ESPN
Stephen A. Smith said "a lot of people" don't like the WNBA
The WNBA is more talked about than it’s ever been before. Unfortunately for the league, its players, and its fans, though, it’s not because of the product on the court but the culture war off it.
The 2026 season has been perhaps the most turbulent in the league’s history, which Stephen A. Smith believes has led to “a lot of people not liking” the WNBA.
Stephen A. Smith warned the WNBA that there are “a lot of people” who do not like the league
“It’s important that the WNBA wakes up and acknowledges something. There’s a lot of people that don’t like you. We gotta stop playing games, and we gotta get down to the nitty-gritty of this all,” Smith said on his SiriusXM show.
“I see my girl Chiney Ogwumike, who is a sensational basketball analyst, and yesterday, Andraya Carter, another basketball analyst. I think they’re two of the best basketball analysts in America. They are doing everything they can, trying to get everybody and their mother, ‘let’s talk about basketball!’ Well, guess what? What she’s not realizing is, people don’t want to. It’s not that they don’t know any better. It’s calculating. They don’t want to! It’s just that simple.”
“People do not like the WNBA. I’ve got people walking up to me in the streets saying stuff like, ‘It’s a lesbian league.’ I said, ‘What the hell that got to do with anything?’ Most people in America are supporters of the LGBTQ+ community. And what do you got folks on the right doing? Yeah, I’m calling them out. What do you got folks on the right doing? They’re politicizing it. What’s the Lt. Gov of Indiana getting his ass involved in this incident for? He’s trying to politicize it. Why? Because it’s been politically expedient. Why? Because when you create that kind of divide in a binary political system, it forces one side against the other.”
Smith’s take, while predictably more hyperbolic, isn’t that far removed from that of Bill Simmons, who predicted that league commissioner Cathy Engelbert will not return next season due to the WNBA’s disastrous PR this season, which he believes is overshadowing the best crop of talent that it’s ever had.
In order for the WNBA to move forward and realize its full potential, it needs an “adult” in charge, according to Simmons.
“The WNBA, which is for some reason turned into the Twitter for you page as a league. And meanwhile, has all of these amazing stories going on. The league’s f—— deep… The league’s legitimately fun to watch and yet all anyone talks about is dumb s—,” Simmons said.
“What the league really needs is a commissioner. And I would personally bet anything that we will not have this commissioner next year. I’ve never seen a league more determined to not push fun stars and fun storylines and fun people like this… It’s all this discourse stuff and they’re just stepping in bear traps left and right because they have no adults in charge of the league,” he continued.
“It’s too bad though because the league, they by far have the best collection of players that I think they’ve had. And I don’t know anybody who thinks they’re well-run. So they have to fix this.”
The controversies surrounding the WNBA this season have been seemingly ceaseless and, as Simmons pointed out, have overshadowed the most elite collection of talent that the league has ever boasted.
It began with ongoing officiating complaints surrounding Caitlin Clark — culminating in the Alyssa Thomas throat punch on June 24 that was not called in real time, upgraded to a Flagrant 2 post-game, and resulted in Thomas’s first career suspension.
Congressional Republicans subsequently sent a letter to commissioner Cathy Engelbert demanding accountability, while a USA Today column invoking Emmett Till in an article about Clark flopping sparked national outrage.
The WNBA left Clark off a 30th-anniversary graphic, then the Indiana Fever deleted a video of Clark dancing almost immediately after posting it. Sophie Cunningham’s ESPN comments about transgender athletes in youth sports drew J.K. Rowling’s endorsement, fan rallies outside arenas, congressional attention, and a weeks-long media cycle that Cunningham herself said was “overshadowing the basketball.”
DiJonai Carrington posted “WHITE PRIVILEGE” on Threads after her flagrant foul ejection — then denied it was about the foul — while Indiana’s Lieutenant Governor called for Stephanie White’s firing over her response.
Former NBA players Enes Kanter and Royce White — although calling White a former NBA player is a loose term, as he has more restraining orders against him than he does career points (zero) — have declared for the 2027 WNBA Draft. In response, the WNBPA released a statement describing opposition to transgender inclusion as “hate and demonization” while simultaneously claiming the league “will not be used as political pawns.”
All told, Fox News has run over 200 segments about the WNBA this summer (and counting), which should tell you all you need to know.
Through it all, though, Caitlin Clark — whose entrance into the league in 2024 was the big bang of the WNBA’s elevated relevance — has been averaging 21.5 points and 7.9 assists per game en route to becoming the fastest player in league history to record 500 points and 150 assists in a single season.
While they’ve certainly made life more difficult on themselves, the WNBA is ultimately a victim of its own newfound success. Before Clark entered the WNBA in 2024, regular-season games rarely cracked 400,000 viewers, and the league went nearly 16 years without a single game averaging 1 million viewers. After her arrival, broadcast audiences shattered records and regularly drew 1 to 2.6 million viewers per game.
In a black-and-white world, that’d be an undeniable boon for the WNBA. But the one we live in is grey.
With success came attention, both good and bad. Given that the league is made by and for women, and has a long-standing tradition of inclusivity of its LGBTQ+ fanbase — becoming the first major U.S. professional sports league to officially market to the LGBTQ+ community with its nationwide “WNBA Pride” campaign launched in 201 — the WNBA became the perfect target for culture warriors looking to Trojan-horse their wider political takes. It’s now reckoning with that fact more than ever and desperately needs to find a way to reposition itself within the cultural consciousness.