7:32 PM ET
CloseMechelle Voepel covers the WNBA, womens college basketball, and other college sports for espnW. Voepel began covering ladiess basketball in 1984, and has actually been with ESPN since 1996.
Mechelle VoepelESPN.com
Seattle Storm point guard and 2020 WNBA champion Sue Bird restated remarks made by her sweetheart, soccer standout Megan Rapinoe, about why the U.S. femaless soccer group seems to delight in more public support than the U.S. femaless basketball team and the WNBA in an interview with CNN that aired Saturday.
Bird, speaking with Don Riddell of CNNs “World Sport,” was asked about Rapinoes remarks in an Oct. 5 article in The Players Tribune in which she talked about the U.S. ladiess soccer group getting broad-based honor for the winning the Womens World Cup in 2019, and contrasted that to less attention paid to femaless basketball. Rapinoe wrote that the perceived demographics of the sports was a main reason.
Asked by Riddell to summarize that, Bird stated, “To be completely blunt, however likewise sort of easy, soccer players usually are cute little white ladies. And I think basketball players, were all shapes and sizes.
1 Related” Its 70-80% Black ladies, a lot of gay ladies. Were high; were huge. And I believe theres simply maybe this intimidation aspect with that. People fast to talk about it, evaluate it, put it down. And soccer, you simply do not see that just based on how they look.”
Bird and the Seattle Storm won the WNBA champion on Oct. 6 in the bubble in Bradenton, Florida. It was Birds 4th WNBA title, and she likewise has 4 Olympic gold medals.
Rapinoe wrote in her piece for The Players Tribune that the gamers for the U.S. femaless national team in soccer were viewed as “straight, adorable, unthreatening, rural white women next door. Its not in fact who we are– the WNTs racial diversity, though not yet where it needs to be, is enhancing every year.
Bird and the Seattle Storm won the WNBA champion on Oct. 6 in the bubble in Bradenton, Florida. It was Birds fourth WNBA title, and she also has 4 Olympic gold medals. Riddell asked Bird if the WNBA required to market itself in a similar style to how Rapinoe explained soccers marketing. Bird, who turned 40 on Friday and has actually been in the WNBA since 2002, said she was part of a comparable “girl-next-door” marketing technique that the league tried numerous years back. Bird likewise has spoken in the past about how limiting and restrictive that view of femaless sports is.
If the WNBA needed to market itself in a similar fashion to how Rapinoe described soccers marketing, Riddell asked Bird. Bird, who turned 40 on Friday and has remained in the WNBA because 2002, stated she belonged to a comparable “girl-next-door” marketing technique that the league attempted a number of years ago. However she stated that does not represent a lot of the leagues personnel. Bird likewise has spoken in the past about how limiting and limiting that view of womens sports is.
” The problem is not the marketing, per se,” Bird told CNN. “The problem is how society and how the outside world wants to accept the adorable woman next door, however not willing to accept, or accept, or not evaluate these basketball gamers who are high, Black, gay.
” Thats type of, to me, where the issue is. Where I seem like Ive learned throughout that procedure is you need to be who you are. You need to be to be real to who you are and authentic.
Were representing every day the worths that we want to push forward in our world. And I feel like you can go to bed at night and sleep well knowing youre being real to yourself, and thats more crucial than anything.”
