Welcome to Ball Up Top, a weekly podcast from No Cap Space WBB. Every Tuesday morning, you can find a show in your emails or social feeds that touches on all the trending topics in women’s basketball. The crew will rotate based on availability, whether it’s Tyler, Andrew, Chauny, Greer or Rashard.
After a big week of NCAA women’s basketball agendas, Chauny, Greer and Tyler are in the booth with another episode of Ball Up Top: A WBB Podcast. The three topics this week touch on a couple of different subjects across the sport. Chauny opens the show with an ISO of her own, putting a cap on the Caitlin Clark TIME Athlete of the Year discussion while expanding on Andrew’s points in Five Out. Afterward, the trio discuss who the top three contenders are for the NCAA Player of the Year as we prepare to turn the page into 2025. The show wraps with a conversation about the teams in the NCAA Top 25 and who is worth buying and selling.
Skip ahead to hear…
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Now onto the show…
0:00 - Show Introduction and a special thanks from the No Cap Space WBB crew.
6:25 - A Chauny ISO and the TIME Athlete of the Year discussion…
24:00 - Who are the top three contenders for NCAA National Player of the Year?
37:30 - Buy or Sell: NCAA WBB Top 25 Week 7.
And now…a special ISO from Chauny…
Another week, another news cycle filled with unproductive dialogue surrounding Caitlin Clark.
The rookie phenom made headlines after being named Time’s Athlete of the Year and gave the quotes that many had been asking for throughout the season to quell any rumors about whether or not she was ok being an extreme right-wing avatar. This led to a bizarre response from Washington Mystics co-owner Sheila Johnson in which she asked “why couldn’t the entire WNBA been put on the cover and said ‘the WNBA is the league of the year’?”
Ok.
My immediate reaction to the soundbite was why? Why are we taking this moment to make this argument again, why? Especially when she acknowledged how race and privilege play a part in media coverage, a la Paige Bueckers at the ESPYs. What was supposed to be accomplished with this very public interview that once again put a damper on the achievement of one of the most popular representatives of the league? A player that six of the 12 GMs voted in poll this past April saying they would take in a heartbeat if they were starting a franchise. How do you think this particular strategy will get the legends the flowers they deserve? I've said this before on Twitter that our black legends deserve so much more than to be trotted out every time Caitlin accomplishes something in an attempt to browbeat new fans into caring about them.
It especially irks my last good nerve when the league itself has done literally nothing to tell its own story when given the chance, but a 22-year-old is expected to carry the league history around in her Prada bag and pull it out any and every time she receives any type of recognition.
We are about four years removed from the WNBA’s 25th season that took place in 2021 and let me tell you something America, the league give an absolute piss poor effort to commemorate that milestone. There was no tribute to fallen franchises, specifically the iconic Houston Comets, there were no games featured on ESPN Classic (instead me and the Bonnet Gang crew were trying to watch old games Youtube with Twitter friends via spaces and it was pretty much a disaster). Reader, we were in the trenches.
Fast forward to today and we still have to rely on a sort of digital oral history via old fans online to keep narratives straight, highlight different players, and disperse the lore of the league because the WNBA still won’t invest in storytelling and capitalize off this moment by really showing new fans why they should love the game as a whole instead of just chastising them for not doing the leg work before they came in.
Case in point, our own Andrew Haubner just wrote another banger for The Legendarium on Pearl Moore and really dug into what made her run so special. While we here at No Cap Space will always answer the call to do the work to cover the game, it would be nice if the entity with significantly more resources and connections could make more of an effort to do the same as well.
It is my prayer that the league makes the decision to be a protector of its own brand next year as we all will get a season of peace because let’s be honest, Paige ain’t got the motion to cause all this fuss. Apologies, that hate slipped out before I could stop it. But in all seriousness, we had a season of growing pains, now grow up and get in the booth!
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