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It is difficult, in daily life, to drop into your heart. To set aside the endless barrage of thoughts and happenings and reactions and listen to what you feel at your core.
I think that’s part of why sports fandom is powerful.
Because it brings our hearts to the fore.
The last time I was really a fan of a team was the 2022 Chicago Sky. We played a beautiful, European-style offense that made masterful use of the backdoor cut and led us to the best regular season record in the WNBA.
In the Semi-Finals we met our stylistic opposite: the brute force Connecticut Sun. The series crescendoed to a deciding Game 5 that was ours for the taking.
But the problem: Sun legend DeWanna Bonner. She was always 1-7 until the game was on the line, and then she couldn’t miss. The Sky’s nine-point fourth quarter lead crumbled at her feet.
My heart broke; the Townie group chat deflated.
I’d fallen in love with that Sky team knowing that its aging core would likely scatter after the season. So the loss triggered an intense fear of erasure. Would their brilliance gradually fade from collective memory? Would it even slip from our own?
I think this anxiety is stronger in women’s sports, where even championships pass unnoticed beyond our own group chats, where even the GOATs are invisible to the wider world. We become conditioned to anticipate obscurity.
I could extol the virtues of Emma Meesseman’s footwork for years to come, but nobody outside our bubble would know what the hell we were talking about. I’d have to carry around the memory like a precious stone, hoping someday others might recognize its value.
I thought about that fear of erasure when the Connecticut Sun’s core fractured this offseason. As DeWanna Bonner and her partner, perennial MVP candidate Alyssa Thomas, signed elsewhere, I felt an instant kinship with Sun fans.
They faced the same dread that we Sky fans experienced after the 2022 core split. It’s not fun, staring down a rebuild in the WNBA’s glow-up era, where the superstars gravitate toward $100 million practice facilities, where expansion teams pay $250 million just to join the league.
The Sun were our nemesis in 2022. But their franchise, like ours, sits in the vulnerable position of being owned by millionaires rather than billionaires. Independent from NBA backing, both teams practice in places where children have birthday parties rather than the gleaming facilities of those teams on the leading edge. When success came, it was because a talented couple stuck around and built something special. And when they leave, it hurts real bad.
The Sun's breakup reflects a broader moment of growth and pain in the WNBA. In a recent piece titled, “The WNBA has outgrown Conn. casino, Sun should move to Boston”, sports columnist Matt Vautour put it bluntly:
“Back when the league was a hopeful enterprise that the NBA could also use as a tax write-off, playing at Mohegan Sun Casino was a good idea. But there’s a reason the NBA doesn’t have teams in Ft. Wayne and Syracuse anymore. The WNBA has outgrown Uncasville.
Mohegan Sun is fine for Indoor Lacrosse and could host Arena Football or even a G-League team someday. But the 9,000-seat arena and market are too small for where the WNBA is and where it’s going.”
Vautour’s is the kind of commentary that I see more and more of these days: at once valid and completely ignoring the tragic element.
Like: what about the Sun’s original fans? Those early adopters who showed up long before anyone gave a damn about women’s basketball? What about the significance of place and memory and rootedness in sports fandom?
As we OG fans wrestle with the double-edged sword of the W going mainstream, I think we project our anxieties onto its young stars.
“Lead us boldly into the glittering future,” we seem to be telling them, “but also, bring justice to our overlooked past, do all the right homages, and, as a 22-year old, demonstrate a sophisticated understanding of league history and your socio-political context.”
It’s too much pressure!
But also: I get why we’re trying to pack all our hopes, dreams and history into this shining moment. We’re starving to be seen in women’s sports, desperate to highlight all those stars who never got their due. Our hearts have held so much for so long.
When the Townies started this newsletter, it was partly from worry—that something precious might vanish in the rush toward bigger and better.
The ‘21-22 era of WNBA super-fanning was so so sweet. Courtside seats for playoff games cost barely $100. Season ticket perks let us pack entire rows with our closest friends for the Finals. An intimacy and affordability that we won’t be getting back.
The Sun’s breakup awakened that sense of fragility in me. It pulled me out of beat reporter mode, where I'd been viewing the offseason like a game of chess. Suddenly, I was back in my heart again, feeling the game rather than just analyzing it.
It’s funny. As a basketball player, I thrived in transition, delighting in setting the pace, creating freely, avoiding the slug of half-court sets. Yet off the court, transitions—like the WNBA’s rapid ascent—feel so different. They’re filled with sensitivity, questions, and anxiety.
Maybe that’s part of why loving sports from the outside feels so vulnerable: because we're never really in control.
Instead of calling our own number, we have to hope. Hope that as our teams become part of the wider cultural conversation, we become part of collective memory, too. Maybe, if an Angel Reese-era Sky team wins a championship, it'll become Chicago basketball lore, like the Jordan years.
Maybe, eventually, our precious stones will catch light from every angle, not just our own.
Captured my complicated feelings about W fandom perfectly!