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What’s in a name?
Well, for NBA reporter Ethan Sherwood Strauss, apparently everything.
Strauss got destroyed on social media recently after he claimed Caitlin Clark’s WNBA team, the Indiana Fever, would be hindered by the face that people couldn’t learn the team name.
Instead, Strauss claims that the team should simply go by the “W Pacers.”
Ethan Strauss thinks WNBA teams should be called like the “W Pacers” bc it’s too hard to learn the name Fever and Bill agrees pic.twitter.com/gIg8OdI6MO
— Paternity Riley (@lesterfreamon) May 8, 2024
“One thing they should have done, and maybe there’s still time to do, that they didn’t do from the outset, is just use the same team names” Strauss began on Bill Simmons Podcast. “Like, why force people to learn about the Fever? Why not just have the W Pacers? I think that just makes it so much easier to just resonate and cut across.”
Fans of the league saw his take another way of attacking the WNBA and belittling women’s teams.
This is so disingenuous. Ethan has written ad nauseam about how the NBA can't get people to care about its small-market teams.
If they don't give a fuck about the Pacers then why would they give a fuck about the W Pacers? https://t.co/3BT2tVD7Ay
— Michael Sykes, II (@MikeDSykes) May 9, 2024
it's honestly incredible that two men who have spent their entire careers overwriting about basketball by many thousands of words can claim to not have the ability to remember 12 additional nouns https://t.co/2UubXJ9jGv
— Emma Carmichael (@emmacargo) May 8, 2024
One of the laziest and most ridiculous takes I’ve ever heard. Having a team with its own identity and branding is necessary. My young daughter is proud to be a fan of the Mercury and have her own identity as a fan. Guessing his kids will be Ethan Strauss Jr. or W Ethan Strauss. https://t.co/t2Cd9udUv2
— Espo (@Espo) May 9, 2024
Strauss also came under fire recently for an article about the popularity of women’s college basketball stars Hanna and Haley Cavinder.
“Thing is, the athletes now profiting are not necessarily the ones with the most athletic prowess. Or at least that’s the case when it comes to female athletes,” Strauss wrote in the piece, noting that the Cavinder’s are stars in the NIL world due to their looks more so than their play on the court.”
Strauss’s point regarding WNBA teams and branding isn’t entirely unfounded. The rise of women’s soccer in Europe has recently hit all-time highs. And almost all of the biggest clubs have the same team name as their men’s counterpoints: FC Barcelona, Chelsea FC, Werder Bremen etc.
But things get a bit dicey when you look at the WNBA’s ownership model.
Three of the 12 current WNBA teams play in cities without an NBA team. While the Atlanta Dream, Chicago Sky and Dallas Wings all have unique ownership separate from the local NBA teams.
So it’s not quite that easy, even if people did want to enact Strauss’s plan, which they clearly do not.