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Notes -
WNBA Coach Becky Hammon Suspended.
The WNBA? Do I care? Does anyone care? Well no, but the twist here is that Becky Hammon is (supposedly) actually good. She was a top assistant in the NBA for years under legendary coach Gregg Popovich, and she has gotten numerous head-coaching interviews with NBA teams, some as recently as this month. Every year when the coaching carousel starts, we are treated to at least one thinkpiece asking why Becky Hammon hasn't gotten an NBA head-coaching job yet. So what exactly happened to tarnish her sterling reputation?
"Season-ending pregnancy" strikes again.
It appears Miss Hammon's mistake was taking the WNBA seriously. She has experience in the NBA, a real league, where players are expected to do whatever it takes to win. She thought the same would be true in the women's league. In reality, the WNBA is a loss-leader. It's PR. It's advertising. It's sole purpose is to produce good media coverage and to get little girls interested in basketball. WNBA players aren't paid enough to ignore labor violations (Jordan Poole got a $140 million contract extension shortly after this). The audience of the WNBA doesn't care about women's sports or winning, they care about "women's sports"™. It should be obvious that the core idea of "women's sports"™ is "respect women"™, and you can't "respect women"™ by telling them when they can or can't become pregnant.
The contradictions around pregnancy/abortion in the Liberal mind are interesting for this.
I'd wager a plurality of Liberals would be against Hammon being asked to terminate her pregnancy for the sake of her contract/consider her right to get pregnant to be superior to her professional commitment. Yet if a random 'girlboss' was to abort a pregnancy due to prioritizing career it'd likely be seen as empowering.
I think most liberals likely wouldn't see a contradiction, since their guiding principle in both of these cases would be that the pregnant woman's agency is paramount. If Hamby's confident she can play basketball around her pregnancy, then by all means, let her. By that same vein, if hypothetical girlboss terminates her pregnancy for her career ambitions, well again that's up to her. Hence the whole "my body, my choice".
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