approved by the N.B.A.’s Board of Governors.For now, the teams will still be controlled by their longtime owner, Glen Taylor, but it is expected that in 2023 Rodriguez and Lore will be the controlling owners. In April, a spokesperson for the Timberwolves said the purchase agreement “will initially entail a limited partnership stake with a pathway to controlling ownership of the organization.” The teams were sold for $1.5 billion, The New York Times has reported.Taylor, 80, is a Minnesota native and made his fortune in printing. He purchased the Timberwolves in 1994 from an ownership group that was attempting to move the team out of state. He has told the Star Tribune newspaper, which he also owns, that the sale agreement would include language to keep the teams in Minnesota, though it is unclear if that ended up happening.Marc Lore made billions in e-commerce, from Diapers.com and Jet.Patrick T. Fallon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesGlen Taylor has owned the Timberwolves since 1994.Ann Heisenfelt/Associated PressRodriguez and Lore were part of a group, along with Jennifer Lopez and others, that attempted to buy the Mets, but came up short to Steven Cohen’s billions.Since his retirement from playing baseball in 2016, Rodriguez has worked as a baseball commentator for both Fox and ESPN, as well as invested in a number of companies. Lore made his fortune founding Diapers.com, which was sold to Amazon, and Jet, which was sold to Walmart for $3.3 billion.While Rodriguez and Lore are now part of the ownership group, there is no guarantee that everything goes well.One of the two will have to be designated the control owner, as N.B.A. rules, like those of other major professional sports leagues in the United States, require one person to be the final decision maker. Planned ownership succession can proceed smoothly, like with the Nets, or messily, like with the Denver Broncos. And despite the inclusion of a clause that the new owners of the Seattle SuperSonics put forth a “good faith effort” to find a new arena in the Seattle area in 2006, two years later the team became the Oklahoma City Thunder, a situation the N.B.A. surely does not want to repeat with the Timberwolves, who joined the league in 1989. More

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      5 W.N.B.A. All-Stars to Know

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      5 W.N.B.A. All-Stars to Know Alanis ThamesWatching hoops in Florida 🏀Abbie Parr/Getty ImagesAhead of the Olympics, the W.N.B.A.’s best players will face off in the All-Star Game in Las Vegas on Wednesday.Here are five players who could steal the show → More

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      The N.F.L.'s Carl Nassib Broke a Barrier. Will Others Follow?

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      The number of publicly out L.G.B.T.Q. athletes in men’s biggest pro leagues lags far behind that in women’s sports. Will Carl Nassib’s announcement change that?Congratulatory posts flooded social media on Monday when Las Vegas Raiders defensive lineman Carl Nassib announced on Instagram that he is gay, becoming the first active N.F.L. player to do so.Jerseys and T-shirts bearing his name were the top sellers among all N.F.L. players on Monday, according to Fanatics, the league’s e-commerce partner. Stars like Giants running back Saquon Barkley — who played with Nassib at Penn State — and Arizona Cardinals defensive end J.J. Watt quickly voiced their support for Nassib on Twitter. Well-known advocacy organizations praised his declaration as monumental.“I think people are going to see what I’ve seen for years, that sports are a lot more accepting than people give it credit for,” said Cyd Zeigler, the co-founder of Outsports, a news website that covers L.G.B.T.Q. athletes and issues in sports.Yet Nassib said in his post that he had “agonized” over the decision to go public about his sexuality, after keeping it to himself for 15 years. That he is the only active player who is publicly out in one of the four major American men’s pro sports leagues suggests the height of the barrier that male athletes face openly acknowledging a gender or sexual identity that doesn’t conform with those traditionally tolerated in locker rooms.Other gay athletes who have gone public with their sexuality have said they felt pressured to suppress it — and may still despite currents in society shifting to more acceptance — for simple yet powerfully prohibitive reasons. In locker rooms, on fields and on courts, male athletes are taught to embrace heteronormative standards of masculinity.In February 2014, the N.B.A. became the first of the four major American sports leagues to have an openly gay active player when Jason Collins, who had come out publicly the previous spring, joined the Nets. John Tlumacki/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)“I think it’s men and the machismo culture that pro sports are played, in particular,” that has inhibited men who identify as gay, bisexual, or queer from coming out, said Richard Lapchick, the director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport.Still, some male athletes ventured to do so despite concerns about their safety and backlash from teammates and fans. In February 2014, the N.B.A. became the first of the four major American sports leagues to have an openly gay active player when Jason Collins, who had come out publicly the previous spring, joined the Nets. He retired from playing later that year.Michael Sam, who had been an all-American selection during his college career as a defensive end at Missouri, announced that he is gay weeks ahead of Collins’s signing, in the lead-up to that year’s N.F.L. draft. The Rams selected him in the seventh, and last, round, and an overjoyed Sam cried and kissed his boyfriend on national TV in one of the most visible displays of gay male sexuality in the history of sports.But the Rams cut Sam before the end of training camp. The Dallas Cowboys then signed Sam to their practice squad, but he did not play in a regular season game. He retired from football in 2015.When Michael Sam was selected in the seventh round of the 2014 N.F.L. draft, he kissed his boyfriend on national TV in one of the most visible displays of gay male sexuality in the history of sports.ESPN, via Associated PressIntermittently, a handful of other notable male professional athletes made announcements about their sexuality throughout the years only after their sports careers had ended. But in the mid-aughts the stream of male former players to publicly come out as gay quickened, seeming to herald a shift in sporting culture. Athletes like the former N.B.A. player John Amaechi (2007) and retired N.F.L. players Wade Davis (2012) and Kwame Harris (2013) publicly announced that they are gay in memoirs, magazine cover articles and, in Harris’s case, in a CNN interview.Major League Soccer has had two active openly gay players — Robbie Rogers, who came out in 2013, and Collin Martin, who did so in 2018.In Major League Baseball, Glenn Burke, an outfielder who spent four seasons with the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Oakland Athletics in the 1970s, is known as the first player in major league history to come out to his teammates during his career. He came out publicly in 1982, three years after his last major league game. Burke, who died of AIDS complications in 1995, was supported by some teammates but was largely met with discrimination.The momentum for other gay male N.F.L. athletes to come out while they were still playing may have dwindled when Sam’s career fizzled out before it began. Nassib’s announcement may have been more readily accepted — publicly, at least — among his peers because he is already a dependable veteran.Nassib has already played five seasons in the N.F.L. and has kept a relatively low profile at an unglamorous, but important, position. Drafted by the Cleveland Browns, he has appeared in 73 games, starting in 37 of them while recording 143 tackles.Being labeled a “distraction” has long been a stigma assigned to players who espoused any view or identity that stood out from their teammates, but there’s an upside to Nassib’s increased fame, Zeigler said. His visibility could offer more chances to discuss topics surrounding L.G.B.T.Q. athletes.“Tons of people are going to be talking about this over the next couple of days, then again when he shows up for his first game and then again when he intercepts the ball and runs it back for a touchdown,” Zeigler said. “Teams and players can handle a couple of extra cameras. This will be here for a while.”Layshia Clarendon, who openly identifies as transgender and nonbinary, in January became the W.N.B.A.’s first player to have a top surgery while active.Phelan M. Ebenhack/Associated PressMen’s pro teams in America have lagged behind women’s, where L.G.B.T.Q. stars in team and individual sports have publicly identified themselves and still been celebrated. W.N.B.A. stars Diana Taurasi, Brittney Griner and Elena Delle Donne are among the league’s current players who have come out as lesbian and Layshia Clarendon, who openly identifies as transgender and nonbinary, in January became the league’s first player to have a top surgery while active.The outspoken United States Women’s National Team soccer star Megan Rapinoe, who is engaged to the W.N.B.A’s Sue Bird, said after a Women’s World Cup match in 2019 that “you can’t win a championship without gays on your team.” That year’s World Cup included more than three dozen players and coaches who are gay, in fact, and the winning United States team had at least one couple among its members.In the Ultimate Fighting Championship, the highest-caliber mixed martial arts promotion, the best female fighter of all time, Amanda Nunes, is an out lesbian.In contrast to L.G.B.T.Q. male athletes, their out peers in women’s American sports leagues have enjoyed more acceptance from the public and from their heterosexual teammates in recent years. Rapinoe and Bird are among the most popular and marketable female athletes in the world. In Nunes’s last fight in March, she brought her infant child and fiancée inside the octagon after defeating her opponent.According to Taylor Carr, chief of staff at Athlete Ally, an advocacy organization for L.G.B.T.Q. athletes, that could owe to a greater sense of camaraderie in women’s sports brought on by other collective social fights. Female athletes have for decades fought for equal pay, and the W.N.B.A. prominently led in many social justice causes, including a successful campaign by Atlanta Dream players to oust the team’s owner, the Republican former senator Kelly Loeffler of Georgia, after she opposed the Black Lives Matter movement the league’s teams were supporting.“When you have all of these people in women’s athletics who are sending very clear signals about what they believe, it makes you feel like ‘I have the ability to compete and live as my personal self,’” Carr said. “I am not just an athlete, I can bring my entire self to the court.”The U.S. Women’s National Team soccer star Megan Rapinoe, center, who is engaged to the W.N.B.A’s Sue Bird, right, said after a Women’s World Cup match in 2019 that “you can’t win a championship without gays on your team.” Ezra Shaw/Getty ImagesThere are signs of Americans’ growing acceptance of L.G.B.T.Q. people, a cultural shift that may encourage other gay, bisexual and queer male athletes to come out publicly. Seventy percent of respondents in a Gallup poll conducted this year said they support same-sex marriage, a 10 percent jump from 2015 when the Supreme Court ruled that all states must recognize those unions. Nearly 6 percent of respondents in a 2020 Gallup poll identified as L.G.B.T.Q., a 1 percent jump from 2017.It may take longer for that sea change to erode homophobic attitudes in male sports leagues, particularly the N.F.L. Players have previously faced backlash for offensive comments, some made in the immediate aftermath of a high-profile athlete publicly identifying as gay.The former Miami Dolphins receiver Mike Wallace posted on Twitter after Collins’s announcement in 2013 that he didn’t understand why with “all these beautiful women in the world and guys want to mess with other guys.” Wallace later apologized and deleted the post.San Francisco running back Garrison Hearst apologized in 2002 for using a slur and saying he wouldn’t want a gay player as a teammate after the retired Minnesota Vikings player Esera Tuaolo publicly came out as gay that year. Hearst’s comment elicited public apologies from the 49ers’ team owners and then-head coach Steve Mariucci, but no penalty from the league.For its part, the N.F.L. has made efforts to publicly support L.G.B.T.Q. inclusivity. The league sponsored a float in the 2018 and 2019 New York City Pride Parades, participated in promotional efforts during Pride Month in June like changing official social media avatars to include rainbows, and supported the You Can Play Project, which provides resources to encourage inclusivity in youth sports.Troy Vincent, the executive vice president of football operations, wrote an essay last year in which he argued that the N.F.L. was ready to welcome its first openly gay player. The league’s official social media accounts, including the Raiders’, responded to Nassib’s video with heart icons.Lapchick, who has studied gender and hiring practices in major sports leagues for over 25 years, noted football’s changing cultural landscape. “If you told me five years ago that the N.F.L. and individual teams would use hearts in their communications, I wouldn’t have guessed that,” he said. “Especially among men, there was a fear of coming out, and he broke that fear. I think the reaction will show other N.F.L. players that they can do this, too.”Andrew Das More