Preface: This is a continuation of previously published essay– WNBA mediocrity
I’ve used these terms a lot when discussing basketball without fully defining them. Old school is Red Auerbach. This means the coach/GM runs the organization and is considered the most important person. In old school, no player is above the coach or management. What they say goes, and players who complain or object are benched and/or traded away. Old school was too rigid & deeply unfair to the players, especially star players before free agency. The best players never had any leverage in salary negotiations, and that had to change– hence new school.
New school begins with free agency in any sport, and in basketball it really started with Michael Jordan who was the first player to be above his team because he was so, so great. The Chicago Bulls stunk when Michael Jordan was drafted in 1984, and he immediately made the Bulls the league’s hottest attraction. His Air Jordan shoe deal with Nike and the phenomenon it spawned made Michael Jordan the most popular athlete on the planet. That was the ESPN/cable-TV era of sports, pre-internet.
When I write that Michael Jordan was new school, it doesn’t mean he didn’t have any old school in him. Michael was a team player, who valued winning first, which are old school attributes. New school emphasizes self promotion & getting paid as the priority. Michael Jordan wanted to get paid, so he invented new school to take care of himself. In a pre-sneaker deal era, Michael Jordan would have been reduced to just being the best player, without him being the cultural icon he became in the 1980’s & beyond. It’s a combination of being ready to meet the moment, and society being ready for someone like Michael Jordan in the NBA.
New school means you have your own voice in the media. Media is defined as corporate outlets & social media. All professional athletes have a social media profile and manage it seriously. It’s how they speak directly to their fans & critics. It’s how they express their displeasure with the head coach over minutes, shots, and usage. There is no going back to old school on that.
The best athletes in any sport are the ones who maintain a healthy combination of old school & new school. You need to be able to express yourself publicly, but you also have to look yourself in the mirror first. If you aren’t putting in the work and your performance isn’t meeting expectations, then it’s best to shut up and get to work. This means going back to an old school mentality by listening to the coaches, accepting criticism, taking responsibility, etc. It’s taking an attitude that no one is bigger than the team or the game.
In the old school NBA days, if a ‘star player’ underperformed and started being a crybaby to the sports writers, a team enforcer would find a moment alone in the locker room to set that problem straight. Players simply weren’t allowed to throw a coach or a team under the bus without violent repercussions. With hazing now frowned upon in locker rooms (new school), these issues get handled differently today– for better or worse. The worse is when team drama gets dragged out because no one wants to have an uncomfortable discussion. Too many overpaid snowflakes being enabled is a new school issue.
The WNBA is all about drama. It’s just as much a soap opera as an athletic competition these days. This is different from all other sports leagues that have risen to prominence. The NFL, MLB & NBA all have drama going on behind the scenes, but the game remains the main attraction for the fans. In the WNBA, drama over Caitlin Clark dominates their daily narratives. More people know about that, than the defending WNBA champs. The primary narrative & financial driver for the WNBA is an unremarkable player named Caitlin Clark, and it represents new school at its worst.
Whatever temporary boost her popularity gives the league, in the long run the WNBA will be worse off for hyping Caitlin Clark as a great player. The issue here is all the basketball fans who recognize this garbage and call it out. The WNBA isn’t getting those fans back any time soon. What the WNBA has done with Caitlin C;lark is fundamentally disrespectful to the game, prioritizing hype over performance.
Up until Caitlin Clark came into the league in 2024, the WNBA was solid growing. Ownership embraced Caitlin Clark because she has caused franchise values to skyrocket. The Golden State Valkyries, a second year WNBA expansion franchise is now valued at $1B. The average WNBA franchise value is $460M according to Google. Ten years ago there wasn’t a single WNBA team that could get $100M in valuation.
The WNBA is a financial bubble, with insanely overestimated franchise values, and Caitlin Clark has been a tool for that. The WNBA needed a ‘great white hope’ and so they manufactured one in her. The element of racism that underlies all this is the elephant-in-the-room that can’t be discussed in the corporate media. It’s too uncomfortable.
Meanwhile, WNBA critics are labeled misogynist, racist or whatever semantic inversion they prefer in order to silence any discussion on the matter. The WNBA owners are the ones profiting from this hype, and when Caitlin Clark finally crashes, it will be perceived by them as the fault of those who correctly analyzed this from the start. Because myself (& others) have been critical we’re all slandered as ‘woman haters’, as that’s easier to understand than all the facts & issues involved. That’s NIL new school.
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