The WNBA, via the NY Liberty, gets the sports doc treatment

In the early days of the WNBA, it wasn’t a given that the league was going to make it. A new film set for theatrical release this weekend, Unfinished Business, goes back to the first year through the lens of the New York Liberty, to lay out the stakes those young players experienced.

The origins of the WNBA

“All of us, because we lived most of our life without a WNBA, really took great responsibility that we needed to do everything we could to make sure it wasn’t going to be done one year and done or two years and done or five years and done,” forward Rebecca Lobo says in the film. “We have to ensure that this league is around for the long haul.”

There was a competing pro league that wasn’t affiliated with the NBA, and a tension between the image women were explicitly expected to present and who they wanted to be. Teresa Weatherspoon, the explosive guard and co-captain for the Liberty just wanted to be accepted for her game, regardless of gender and the regressive question of who belonged on a basketball court.

“If you don’t believe in us, why are you here? That might be the question,” Weatherspoon says in the doc.

The movie will be released theatrically this weekend at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and elsewhere after premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival last June. Amazon will be streaming the movie and it will be shown on ESPN2 on May 14.

Co-producer Samantha Bloom told Deadspin that after many of the interviews, players would thank the filmmakers for telling their stories – because despite this team providing the origin story for the New York City franchise, it’s a story that hasn’t been told at scale all that often.

“They really haven’t had that much coverage,” Bloom said.

Twenty-five years after the WNBA’s founding, its time to start telling these histories, and that’s what the new documentary “Unfinished Business” attempts to do with the Liberty. As one of the league’s few original teams, that history stretches back to the signing of Rebecca Lobo, Sheryl Swoopes and Lisa Leslie, the WNBA’s original marquee players.

“We were the faces of the league because we were the only three players who had signed to play in the league,” said Lobo.

But then there were others. Sue Wicks talking about how she grew up wanting to play sports and only saw women playing tennis and roller derby, and when those weren’t available to her, she picked up a basketball and set her sights on the New York Knicks.

That was my first year as a reporter, and I covered the Liberty’s Madison Square Garden home games for the inaugural year. I’m one of the voices in the documentary as well, giving context to the cultural currents the league was trying to navigate at the time. One moment that stood out then, was Wick’s decision to be forthright when asked whether she was a lesbian.

“There was a backlash from that,” Wicks said. “And being used to people loving you and being so…