WNBA Week 4: Who’s Hot? Who’s Washed? Who’s the Best Dressed Gay of the Week?

The WNBA’s 2023 season is in full swing now, friends! All-Star voting is underway; teams are cementing their identifies for the season; and superstars are setting themselves apart from the rest of the pack. Also, Natalie is tied for first in our Fantasy League (while Heather is barely breaking even). We got together, once again, to break it all down!

Heather: Natalie, hello! Another awesome week of WNBA basketball is in the books, and what a fun weekend of games!

Natalie: Absolutely…but I think we have to start this week’s conversation in the same place we began last week’s conversation: the discussion about Brittney Griner’s travel. The All-Star center did not play much this week, after being sidelined with a hip injury a few minutes into the Seattle game, but her travel and security remained a big topic of conversation. What do you think about what we know so far about the WNBA’s “solution” to those travelling woes?

Heather: I’m glad you’re kicking off here because I think we are both still very unsatisfied with the answers the WNBA and the Mercury are giving about what actually happened in that airport in Dallas, why it happened, and what they’re actually going to do about it going forward. Much like last week, stories continue to trickle out from different sources, and they’re contradictory, and no one in charge seems to be telling the whole story — still. Maybe the most illuminating (and infuriating) bit of information so far came on Friday when SportCenter had on both WNBA Commissioner Cathy Englebert, followed by Terri Jackson, the Executive Director of the WNBA Player’s Association.

There was all this weird reporting that the W has approved charters, but that still left more questions than answers. It’s one company they approved, it only flies out of four W cities, apparently the Aces have already used it at least once and not been penalized, it costs the same as commercial air because they rent out the whole plane on a predetermined route (which includes Phoenix to Dallas, which makes the fact that BG got accosted in DFW even more ridiculous), but then Vanessa Nygaard said the Mercury were afraid to book charter and get in trouble, blah blah blah. But here’s the thing that’s got me the most furious: In that SportCenter interview, Terri Jackson said BG is paying for at least some of her security detail OUT OF HER OWN POCKET.

I don’t feel any closer to okay about this than I did the day it happened. How about you?

Natalie: I don’t, actually. I watched the Phoenix game yesterday against New York and the commentary there seemed to be that the Mercury have developed a plan to allow BG to fly charter, safely, but they won’t tell anyone what it is for “security purposes.” Which, on some level, I get that…like it makes sense for the league to withhold certain information…but, at the same time, that situation in Dallas was a loss of trust from my perspective. I…