Recapping Cathy Engelbert's (Hopefully) Final Commissioner's Cup

what's popping everybody it's logan murdoch here from the ringer the 2025-2026 nba season is here and we got your hoop podcast needs covered on the ringer nba show be sure to check out group chat with justin barrier rob mahoney and jay kyle man on sundays and wednesdays and real ones on tuesdays and fridays with myself rajabelle and howard beck get your ringer related nba podcast fix on spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and of course come find us on youtube twitter instagram and tiktok at the handle ringer nba i'm pro football hall of famer brian dawkins and i lived for a long time with something i did not know the name of major depressive disorder i carry sadness and anger because i thought i could handle it alone but i couldn't now i want to make sure others know that that support is out there if you're experiencing similar symptoms talk to a health care professional visit mddallies.com to watch my story paid partnership with johnson and johnson brian dawkins is not 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monitoring is recommended common side effects are sleepiness dizziness nausea dry mouth feeling tired and diarrhea these aren't all the side effects ask your doctor about capylita learn more at capylita.com or call 888-252-4824 this episode is brought to you by boar's head what if we told you the taste of deep fried turkey is now available at your local deli well boar's head just did that bursting with flavor perfectly seasoned with that indulgent taste that usually means planning your whole day around it presenting the fryer's turkey breast only from boar's head backyard tradition now available behind the counter visit your local deli today discover the craftsmanship behind every bite boar's head committed to craft since 1905 welcome to the ringer wnba show where today we're going to break down what will hopefully almost definitely be the angle for its final commissioner's cup the liberties like wnba survived but not without some self-implicated errors uh before we get into all of that we are gonna get into kathy engelbert the statement alissa thomas statement um sophie cunningham getting the white house co-signed oh my god um we are in in the middle of a burning house but we are going to be the dog that says this is fine and for the first segment we are going to lock in we're going to lock in we're going to talk some basketball um we are joined by super producer very special guest who jetted over here after taking in the game at barclays and we're going to talk about some basketball and we're going to talk about some center liberty super fan um the guy who makes this show awesome stefan anderson it's lovely to see you on the other side of the program how's it going man this feels so weird i don't even know how to start this but um it's a pleasure to be here i've loved being interviewed by my host this feels this feels like you feel special are you like i feel important you know i feel good you are important you are important um where do you want to start do you want to start with the vibes because you came in you were wearing a liberty top and you were wearing a liberty top and you were over a knicks hat and a liberty shirt like is it nixon five lives in five new york it's just capped off like one of one of the all-time junes what was it like in there it was very uh i will say this and this is my i think like my third or fourth time going to barclays to watch a game one of the best basketball environments i've ever been to in my life like period i've watched games at many different arenas but it's something about that place when the towers are going and everybody's dancing to ride that way and i'm like i'm gonna go to barclays and i'm gonna go to barclays and i'm gonna wave and jump and the dj it's something about it like you feel it when you come in it's like a very calm in the concourse area but once you sit down in your seat and like you kind of take in a game it's like it represents like new york city basketball in a sense like you get that like garden dykman rucker park wherever you like to watch basketball watson i don't even know wherever you like to watch basketball in new york city it gives you that feel and i think that tonight was like a good example of like the team coming off of a little bit of a west coast swing that wasn't the best and then you know the energy was just back in the building tonight like it was good it was good it was a good good environment to answer your question there's this feedback loop that the new york liberty fans have with sabrina unescu and for a lot of this season that feedback loop has been interrupted by injury by sabrina being off to truly one of the worst starts like a star has had to a wnba season in a way that was genuinely unsustainable you know like negative win share averaging below double digits like 35 from the field 25 from the three-point line i think there was a lot of relief in the building tonight and a lot of catharsis to getting to see sabrina unescu like really get off and i love the way that they incorporated her into the offense too like she is somebody who um for the last for her entire career has been in top five in pick and rolls right and this season she has not been in that top five at all like chris marco is bringing in this new offense which is going to be a lot of which you know you like the layering right like you like that they're doing the inverted pick and rolls they do want to there's there's so many there's so many dimensions to their offense that like don't they don't necessarily always get the most out of their players so you do like that but at the same time like they were getting away from their bread and butter and this game they open it up sabrina's got the ball in her hands pick and roll they're setting all these screens to get her open up get her to open up and like it's like it's just this feedback loop like the second she starts to get it going like the whole crowd correct the rest of the team the crowd too yeah right and it's uh i think the last shot that she took to kind of close out the game i think that's like it it brings it all full circle in a sense right so there was a moment there in the third where she started just taking some wild shots like some shots that was like playground s to bring back the whole rucker that you feel like she was playing like she was out there a lot too many heat check shots like just like one too many one heat check shot it's fine but like four in a you're not even hot anymore yeah you're nowhere near hot anymore like calm this down and the aces went on a run do you know sorry just sorry to cut you off for a sec do you know about like the myth of the hot hand i i get the you could explain it to me your terms but i get it like the hot hand theory is like crazy but i also there is like i think austin rivers is the best person to say it it's like why do players always go for the wildest shot when they're having a heat check why not just take another good shot that like you were taking while you were on there like why take the wildest shot is it just like you want extra style you're not gonna get an extra point for doing it like why do you want the style points and i think tonight sabrina was going for too many style points that's probably why brianna stewart like two-time two-time commissioners cup mvp now actually ended up taking home that trophy as well and she said after the game hey this is ours we can we can share it but like it kind of was stewie's trophy to take home because she only ended up having like one last point then sabrina and was like also doing like all the stewie stuff that were yeah the impact defensively was just she was all over the floor like they had her out there guarding chelsea gray she's in the post swatting shots it's in the middle of the lane stripping girls off the off the dribble she just did everything that like stewie is just you know we we don't have enough superlatives to give her but one of the greatest man is it's an honor to share and i think that's my biggest takeaway from tonight it's an honor i get to cheer for jaylen brunson and brianna stewart this is euphoria right now this is like two really good basketball players that like you could teach your children about these two you could just watch them like hey watch these two people play basketball like they play basketball the right way all across the board no that's so true like stewie um only took one three today as well like it felt like she's also kind of like going into this stage of maybe acceptance about the three-pointer not being quite like the way that we expect it to be and um like it's been years now where she's been like she's kind of lost that three and she's like getting two feet in the paint she's hitting these mid-range jumpers she's incredible on the boards the aces have always struggled against the liberty because of the size deficit obviously in a game without asia wilson um that was even more magnified right and just you mentioned it but the things she was doing defensively like she was ahead of the snake on all these traps and it's just this is a season that she's having though like she is probably like who's making a better case for like the non-asia mvp race right now like i don't know if there's anybody better than stewie right now i mean we we talk about her i think she's like the the hot topic of the show it's probably olivia miles uh other than her but like yeah if you if you ask me if you give me a leaderboard of people i would say are at the height of my mvp conversation it's definitely asia wilson it'd be stewie olivia miles and i'll throw gabby williams in there because i just think i i have like an affinity for what the valkyries are doing and i think that that should be commended in some way some warm and she's the best player in that team defensively. You do. You've been showing me this, like, bored of like you can talk about it because i don't really know nfl yeah so it's very similar i was watching um about a week or two ago when they played the dream on that thursday night and they show the amount of players that the the valkyries have been locking up and it was reminiscent of the nbc graphic that you mentioned and of daryl revis in his prime in 2009 and how he's faced like eight of the best wide receivers in nine weeks and like held them all under 50 yards they've been doing the same thing to every team that comes over there to golden state it's just we're gonna just harass you we're gonna make you look crazy we're gonna turn the ball over we're gonna run and play fast you're just gonna be down by 15 at half and like how do i even get my offense started because they're just blitzing us every play so i i do have an affinity for that i do like to see teams that play defense in that kind of like cohesion and just like fly around the court like this looks like you it's terrifying i don't know how if you ever played basketball in your life sir but like the most terrifying things in my life i could say like as a teenager like it's the first time when i learned how to play basketball so we went on au trips and like we played those teams that trapped 94 feet and just like press like as a point guard this is like i'm five six point guard five six point guard yeah i know terrifying they're like terrifying just see the press at 8 a.m in the morning it's like stuff you have yeah you have nightmares let me have a coffee bro yeah later in your life you start thinking about this like this it's terrifying and i this is very in comparison this is how i feel like the balkans are treating wba teams they're just terrifying them every night they punk you out of the gate you know like you better be ready to play kia stokes is probably like and the kais duncan tweeted that she's uh the probably like the permanent defensive player of the year right now and i just don't think that like you can dispute that right now she's awesome they're just they're just locking you the up all day they are um okay i did cut you off though you we started talking about the liberty in the third quarter when the aces were getting back into the game what were you gonna say that was just that goes back into like the the stewie like if if she wants to go she can take us very far like she also started that run where we kind of pushed the lead out to like 15 i believe and once she started taking those like heat check shots it was it was like all right they're back in the game jack young gets hot uh bell comes in and hits a three tyus parker is like knocking down good layups like chelsea gray's like throwing no look dime whatever like just making some of the best passes i've ever seen in my life um they just started flying it was like all right let's figure this out and i think there was a moment where it was just like oh shit we have rihanna stew and we have sabrina inescu like let's just run the pick and roll they have no bids they have no bids they have no bids they have no big hair they have no matchup for stewie like we're just gonna spam this for the next like five minutes and close out the game yeah they gotta pick a poison if they go with stewie sabrina you have the angle get to the basket get a good layup if they come with you we dump it down to stewie and they just gotta live with what stewie's gonna do in the mid post and i think that was like it was something about watching that that they didn't kind of figure it out like i think pauline a big pauline uh stan account right here but i think she like brings that out where she's just like oh i'm gonna run the pick and roll and like i'm gonna get it to my bigs and if they step up i'm gonna kick it to the open shooter we're just gonna open the game up a little bit i like that they finished the game with her and sab where it's like sab is not bringing the ball up all the time and you can kind of like have her play off ball a little bit but when she gets the ball if you run a pick and roll her she's still sabrina inescu you have to respect the three and you have to respect the drive so she did a good job tonight at uh picking her spots outside of that third quarter where she was just like doing anything for a little bit well the cool thing about pauline too is just she's just such a constant downhill threat that i think it's a type of player where now that coaches are are scouting for her i think they're drilling into their players like don't let her get to the rim like there's nothing that coaches hate more than layups and she is just like a walking layup line yeah so she just like adds a new dimension to to the offense as well that that third quarter i thought was interesting because it it sort of like started flipping this thing in my head and i'm curious what you think about it and i'm like what feels like a liberty yellow flag into like a bit of a green flag for me where i think demarco the school of thought on him right now is that um sometimes the offense gets a little too egalitarian and he also has had some games where he's kept the bench in too long like in these games like the sky when they made their comeback like a lot of that was just like kind of getting a getting a big lead and then taking your foot off the gas keeping the uh the bench in too long and also just kind of letting the offense freestyle too much like some of the offense that was sabrina but there was also just like moments where like you don't have stewie in the game john quell is in this game she's like get she's getting these switches she's get she's getting like good positioning down low against like the joel lloyds of the world is she i think there are moments that she is i think there's also moments where she's not necessarily going into the post i also feel like john quell is a better spot up face up like drive off of closeout player than she is a post-up threat but because of her like her height at 6'6 like we do kind of pigeonhole her a little bit uh but overall like regardless of like the type of offense you want to see her get i do think like there were moments in this game where it was like okay like your bench is in with john quell and like you're not really featuring her in the offense right now and then like you said they did sort of get back into their bread bread and butter which is why i was kind of like okay like we've seen this movie before but you did correct it earlier this time like whereas last like last time against the sky they kind of let that ride for a whole bunch of them the fourth quarter before they got their starters back in and eventually closed that game out with the sabrina game winner um but i'm just curious what you kind of make of like do are you okay with demarco doing this early in the season where it's like yeah you know like none of these games matter any yeah like where are you at on like just like it's been it's been seven weeks of him like where are you at on all of this well it's the complete opposite of what we've watched for the last two years where sandy would never play her bench so it's actually super refreshing to to to watch and i hate to keep bringing the parallels back together but uh this is similar to what the nicks did this year where it's just like the same kind of philosophy you kind of need your your guys down the stretch and i think if you empower the bench early they're ready to play when it's time late like you never just know like somebody may not have it sabrina may not have it and you can go to pauline right there and just play her johannes is proven you know what she can do like you can put her in and out of the game and she's going to be a great player and she's going to be anytime you can't play her too much because it's like all right man we can't take too many of these off one leg step backs too many too many for my concern you know what i mean it's fun the trick shots the good passes across the head like yeah i like all of it but like there's a limit on that that we can do it's really funny i feel like the start of the season chris demarco saw more marie like like like all of us like you're for the first time you watch me and johannes play basketball you're like why is she not a star like why does she why does she not have like a like a 30 usage and why does she not perpetually have the ball in her hands and i feel like the season started obviously you had the sabrina injury and chris demarco kind of had that school of thought where he was like yeah like she's a tough shot maker we're gonna put the ball in her hands and she's gonna cook and then she got off to a really hot start and he looked really smart for a while and you realize after a while like she's not a starter like you know what yeah she's your microwave score like yes that's what you're supposed to do yes she comes in and changes the game that's what you need her for you don't need her to play heavy minutes so like that even even rebecca garner tonight like rebecca was like terrified to shoot the three but she's going downhill she's like making back cuts and hitting layups so i think it's really good i think i think it works out and i think you kind of like stretch out your lineup like what's more scary than a team that is making hockey substitutions that's playing nine to ten you know i mean maybe there's nine maybe the rotation shortens up to nine like your bench you're bringing in satu you're bringing in but nija you're bringing in marine johannes you're bringing in han like pauline like this is a scary set of players that you're just bringing in just like oh yeah this is my second unit and yeah brianna suit is on a bench but i have like five really good capable players on the floor or i could sub you know i mean i could steal some minutes and get jj and stewie off the floor at the same time and kind of like still not feel like i'm losing a game so i am for it i i i like to play a lot of players early and and see who's ready for it and just have them ready like you just never know with the playoffs and just how like postseason basketball works out in essence yeah i do think though there was there was like a bit of a recalibration though by demarco where hanzo did not get into this game which i we i sat with um millie shout out millie who works here at spotify with us we we talked about she's like why not just i think just play her for a minute she's like why not just play her for a minute for five minutes they have no big out there so kind of just have her in and just like shoot shoot all the threes you want it's gonna come off the glass and it's gonna go straight to her and like we'll live with the results i don't know about that yeah well benaja laney hamilton didn't play either and yeah i do kind of wonder if if there's one thing that i feel like the liberty really need is reliable depth in the front court benaja with her injuries has just really struggled to get on track i would personally continue to give her a chance especially just how well she played against the aces in the last game like i was a little bit surprised by that um and such a great defender like you're gonna need her on the floor at some point like i just like what does she defend she's really physical and she gets to her mid-range it's a little bit different than everybody else who's downhill or shoots three so i think she's perfect yeah it's interesting like is she on was she on the injury report i probably should have checked this before like before we started recording but um because i feel like she just had a dnp and maybe look maybe this was a type of game where because the starters came out and they came in with the appropriate physicality demarco didn't feel like he had to play that card um and hey it worked out today like they just did not need her but like she does it's like i feel like it's either she's got to be a big part of what you do or you have to see what you can get for her with the trade deadline coming up and see if you can actually bolster that front court depth with someone you trust to play like every single day um but we'll kind of have to see what happens there it's tough though because she was a part of the first run like you kind of just like i think you got to ride it out and she spent the whole year injured she went to play on rival for a little bit got hurt like i think you gotta kind of like see her through because you still need vets like that like that like i said like i don't know you would you trade it for another big i think i think i would keep her i personally would keep her but i understand i like the thought of thinking it's like the more the merrier right like at this point like just kind of load it up we have enough wings we have enough guards we're just get something else that could kind of like yeah yeah i mean the city loves benaja so i totally get it we do though that's the that's the toughest part is that like a lot i've seen a lot of benaja jerseys tonight like they love they love queen like they yeah she's big she's there like she's your guy yeah she's like one of those new york players you know yeah exactly like won the championship with us big part of the winning like yeah well the depth the depth aspect of it i thought really had an impact on this game because the aces like they don't have asia wilson um they start jewel lloyd in her place and jewel lloyd has five points two for nine shooting one for seven from the three-point line overall like both of these losses against the liberty like tough shooting nights i think it's 29 percent the first game and then 23 percent tonight they got a lot of open looks that you know you normally expect them to make they are an offense that is either going to be asia or that's going to be the three-point shooting if you don't have either of those going like you it's kind of hard to expect them to win against like especially a motivated liberty team but i do feel like this was a game for the aces that like you know just shot an even bigger spotlight on some of the things that i worry about with them you know as far as like that that depth aspect of things goes because i mean kennedy carter was awesome she is 18 points off of the bench um but it's essentially like she's she's essentially just a fifth starter for them when she's healthy because steph talbot doesn't give them anything at all like she had zero points in the starting lineup tonight she only played 13 minutes um she has a negative 14.4 net rating it's the worst on the team and it's like even worse when you consider the fact that she actually plays most of her minutes with the starter starters and like some of it's i kind of feel like it's a psychological thing where i feel like sometimes when a player gets designated as a stopper they just like lose their offensive skills yeah it's so weird like this like every every once in a while it just happens with the player because i don't really look at steph talbot as like a zero on offense but she absolutely has been um this season and you know you when you have that from jewel you have that from staff like melissa just didn't have a good night i thought i thought jj did a really good job just like winning that matchup even even even if she didn't also have like the best night on on offense like winning that matchup just like that's that's enough for me and then like you combine the traps like it really was only jackie young and jackie young is i think someone that they're just gonna have to continue to live you just gotta live with whatever you're gonna get from jackie the jackie young's that good that sometimes she's gonna fry you and it's gonna happen there's nothing you can do about it she is becoming like she has always been like an all wnba level of talent um she is has slowly become more and more of just like gone from like good playmaker great playmaker to now like absolutely elite playmaker that has nights where she's like on par with chelsea gray as far as like you see her make a pass and you're like wait that wasn't chelsea gray the point god making that pass i think this season they're almost neck and neck and like assist averages she had 31 points tonight some of the like the snaking the pick and rolls coming off of the screens she's just she she's like a practitioner now man like she dissects offense and it's at the point where like a like you saw sue bird was talking with her after the game seattle fans want her bad like they want her bad but i think like a lot of teams in the league will and i think it's going to be really interesting to see just like what the trajectory of the rest of her season is as far as how much she ends up contributing to this aces offense like her usage has sort of consistently gone up throughout the course of the years um in a game without asia you naturally rely on her she has 31 points 12 for 21 from the field gets to the free throw line a couple times seven points um and seven assists two turnovers um good defense like she's just doing everything that you can possibly ask of her she is the bright spot of this game and sort of the place that you look to if you're an aces fan to say okay like continue let's continue to get more of this like jackie and asia are like that's our one two like we can ride with that we're we're thrilled with that but like man like she is truly going into growing it's like one of those players where i'm like you like you could build a heliocentric like you truly truly could if you guarantee her 20 shots a night like she's scary she's going to like she if you give her this many shots like she did this against a defense that was keyed in on her yeah she did this against a defense that was like we're gonna trap you like you are our number one focus at the expense of everybody else and she's also just so mistake free which is really cool to see from a player who like i think early in her career kind of hesitated because she was like a bit of a perfectionist because she was afraid of making mistakes and it's like yeah it turns out you're that kid like we can give you the ball in your hands and like you are not going to make that many mistakes like you just you got it like that yeah she's scary man she's scary like every time a shot went i was like ah yeah that's jackie young that's that's gonna happen like that's like one of those ones where you're just like yeah you just put your hands up and go yeah that's part of the game yeah she was scary yeah she's it's definitely definitely scary hours with her um but over i thought like you know where does this where does this rank as far as like i guess it can't you can't you can't let this go too much and it just got serious they locked in it was like all right let's win this game so yeah this is this is up there as far as like when's it a year yeah this this is definitely definitely be up there for me um i guess we got another big test on friday with uh livian miles coming into town yeah yeah so uh we'll we'll we'll reconvene next week you gotta catch her live i gotta yeah you know what i'm let me see what my friday it's it's fourth of july week and i'll see what the friday looks like uh i might might be able to sneak in there and go watch and what better way to celebrate america's and take the greatness of olivia miles you know what you're right you're absolutely right you're absolutely right no this is our ufc 250 in the middle of flatbush brooklyn instead of the white house we'll figure it out we're figuring it out yeah yeah yeah everybody everybody come to central park it'll be like the hacks finale exactly exactly exactly no this was really good this was a really good win this was fun um the building was amazing and i'll say i i'm very confident um in this team i think you got to just go through these ebbs and flows i just want to see them at full strength i want to see the real like not you don't play like yes i want to see satu like get her feet under her and like see how this really looks so i think we just gotta wait a few weeks to see what really happens but other than that i feel good about it like they're playing really good defense they're shooting the ball really well um sad but i think she's gonna figure it out i think she's it's gonna take some time but when it does i think once it clicks i think it's gonna work out i think chris has like a good like idea of how to use this roster like he wants to play a lot of guy a lot of girls excuse me and just give them a shot so i'm confident in my yeah i feel you i feel you all right i gotta ask you so i'm watching this on tv right um kathy engelbert yeah the second the second she's announced the booze immediately they're loud and then all of a sudden like there's this cut and you can tell that um the like they're they're they're trying to they booed everything she said until she said uh your commissioners cup mvp brianna stewart and then everybody started cheering but like she it was so embarrassing i thought i felt bad for her after the first move but i understand because but you know what everything else that happened this year um when she first went out there yeah the booze were they drowned her out and she was like like couldn't hear a thing she said like she was so ready to get it back to uh ally she was dying to get the mic back like just get it out of here like i have no more speech and then when they called her back i think she was like she's like cut cut cut please somebody else do it for me like i don't know i want to get back on a mic as soon as she got back you decided to name it the commissioner's cup yep this is this is literally your foot corn base cannot save you from this one but yeah they they rained down it was it was loud in there they were booing the hell out of her for sure it was bad that's tough that's not surprising i saw this coming pretty much as soon as were you at all online as far as like were you checking twitter as far as like all the updates that were going on it like with with like the alissa thomas stuff and like so a little bit of the statement um i seen a statement before i got in like oh i was on a train that caught that on twitter um which is like tonight is all night you probably shouldn't have put out a statement maybe wait till tomorrow before you get on national tv i don't know um yeah alissa thomas she's saying what she said i'm not you know i get it i totally understand like her point of view is crazy like i i was worried about you the other day uh we could break the fifth wall a little bit after i cut that clip about you talk about kaylin i was like fuck i kind of fed sarah to the wolves a little bit because this is gonna get nasty like you know the comments they go crazy in there a little bit when you when you start talking about kaylin you know everybody loves her and she's like i don't know she has a very hotter call you either love her you hate her and the people who hate her let it be known the people who love her they fight even harder so it's uh yeah it's a tough thing i can take it i know you can take it but i was like damn i kind of fed you to the wolves but i think the conversation i didn't even honestly i didn't even see any of it to be honest so they kind of they was i seen a little bit i checked these things this is what i get paid to do you do you do you tell me like you you let me know like hey like a lot of people talking about this my i honestly there's a lot of stuff that i don't see which like i'm i'm more than happy to not see which is good i try to prioritize i'm glad you touching grass as much as i possibly can touching grass yeah getting your zen and doing your meditations and just watching hoops this is you know how it is you know how i'm with the positive affirmations exactly exactly positive affirmations we gotta hit the sound bowls and watch some good basketball this is the perfect balance in life but exactly yeah kathy kathy probably should have waited tomorrow to put out this statement probably just let it go today i don't know maybe if i was a pr person that's probably what i would advise but again i'm not the pr person for the w but god bless the person who is the god bless the person who is here's the thing like so this is just gets into how reactive um the wnba's responses are to everything and i felt it in alissa thomas so alissa thomas spoke today she um talked about how you know she's received death threats it's actually a story that came out in the athletic that like went into farther detail about that about how addresses have been doxed and like people are getting more and more texting like personal phone numbers of duana and alissa thomas like this stuff is absolutely horrible um we've seen some of this stuff online as far as like comparing like the caitlyn clark like like to like to to george floyd like there's shit online that is absolutely fucking unforgivably racist and and bad right um so alissa thomas is naturally like anybody would look that stuff is just designed to provoke reaction um and look before anybody comes at me with the both sides like we talk about both sides of this thing right now i'm talking about the alissa thomas racism okay i understand that there's like maisha hines allen there's like like caitlyn is also like you worry about caitlyn's mental health absolutely right now as well however right now i'm just talking about alissa thomas she has spoken about these things i think they are horrible you i think you should be able to hold to the idea that like yes she absolutely committed a flagrant foul um she should have been suspended for that i think like she kind of even in a way said said as much where she said it's not even about the suspension it's if that's what they felt was necessary at the moment then so be it there's a lot of other players you can say the same about that but the biggest thing is the safety and she of a player is like off the court um that she wants to address and she she said so here's like what i think the communication mix-up was she throughout the course of the press conference said that we haven't heard from kathy um and then there were like honestly this blast went out to like multiple reporters during the game that um like you know multiple sources say that kathy engelbert and alissa thomas have been texting and like this is just not the time to try to win a pr war with alissa thomas like you were in the middle of a marquee game that is literally named after you like this is you couldn't have picked the more horrible time to try to litigate all of this i'm gonna give alissa thomas the benefit of the doubt here and say i think that when she said we haven't heard from kathy i think she meant kathy has not made a public statement and then naturally the most reactive league in the world that has no vision or execution beyond just trying to put out social media fires and save their own ass then and like two hours later puts out a statement right before the commissioner's cup so as the media were distracted while watching this game like it's just such a it's it's such an they can't get out they can't get out their own way it's it's literally the same thing that happened with her and the fisa over the summer it's just like why get into this spat instead of just saying you know what not today tomorrow let's get this together let's put together like what what is what is kathy gonna do here is she gonna pull out screenshots and show that she was texting alissa thomas like what how else are you gonna prove this and how much faith do you think the public has in you to believe you at this point after they felt they went through a whole summer litigation with you where everybody's just like we don't like you so how do you expect people in good faith to turn on your side like what what were you expecting when you put out this press release that will be my first question what were you thinking what did you want to come out of this like if you had another plan explain to me the plan so maybe i can hear out your point of view but just looking at it from a whole grand scheme of thinking it really doesn't make any sense it doesn't well that's the thing nobody trusts the league office i think like yes you can take it back to fee statement where then kathy engelbert makes a counter where she says the things that Nafisa Collier said were actually not true after that any inkling of possibility of her making up with Nafisa Collier was over because as Nafisa said well you basically called me a liar we also get reporting from Ramona Shelburne and Kendra Andrews at the time that multiple people can recall Nafisa talking about this conversation like six months ago before she ever talked about it in public so that's not screenshots but that's some level of it's not confirmation but it's it suggests that it's likely that kathy engelbert did in fact say those things i also trust nafisa collier way more than i trust kathy engelbert so i at this point i already think you lie publicly about things yeah and there's never going to be in a world of any sport where a commissioner is going to be liked more than the players you are not trying to be like yeah exactly you why is a commissioner are you ever trying to be like you are not good it's not the job of the wnba commissioner no you're supposed to make things straight like your job is to you need to talk about this officiating like the officiating is bad from game to game it's like you let it turn into the 80s basketball and then it's like no no wait a minute we got to dial this back and like no we can't have too many fouls let's call everything it's like there's no there's no middle ground here it's like if these gonna be physical let it be physical but don't be mad when people are getting clotheslined out here it's like you allowed it to be so physical that people are gonna start seeing like all right well if this isn't off the limits let me try this it's like no that's not how it works you have to like stop it before it happens you can't wait till it happens and then try to like clean up the messes you're gonna keep exactly putting out fires for the rest of your life this can't be good that's all this administration does that's all this administration does i wrote about this on on the ringer um on friday like every single thing that we've seen from this like like from the kathy engelbert regime essentially has been very reactionary they're always just trying to put out social media fires like when when you know people talk about like oh there isn't any consistency the reason there's no consistency is that everything that they do is coming from a place of how are people reacting to it there's no actual standard of like if i feel like if i ask kathy engelbert what type of league she wants to see she would need to like talk to 40 focus groups before she could possibly give me an answer it's honestly like it's it's like establishment democrats like this it's it's the exact same thing it's like the complete avoidance of any sense of reality um as far as like what your base what your fan base wants from you um it's like dismissal it's defensiveness it's denial it's ego it's resistance to change um it's you can't solve it you can't solve it you can't solve problems that you don't acknowledge there's no vision um it's just trying to like it's just trying to survive like it's just trying to survive there's so much intellectual dishonesty where like specific instances get twisted because they don't actually like they contradict the cause they contradict like the story that they're trying to tell um and you had this opportunity like the feast of collier calls you out you still have not been fired um and what are you being criticized about amongst other things there's a lack of communication and the fact that like you have people have to drag you kicking and screaming for you to even give them an inch as far as listening to what their concerns are all of those things still feel true right now like as far as the communication with alissa thomas goes like this texting back and forth we also have reporting from the athletic that alissa thomas actually initiated those texts so i'm not really willing to give kathy credit for reaching out i've also talked to people around the league who feel like kathy has not been a part of the league she's not been a part of the league she's not done a good job of like actually trying to like reach across the aisle now that the cba is done and try to mend some of those fences either yeah it's like what are you doing like you're kind of a lame duck it's an open secret that you're out after the season like everybody thinks you were out after the season frankly the cba got done earlier and they had time to install a commissioner before the season started you would have been out before this you kind of have a chance if you want to to keep your job right now but you have not listened to any of the critique that has come your way and at this point i also have to turn my attention to adam silver like he is the one with the power here um if you know that you're getting rid of her which i feel like you know um why hasn't it happened yet and the thing that i've heard is like basically they wanted to get the cba done and basically let this be like a victory lap year for kathy engelbert and kind of give her a golden parachute on the way out before they like transition to their next era of the wnba well congratulations on your victory lap you've fallen flat on your face i don't know what kind of golden parachute you're gonna get when every time everybody googles your name they're going to associate it you're gonna get a golden parachute with basically incompetence and here's another okay now i'm just going here's another i am so sick i'm so sick of hearing about how she's a good businesswoman she's not a good businesswoman not a good businesswoman does she cares about the quality of her product she cares about the state like if you if you the wnba is a business players are the product you do not care about their safety you do not listen to them you do not care about their well-being um you do not care about the actual product on the on the court a good businesswoman also listens to her customers the customers have been telling her something for three years for longer than this it's just gotten louder in the last three years because of caitlyn clark she has not listened to that but by any measure um how can you be a good businesswoman that's not respect receptive to customer feedback how can you be a good businesswoman that does not identify places of weakness and care about the process of how things get done in this league how can you be a good businesswoman and not have a vision for the product and actually be able to know how to sell it to people because that's what the next commissioner of the wnba is going to do like the commissioner only has soft power and how can you how can you as a commissioner wield any soft soft power because you don't like this is like look it's a hard job it's a hard job it doesn't have a lot of real hard power you are reporting to 30 owners half of which do not care about the wnba they only have nba teams you have also another swath of like nba wnba only owners adam silver is your boss alongside these owners that like a lot of them don't care right but here's the thing that you need to be able to do you need to be able to build relationships with people you need to be able to be convincing as far as like selling a vision for a product that will actually make certain people who do not care turn around and realize oh we own this product and we're kind of sabotaging it we could be getting a lot more out of it but the thing is i don't think she a believes in the product that much or really understands what makes the wnba special otherwise we would never be in this position in the first place yeah i'm with you a thousand percent yeah that was a uh that's a good point i think that's a good point i think that's a good point i think that's what they call a one for a flat i just took the screen and went straight to the corner just like what you do what you were to do you were just dancing you were out there just you were just dancing tap tap let me get let me get here hold on yeah let me probe a little bit more but you're not wrong you're not wrong it's it's uh yeah malpractice across the board but i think yeah i guess the next commissioner has to it'll be a lot easier because if you're just sitting back watching it you just say all right i just don't do everything that person did i just kind of do the opposite and i think i'll be good at this i think this is like i think maybe that's what adam silver is doing maybe he's playing 5d chess where he's saying like all right let's show the next person like this is exactly what you don't do like let's show all the bad things possible like you take the good one with the good but all the bad take that and kind of just do the complete opposite we're gonna be good we could we could really take this bad boy to the next level so yeah i'm with you i'm with you maybe adam is just keeping kathy around so that he doesn't he's not the one taking the heat for all this stuff yeah he yeah he's just like listen let's keep the energy here let's not talk about all the gambling and malik easley and all of this kind of stuff like former nba players in a group chat discussing props yeah jimmy butler's best friend we don't want to talk about that yeah let's like let's just throw everything off let's move it from vegas to butler university like let's just do a bunch of weird shit why is the nba company butler university in the middle of indiana god knows why but you know what i'm saying they're the w the nba is trying to trade on the caitlyn clark effect that's what i guess so i guess so i guess so man i guess so yeah look um i mean look we're already talking about this i was gonna have andrew on the pod but i feel like you want to just do you want to just do this no we need answer we're bringing andrew in we're gonna bring andrew we have to bring andrew in i think i think you need andrew here i am uh just a humble servant of the people i'm just here to you know give my on the streets sideline reporter uh vibes of what's going on at barclays arena tonight but i think a deeper dive where andrew is needed and i think i can't wait to hear it i can't wait to listen let me see where we're at we're already at 42 minutes we're already at 42 minutes syrian is fine i'm doing this to you know what i'm i'm i'm i know i know you got your hands up i am i i i'm taking over as a pilot of this airplane and we're gonna land it together we're gonna we're gonna give andrew the day off we're gonna land this one together all right let's do it let's do it this is your producer yeah i'm now i'm now i am the captain now i already called the iso now i'm telling you come back you gotta get out of the screen i think we got the back you're like the d'angelo i was like you're d'angelo russell passing the ball to me and i'm just passing right back to you no you cook no no no literally this episode is brought to you by the home deep oh the home depot has everything you need to launch your holiday season in style upgrade your yard with this year's hottest holiday decor including the show-stopping towering santa oh i like that one and his impressive reindeer both 8.5 feet and both designed with incredible detail that stands out day or night when you want decor that delivers impact the home depot has it make your home santa's favorite stop with the holiday decor you want all waiting for you at the home depot are you looking for support in your weight management journey zep bound terzepetide may be able to help zep 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vaccine talk to your doctor and explore what's possible or call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more about trimphia and visit trimphiaradio.com here's the other thing so kind of interesting thing happened tonight also during the game um i have been surprised that it's taken this long for this to happen um because the wnba is the most online league and we are currently in the middle of the most online white house administration that we've ever seen and i've been shocked that like that that like they this this this collab this collision took this long to happen um but during the game um the white house tweeted um the viral meme of sophie cunningham pointing at dwana bonner and they cut it with that picture that like other one of like trump pointing at the camera and smirking yeah uh this this this this has been wild man what's your move kathy what's your like what is your how do you how do you yeah i don't even know how you come back from this i don't even know how you respond to this this is just so but it makes sense right like if this is i think it's been leaning that way um for a long time if you've been leaning that way um for a long time if you've been if you pay attention to sophia um but man this is again this happened in like in the second quarter when you text me this is not good this is not good at all like this is a pr nightmare so i know you were saying i should be the wba's pr person i wouldn't even you i don't even know if they have enough money to pay me to do that that sounds like a nightmare like terrifying i don't know what the commissioner says you do you condemn that or do you just like let that be a part of the fun because you've allowed it to get this far already well if this is what you wanted which a lot of people have theorized that the wnba and the nba actually like that the wnba is such a big part of the culture wars right now because it gets the league into the headlines now i would argue that not all publicity is good publicity because i don't think that these types of things are what make people want to go to the games you were just at a game today that was a magical experience that is incredible crowd of people who just love basketball and really enjoy it um this doesn't bring people there for it i mean you had some trolls there were two guys i think i might have like left this out there are two guys who bought who came in with their brunson jerseys and sat right behind the aces bench and i guess they were attempting to troll becky all night but you know what fair play fair it's fair it's it's a you know what take take your laughs but it's also super ironic because becky is also in the rafters in the ring of honor here at the nba so i don't know if that's true but i don't know if that's true but i don't in new york so it's just like all all funny when you take it all in but i'll say this and say i don't this doesn't help yeah that doesn't like people are going to be what buying sophia cunningham jerseys by the tons now but like why you don't mean is it for the reason that you want this is this kayla clark is way too talented and way too good of a player for people just you know to turn her into like the race baiting superstar at this point i would say like she's way too talented into by these people is really it really sucks because you're right like who she is versus what she is turned into are two very different things and what the wnba feels like versus what it looks like on the outside looking in are also two very different things that's another thing i talked a lot about a lot in the piece is like the environment inside of a wnba arena and like you you were at the liberty arena i think that the valkyries this applies to them too this applies to portland as far as these arenas that are like i call them the wnba's gay holy trinity like they represent not only the wnba's history but like the future that it can have if it doesn't run away from itself as far as like being a league that can like lean into what it actually is and also monetize all of that too like the fever are number three in attendance in the wnba number one two and four are the liberty the valkyries and the portland fire so like there is something very like palpable and energetic there and i just feel like i don't know like you're in new york like you've experienced all the nick stuff like you're what like i'm sure you're watching the world cup like i've been watching the world cup and like i just i feel like at the end of the day the culture around any sport is pretty inextricable from the sport itself as much as like there are people who are going to be like look like this can't be an absolutely has to come first but like sports are always an inherent part of like whatever fabric of like the culture they emanate from um it's something that like is really obvious at a time like the world cup and when it doesn't feel obvious it's because it's so ingrained that we're not even noticing it right but like every single this goes for every single sport and the wnba is black it is queer and it is those are also like a lot of that stuff is what makes it really fun as well like a valkyries game seems like game seven of a basketball series alongside like a pride night and those are things that have mass appeal not just to like gay people like we're just like pride month is ending right now straight people love a pride parade you know like that's it's not like it's it's not like it's not 1997 when the league first started and like they're running away from their identity and like we don't have marriage equality in this country like it is a completely different time for um like queer people and like the like you know i don't know i don't know i don't know queer sort of like like marketing and like the wallets that are available for you to like to get money out of if you actually like embrace this side of of your league and that's what those three teams have done and they've done a really good job of it um but at the same time like i think that is also what makes this league like inextricably a right wing target as well like i do think that like some of the best off-court parts of the wmba's culture um are also like what this modern conservative movement wants to tell you is not possible like it is excellence and advocacy at the same time it's joy it's like queer visibility it's chosen families that are thriving it's like people that are like you know finding their people and you're seeing like excellence and diversity exist all at the same time um it's collective action it's it's like all of these things that i think like the right now the modern conservative movement wants you wants to convince you aren't real so that like you buy into a lifestyle that is that is regressive and and old-fashioned and look also like to each their own like it's really just about agency everybody should live however they want to whether you're a traditionalist or whatever but like it's just really like to each their own um but as a result of like that symbolism and that power like i just like this type of stuff is gonna happen like you are gonna have like the national police union weighing on in on this shit you are gonna have like the riley gains of the world weighing in on this shit now you have like the white house weighing in on this shit and like you can take it back to like like i don't know like you look at like the mlb and and uh and like the the pride stuff they're having like the issues that they're having with like bible verses on the side of their hats like why only now in this this part this month of the season like why haven't you had these bible verses on the side of your hat for the entire year like why why now like because you you want to show like and i think this is like a another conversation that leads to another thing like my family uh just a little background like grew up very christian i wouldn't say super conservative but like grew up in a christian household i don't have a problem with anybody who chooses to do it as long as you're not like harming children or like being a terrible person do whatever you want to do in your life and you're gonna be okay with it and you're gonna be okay with it the bedroom and the privacy of your home that is like what you do i don't think that makes you you're not like the judge jury and executioner of this thing like i don't i don't get where it comes from and maybe this is something i gotta learn or maybe this is something i gotta see going forward but i think that this like letting these people like what did you think that women that play basketball all the time and like the wmba is such a progressive league this is going to be happening here you're going to have superstars that are you know don't partake in the same things you do but hey the greatest player that we're watching in the world is a straight woman like why does everybody champion that than rather worrying about i don't know who isn't who is queer and who is i don't that's just like my thinking of it i just i just don't i don't understand it um i hate it because there's so much good basketball that you can watch on a nightly basis where it's like like you said like portland is such a fun place to be and i think that's what fun story their first year in the league like they're just having a good time like people are showing up they're winning games they're not supposed to be winning at times like it's just it's a fun story toronto is such a fun story as like i could i know people at home are probably like i know you have friends that you grew up with like i'm going to a wmba game it's like i know you probably thought i was crazy watching the wmba 15 years ago but like you're going to a tempo game now because it's like the w is right here in toronto playing out the westchester county center like less than five years ago this is not like that far ago like there's high schools in white plains that graduate out of the westchester county center like smaller high schools like white plays high school graduates out of there like community colleges graduate out of there like they're selling out the barclays on a night in night out basis this is such a fun league and i think when you take away from that the basketball aspect and make it a fun league it's like it's like a fun league it's like a fun league it's like a something else it like it's yeah it's ruining the product yeah well how long have you been a wmba fan i so i would say i've watched since i was a child like i remember that first season in 97 like all the games are on nbc like vividly remember teaspoon shooting the half court shot like the comics just being extremely dominant there was a phase in my life i'd say probably in the mid-2000s where i wasn't watching as much kind of got back in like i was like i'm not going to like around in my more train and i think i started watching more uh i think i started paying attention a lot more maybe like 2018 2019 whenever one of the mystics win that was 18 19 19 so i say 19 was like my reintroduction where i started watching the league a little bit more heavy they had the bubble season and then coming out from there and like the liberty kept getting better we get sabrina we get brianna and i'm like okay i want to go to a game and i ended up going to barclays to watch a game and i was just like this i went to game i want to say that was game four or five of the 2023 finals when I tell you that was like I left that game sad that the Liberty lost but I was like that was just such an experience that I've never got to see in like watching basketball it's like I was blown away as somebody who watches basketball night in night out like I've left that arena like wait that was so much fun like how have I not been to more games like I was a little bit more upset with myself like how do I not go to more games this is so much fun like I had such a good time like the crowds interacted the basketball is intense like it's fun so I don't know it's very interesting yeah what would like do you feel like and I don't want to presume too too much here but just like based on a couple of the things you've said about your background like do you feel like watching the WNBA is also was also like this sort of like entry point into like humanizing queerness on a level no I would say more like more life experience than I've ever had in my life I would say more like more life experience than I've ever had than anything just knowing people like I think meeting queer people as you go along I think um I think when I got maybe to like college is when I started humanizing like not saying humanizing let me take that back um sorry that was my words my yeah yeah but just like having a more understanding of it it's like oh this is just like all right this guy's just gay like he lives in the same dorm hall with me like he showers in the same showers that I use like he's not attracted to me I don't have to like be too masculine to say what's going on but I'm like what's up to him act like I don't know him it's just like yo this is what he likes to do in his spare time and that's what makes his heart flutter like god bless him whatever he's into is what he's into like he's not a terrible person like I think that's just how I see it yeah I think that like that's part of like that wasn't like like I like that wasn't your experience like you went you went you went to college and like that's like when you got like an interface with people that weren't like you right exactly and that's like what I think makes the WNBA on a level powerful and also what I think it makes it like a threat to certain people like inviting these women into your home when like like you know through your television screens and like people that your children can see and stuff that you normally would not interface with like certain people will see that and be like oh right like I think most people will right and then the more people that are doing that like the less power that movement has but that doesn't happen if the WNBA is like demonized you know what I mean like that doesn't happen if the modern conception of the WNBA in the eyes of mainstream people is that it's like a league that is like not welcoming and gatekeepy and like it's just full of like performative scolds that like don't want anybody in there that has like even like presumably any level of like different opinion from them so like that that to me is like the tension here like I and like I'm I feel like the whoever the next commissioner is has to be able to have like the political savvy to understand that yes you want to make it about the basketball but this stuff is like this stuff hits people's cores like you can't you can't really get away from that and it could be a very very powerful tool if it was a league that like leaned in more on like finding ways to be competent and also like finding ways to bridge the the like the bridge like the things that made the league special because there was no spotlight on it and the things that also like were causing the league to not have a spotlight on as far as like the incompetence issues go like fine like how do you bring in somebody that is like understands the institution well enough to know what's special about it but is also like not like marred by it like someone who can like bring in the wisdom but like also be a culture changer like I think that's like the sort of difficult place that the league is in right now um and I appreciate you letting me use personal story a little bit there I just like I did want to land the plane a little bit but I also feel like that like that little like literally like those types of personal connections and stuff are like when they add up collectively like are what make um the league really really like interesting and special and why it's like such a big part of like the culture wars but why it can be a big part of like cool as shit as well yeah and I think it's I think the most I think the worst thing is like the slippery slope right like you've been watching the w for I would assume most of your life or not your whole life right no no I started I came in with Caitlyn I'm not gonna lie you're lying I'm not you did not come in with Caitlyn I came in with Caitlyn you're too much of a hoops head to just come in with Caitlyn I came in with Caitlyn I don't want to tell you all right man whatever I would say when the money like just the idea of like the money coming in we also like the culture of race wars is like oh it's like the combination of all the bad things that could have happened like I think that's the worst part about like the more visibility came and let us like oh well this is the reason why we're getting this money like let's just lean into it more it's like no yeah you shouldn't do it this way that's actually no you have more money and more eyes you should actually show the thing that like oh this is why I've been to it like oh this is actually pretty cool like I would rather spend like a little Tuesday night and go to Barclays Center I will go to Gay Bridge or I will go to the wherever you like to watch the games that I will go to Vegas and watch the game like I'll make a trip out of it you know what I got a random night I'm staying in Vegas for four days why don't I just go watch an Aces game Tuesday night and go to Dre's after it's like a fun little night for you you know what I mean like you could really plan your night and your day around it was like oh why I just got to watch Angel Wilson play for like 20 minutes like I think I just watched the best basketball player I've ever seen in my life I think the average person might come out like that I was like wait this was fun like why don't they play again like I'm gonna watch yeah in certain arenas it's also cheap enough that it's basically like a third space I mean realistically like I sat somewhere in a Laura Bowles and a person who I went with is a season ticket holder and they said they get tickets for like 60 to 80 dollars a night which is like really good yeah I mean but you can you can get in it for like ten dollars in some places you know like you could take your kids like it could be a thing like you can get everybody into it like that was the other part I've seen tonight like a lot of like young men like walking around in Sabrina jerseys it was like it was it was it was nice to see like I'm always like very amazed and taken back by it but it's like it's dope that they get to see it and like love the basketball in general well like those guys that showed up in the in the Brunson jerseys right yeah there's no way you're not telling me like you can't tell me that those guys like didn't walk out there and they're like oh I'm a Sabrina Unescu fan now for sure are they you're somewhat of a basketball fan like you're into like you know Stewie like you you had to be under a rock if you don't know who Brianna Stewart is like she's only like just the weirdest player in college like just never lost just really good just been really good her entire life like I think you walk away you're probably you're probably a Johanna's fan like you probably walk away a Johanna's fan tonight well the first time you watch you bring in Johanna's you're like why isn't she starting why isn't she exactly you probably walk away like yo I gotta watch some more of her highlights like she is she is crazy did you see that scoop layup where she came across I was crazy everybody's body like wait I gotta watch her more I'm a fan like yeah I think you come for those things and leave with something and if you're if everybody's only coming in for the hate and not coming and not leaving with good basketball with more hate it's like that goes back to your whole point of like the commissioner she has to or the next commissioner they have to take hold of this thing and like really let people leave with that experience like even if you come in with the hate and say damn I came here to hate Angel Reese tonight but damn yo she fucking hits the glass hard like she's getting 15 rebounds off of just pure will like I don't know if it's skill or whatever like she left with 12 and 15 but it's like the clunkiest wildest fit 12 and 15 I would have thought I would have seen but it was like damn she's she's just good at what she does yeah I really think so much of the WNBA's marketing efforts like especially on a team level really need to be about getting people in the door like I think this is a thing that's the Sparks did a really good job of like for the 30th anniversary the Sparks don't normally have sellouts they had a sellout for that game and they did a really good job of like getting people in the community into that game then they got to see a night where like Lisa Leslie has like all this gravity at halftime and she's like making this amazing speech and like you're seeing just like I mean Lisa's just like different right like she's just she has so much aura like you're like oh my like like but you feel something when she talks and then they close the night with a Neko Gouma cake game winner that is like and then you're like okay yeah this is an experience I want to be part of like I really want to be part of it and I'm like I want to be part of it I really think that like they really need to sell the in arena experience more because then it also gives people a chance to realize that like everything that you're seeing outside like on social media is like really not what this league is about yeah it's just twitter banter and like yeah for sure wanting to argue for the sake of argument last thing I want to talk to you about before I um stop forcing you to do a podcast with me yeah you turned me into your guest you booked me and I didn't know that I didn't realize you booked me tonight until I booked you and I'm bumping Andrew sorry Andrew 15 minutes ago listen man we'll add that to the list of things that I've done in the last six months that's an accomplishment look at that um do you watch summer house no I I have not into the reality uh television world but please give me your summer house comparison let's bring it to me so now I can talk to somebody about summer house and they could bring it full circle for me exactly there you go so I'm coming in with no expectations that I'm going to leave him. something there you go exactly there you go there you go yeah you got it you know let let let your let an experience ride so as a simultaneous summer house and wnba fan sophie cunningham's podcast with west wilson is like the biggest trip in the world for me so i'll explain the west wilson lore in like you know a minute or less um he was like a newcomer to the show a couple years ago and he was like pretty beloved at the beginning for honestly kind of some sophie cunningham-esque reasons like he positioned him himself close to a fan favorite and sierra miller um who he would then go on to like have a situationship with um he's like charming and funny and sort of like this like let's get a beer together sort of way like he's very like backsliding type of guy um and then as the show goes on like you can't you realize he's a bit of an empty vessel and he's like mostly an attention seeker um he plays sierra who's also like the only black woman on the show at the time um and then this season they sort of like reconnected and tried to be friends again and he ended up playing her again and he went through what was essentially like this like four episode reunion humiliation ritual where he is like exiled from reality i just love that i love how people just casually use that term all the time this has nothing to do with anything but i feel like people just pull it out for no reason every day that's one of my favorite phrases i'm people it's hilarious to me i'm sorry there are people who are really going to be the asian rituals i'm not laughing at you guys i'm sorry but the term just getting used in everyday vernacular is funny to me i'm definitely laughing at west and like you know he he gets he gets you realize he's basically like this emotional terrorist who um was kind of playing out this arc now it seems like for attention so that they would be like one of the bigger plot lines on the show and ironically it's now sierra who is getting all of the positive attention that west dreamed of and he is like yes he's getting a lot of attention but it's not the right kind and i feel like he is almost like this attention-grabbing kind of guy who's like you know attention economy um he's like an attention economy cautionary tale in a lot of ways and i'm relating this back to sophie cunningham because now she's in this place where she's obviously very fluent in this in the same economy right like she has been able to position herself as somebody who can have like plausible deniability of like being the worst parts of mega um while also being able to make herself like a symbol in the culture war and to be able to like trade on it she's um got that sort of like i'm just telling it like it is vibe and also like there are times when she does and this gets into like the wnba's problem where you give you create a market inefficiency when you are this sort of when you have the level of political correctness that the wnba does like you do create room for sophie cunningham to exist um and she's really good at it like she can kind of flirt with this audience without like fully having to commit to them but now you've got the white house tweeting and it's sort of we're kind of at this place where it's like sophie your move you've been dancing on this line you want to be riley games like you want to like what what are you what are you going to do from here from this point out and you might want to look at your podcast co-host as a bit of a cautionary tale here i don't know and it also like what does that say to your teammates like what what what do the what does the raven johnson's think of you what if the my shall and heinz think of you at this point like if you know what i mean like how does that you know how does that all work out where you like you said the the w is black and it's queer like very black very queer like how does how do you last in this league how do you go into locker rooms like what locker room are you accepting and how do you go into the locker room and how do you go into the locker room at this point just based on that because you kind of play wooden everybody's like yeah i kind of know but like now it's like out there a little bit do you say no i'm against it or do you like lean fully into it yeah what do you i feel like she leans fully into it and kind of just like i don't know i don't know what's like truly what she truly believes like i here's the thing like even trump supporters at this point are like kind of out on trump he's got like a 27 approval rating he is like like young men are out on this dude he had to like this there's a reason that they did ufc 250 in the white house like he needs he needs that base and he does not have that base anymore so i'm also like i don't really know what sophie cunningham in 2026 really believes like she has said on the record that she's like really in the middle of the road and doesn't talk politics now some people really are in the middle of the road and don't talk politics some people say that when they don't want to say what their views really are i truly do not know like i i cannot tell you well it's in this woman's heart because like i've also seen her look like you see you see her like on the sidelines and she's having these like like deep like not like like you know like britney grinder sees her and they're like they cannot wait to hug it out and they're having these like conversations they're super happy to see each other like you can tell that that's like an authentic relationship that she has with with bg and like other people in the league who are black and queer and stuff like that so like i don't really want it like i know it's like i think like the journalist me is coming out and being like i don't actually know like i think the thing is i just don't want to like put words in her mouth and i want to give her the benefit of the doubt here and i just want to like kind of on that end too because like this is also somebody who very recently went through having to like file charges against somebody who was stalking them like this story just came out like last week where like some a guy from indianapolis was facing like multiple criminal charges after authorities say he sent like threatening and sexually explicit messages to her um like it's just kind of it's like that that element of it where i think that a lot of the black players in the league are demonized i think that like some of the white players in the league like particularly players like sophie um this happens with uh with caitlyn clark too who also had a stalker i think that those women are kind of like fetishized in a way where um there are people who worship them and are obsessed with them in a way that's really deeply unhealthy and frightening and that's what i'm trying to say i think that's what i'm trying to they also do get like the death threats and like that type of attention too i'm sure um but there's also that extra element of it as well and like i think that like we just live in this world where a lot of these wnba players they have become like political symbols and like culture war symbols and it kind of gets them into a place where like they lose control of like their own image as well like that's i mean it's kind of like what's like happening with with the meme in a way like it's not like sophie made that meme um or anything like that but like because of where the wnba has gotten to is like its place in the culture wars and like sophie's place within that like the white house is just using it as another as another sort of like distraction from whatever is going on in the country um and that is going to have ramifications for the wnba and it's going to have ramifications um for sophie as well like regardless of what's going on in the country regardless of where this goes from here i won't take you out uh no i'm with you i'm with you i'm very interested to see how all of this this comes out and if we get another pr statement from the league or what what what's being condemned and what's not being condemned how does she lean into it and i just think it ultimately just goes back to our prior conversation where it's just like it adds to this thing again right like everybody's using this point gif for meme and like it's just going super viral over the last i don't know week or so since this happened but how does this make you a fan of caitlyn clark like what makes you like does this make you care about her pick and rolls and her coming and hitting deep threes anymore like does this does this help does this make you care about sophie cunningham as a basketball player do you even care are you just saying i'm with her yeah because of this yeah it doesn't it doesn't help the product at the end of the day so it sucks but it goes back to like everything i think uh current administration just finds different ways to latch on to things like they when drake's album comes out they just turn the ice man to maga man and it's like a whole nother thing and it's like drake's canadian bro he doesn't even care about american politics like well why are you guys involved yourself with this i don't know yeah like the same country you're trying to like impose tariffs on yeah i have no idea why you guys did this but like i guess anything to stay in a news cycle to keep our eyes off of what actually is going on yeah i don't know i don't know you don't want us to talk about the stuff that you don't want us to talk about right i guess i guess it works but maybe somebody could explain it to me further i'm willing to listen um yeah similar to your summer house point if you gotta just give me a little brief story what's the basis of summer house what is summer houses like thing why are people why do people go to summer house okay so it is um i have did not watch it from the start this is actually the first season that i've watched it um basically every weekend this group of like influencers reality tv show to the haptens um they all live in new york they work in new york and they go to their summer house where they party they like play pranks on each other they sometimes they date sometimes other stuff um they go out they have like these themed parties like there's like friendships like it's just like it's just it's it's a hangout reality tv show basically where things happen because you put people in the same room and with alcohol and a desire to get attention okay so people it's just like a simulation like a weekend simulation like you just put it's an influencer house so they just it's kind of an influencer house yeah in a way just turn the cameras on and people are just trying to go the most viral then but it leads to a lot of trying to have like their side hustles that like are like you know the show obviously helps that some of them have like their seltzer brands there's like a dj there's like a one guy actually really like carl he opened a um non-alcoholic bar called soft bar in brooklyn um like they just sort of like you know it's just like the classic it's influencer economy stuff if you really want to know you got to listen to listen to um um we're obsessed with uh with with uh with nora and jody they talk about this stuff you know what that is a very good plug and i will be listening i will ask jody has a good way of explaining these things i think jody like low-key got me into watching uh love is blind i'm sorry this is like a very random sidebar that i'm getting into core week i think it was two weeks ago we went to la her and uh cliff and kellen i believe we're explaining the love is blind and i ended up watching the last i think two or three seasons following that and i was like oh okay i got it jody has a way of explaining this to me so i'm gonna talk i actually need to talk to jody and i'm gonna get you should do it i'll come back to you i will report we will have a summer house recap somewhere further down this summer and i'll come back the next time we'll talk about it let's do it i'll let you know where i'm at with the show at that absolutely i'm so down you can you should start with the reunion and like that'll actually make you want to go back and watch like the actual season i'm so down you should start with the reunion and like that'll actually make you want to go back and watch like the actual season i'll give you like and you can kind of get your zabruder on and be like wait were these two people so west actually so the way west screwed zero over was he actually started like dating her best friend who also was married at the time and you know what we're not gonna do this right now like that's listen listen to we're obsessed it's very messy um i'm gonna close this out with something fun right now and i'm so so you can so you can exhale a little bit um are we doing breathing exercises or are you no no we're not so lebron james has is is no longer gonna be a laker um and he's told rich paul like to talk to everyone around the league who's interested in him and come back to him with like the options that are best so he can make a decision um not no i thought it would be fun to rank which wnba teams lebron would be the best fit with and we we've been going for a while so i'll speed run through some of these and we'll do this we'll do this basically like from like bottom to top so like last team connecticut sun no spacing no future um they have the houston move coming up he could mentor leila can i'm not moved not even going to talk about it chicago sky fuck no can't have lebron going to a place with no practice facility like we don't want an incompetent front office sleuth's return is cool like they're playing a little bit better right now but absolutely not i'll put ten dollars into chicago sky swear jar for that super easy and i'm not gonna talk about it but i'm gonna talk about um phoenix mercury they already have enough of an aarp vibe going on there uh they need more youth uh he probably overlaps with alissa thomas too much uh and they're kind of like on the same timeline age-wise so i don't really love that one um and we can get into so the mystics i don't really love the the fit however he could like kind of be a mentor to cody mcmahon who's been compared to him but they don't have enough spacing and i never want lebron to go to a team without spacing he could stay home they desperately need some front court help they need the playmaking they need the scoring they need everything but that's part of the reason i don't want him to go there so kelsey plum already has an overuse injury and like we've seen lebron on teams that like he has to do everything um so those are the ones that like yeah atlanta is also up there too like i just don't like the bit pain is packed they have enough on the wings um they'd be like a clunky on-court fit like i don't don't really like that one either um what is well here's here's one here's one i want to get thoughts on um portland so they have lots of spacing i think i think lebron would fuck with cla i think he would like alex sarama's system because do you remember like there were years ago when he was on cleveland and he used to balance himself on clear plastic bubbles um like for his longevity and he also like i feel like he believes in weird training and like health related stuff like he is always kind of like on the edge of those things like i actually think that they would like smoke some weed and drink some wine and like come up with like the way to elongate his career to like 50 okay and he has the nike ties in portland exactly no it's a great point that's it that's not a bad move i think portland i don't think he would do it in this stage of his career if you told me he left miami and went to california he would do it in this stage of his career if you told me he left miami to portland as like this next like later stage he's like in super what's the term that they used uh teams i forgot what the term is lebron jay wants to play with teams that are uh i forgot what the term was the title contenders essentially yeah they did but they they used it as such like a uh what was the term i can't remember the term oh my god it's gonna kill me i need to hear the terms but it was like teams they want to say he wants to play on a contender but teams have like a super contender basically yeah like like the competitive balance has to be like amazing like competitive he basically wants to play for a contender where he doesn't want to have to do everything right so i think portland portland might not be i wouldn't say at this stage at 42 if you told me 10 years ago before la that would have been like you know what this is kind of like a little like lebron's just doing something new like small market small like yeah i think that would that would have been fun years ago i don't think it fits now yeah no yeah it's a good point okay there's actually so seattle is also probably in the same ilk where i do i love the on-court fit because they are just like one playmaker away from even unlocking dominique malanga and awa fam more like they just need someone to like the lobs would be crazy the front court with those three the size nobody would be kind of like lays off on defense and kind of like funnel everything to the lane he would probably have a blast doing that but he'd be taking a ton of plays off on defense they could go super big with flage at the two i would want a little bit more floor spacing but awa can shoot i was shooting like 76 percent from three over the last three games and she's got that quick release i would be eaten yeah the two bigs would have amazing time playing with lebron but but probably too young too young too young too young um wish casting here but lebronto lebronto kiki kiki lebron the one two like that size that size the iq defensive ability playmaking would he get along with sandy why wouldn't he i mean sandy's like a player coach i think i mean i think sandy sent like you like you you probably know better you're a liberty fan but sandy seems pretty easy to get along with you think he would make it work with sandy lebronto wouldn't be it would be i could you're not moved you're not i'm not moved but table it table it table it okay it's not it's not the worst idea you came up with tonight okay what was the worst idea i came up with tonight we'll talk about that later we'll talk about that later keeping me off for hours of change on the podcast the worst idea we had tonight it was the worst idea the fact that i couldn't wait until tomorrow with andrew um so dallas um i think he would be a great player he'd be so good at finding page and az on like the cuts like you could just put the ball in his hands and they would just thrive they need the wing help like a reek the erike thing is not really working out yeah i was gonna say i think a reek might have the worst have to get the worst of this because like could she come off the ball that much playing with lebron well we but we've seen the kairi like kairi is like erike's like wnba comp and like the kairi lebron thing worked really well when it did when it did and then it did okay okay um all right uh golden state he's already thinking about going to the bay area yes to join the best shooter of all time why not the best shooting team in the league what's the one thing that they're missing they just need their closer they have everything else you don't have to play defense you don't have to be the point guard you have run up and down they're gonna you can just run up and down yeah you can kind of play that shot on my list right now i'm i'm like i have a soft spot for going to state but yeah i think i think go to state would be an amazing fit it's it's yeah it's it's the best one so far it's the best one so far um all right i think we're okay so we're getting to my top three now um and i just i have my number one two and three kind of interchangeable so minnesota links just we'll love to see what cheryl reeve could do with him the law he could be a lob threat for olivia miles pick and roll would be fun you can if you had lebron and and fee on both sides of, like, the elbows, just, like, picking defenses apart. It'd be a beautiful thing. Yo, the horns action? The horns action? Yeah, that was, like, some Cleveland shit. They ran that a lot in Cleveland. They would actually. They would love it. They would love it. Kayla McBride getting even more open threes. Yeah. She'd be, like, his Kyle Korver. Yeah, and then, like, Courtney Williams would be, like, the ultimate, like, person to play with. LeBron James on stud butts? Yo! Yo! We're cooking with gas now, right now. Oh, my God. We're cooking with gas right now. And I don't know what the clubs are like, and, like, respect, you know, LeBron has a wife, but the two men, the two men with Kourt and LeBron would be insane. Yeah, and LeBron would be incredible. LeBron, he would be a good wingman. He would have Kourtney on fire. Yeah, he'd be like, yo, my friend over there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, let me set the mood. We got some Lobos over here. Like, let's have a good time. I love it. I love it. Okay. Indiana. The Caitlin Clark, LeBron James, LeBron bromance continues. The Nike connection there. In fact, they love each other. LeBron relates to Caitlin on the level of, like, you know, kind of being that chosen one that was tasked with saving the league. Dare I say, honestly, if LeBron goes to the WNBA, this takes a lot of the pressure off of Caitlin, too. It could be kind of like his parting gift to the game of basketball to sort of ease that lift, be that mentor. They, like, in the lob threat with Caitlin, too. That'd be insane. That's kind of like the version, that is like the WNBA version of, like, Steph Curry and LeBron playing together. And then, he kind of replaces Natasha Howard, in a way. Like, they're missing that defensive versatility. Steph White could do some really fun things with him. I think LeBron would love it if it wasn't in Indiana. I think he would have a blast going to Indiana if it wasn't in Indiana. If that makes sense. It's just that one thing, though, for sure. You know where he would like to go? The place that he thought about buying a team, the Las Vegas Aces. There's also. This has LeBron James going to Vegas, spread all over. He's like. He would turn Angel Wilson into his AD. He's like. He's seen this before. Jackie Young is like. He could play off ball with Chelsea Gray. Yeah. And it's such a bandwagon. Like, it's such a LeBron hitching his wagon to something fun. It's fucking Vegas. I love LeBron. LeBron's a goal for the race. For the record. I'm just gonna put that out there. But, yeah, Vegas has it written all over. But, my. Dark horse, man. I'm not gonna lie. Golden State. We might have to put Golden State up there. I'd put Golden State like two or three right there. You know who didn't mention it? What? Oh, the Liberty. I was gonna ask you about the Liberty. I was gonna ask you about it. You couldn't see him coming to the Liberty. I actually. I think we have the spacing for him. I think if you just let. The spacing is there for LeBron. LeBron, when he plays with like a 5-0 big, like John Cole Jones, you got Sabrina Unescu. And Sui and Saab and Marine. Like, imagine the. They would look like the wrong goal trotters out there if they're like running The handoffs with Marine and New York. He finally plays in New York. He finally comes. Like, Barclays is on tilt. Honestly, Joe Sy needs this. Like, for like the larger overarching, like Joe Sy versus James Dolan is like the owners of New York basketball. If he wants to win the city over, he would have to do this. He could. I mean, he's. You don't have to do much to beat James Dolan, to be completely honest. Like, this would like cement him into like New York ownership. It would be like Steinbrenner than him in New York ownership. I still. So here's why I think it'd be the Aces, though. So, you still have the Nike angle with Asia. Right. And it's the clutch aspect of it. Like, Asia is with clutch. Chelsea Gray is with clutch. Jewel Lloyd is with clutch. Like, that is a clutch WNBA team. So, like, you know that LeBron could get there and like, know that he's taken care of in that way as well. Like, you know that he likes to have a good time. He likes to have that sort of control. And you've got the two goats angle as well. Two goats on the same team before five lineup with Asia at the five. It'd be insane. It'd be insane. Plus, he gets to be close to home. Yeah, it's a little two-hour ride. Plane ride. You know? Gas up the jet. They need that Steph Talbot replacement. He could just slot right in. Ah, man. Vegas makes a thousand percent sense for LeBron. Yeah, I'd lock it in. I'm still fighting for Golden State, but. You sold me on Vegas. I think LeBron and Asia would be. Yeah. They have to recreate the Wade and Bron picture where like, Asia throws the lava up to Bron. Oh! It's just like. Oh, that'd be too sick. That'd be too sick. I think the Aces is the most likely. The Fever is like. It's like between the Fever and the Aces, right? And then like, the Lynx get a meeting. The Valkyries get a meeting. Get a meeting, too. And they're sort of like the basketball sickos are all hoping for that one. Yeah, yeah. That's like. That's league pass. You know what I mean? Those league pass junkies who don't sleep at night and just watch hoops. They would love that. And then I think out of respect for the city, he gives the Sparks a meeting. And then he obviously meets with New York as well. Yeah. Because he wants to be winding down. He wants to see what Cy has to offer, for sure. Yeah. And I think New York would make a good push. He could definitely go to New York. I think like, you know, you remember the Breonna Stewart recruiting where like Clara Wu Cy flew out to the Mediterranean Peninsula and like they went out on that boat. It's not a peninsula. Not bad. But they, you know, they were out on a boat. Like, you could just. You could see that. The banana boat. Yeah, we just sold you Stu York. What else, man? Stu York. I'm selling it, man. Jay-Z will come and watch every game with you, you know. Jay is throwing the Barclays. That's your guy. He'll come and watch you. Oh, yeah. We can get Beyonce to come and watch you. Beyonce to a game or two. Like, we could change. We could change basketball. We could change W if we ever come to Brooklyn. That's a good sales pitch. That's true. LeBron James could get Beyonce to a Liberty game, man. That. You want to talk about crossing over? Asia. Asia's favorite artist is Beyonce. And her. Beyonce is also at the top of her wish list for, like, celebrities that she wants to see come to a game as well. And it's like, you know, queen of the WNBA. Queen B. King. Then you know what? You got Benajalini Hamilton in the Queen B of the Liberty as well. Queen B, yeah, man. It's. It's a lot, man. They both got a strong case. They both got a real strong case. Yeah, Rich has a lot of work to do. Rich has to. He really has to sell LeBron on this. But I think he's gonna say Vegas, bro. Like, we could start here. We could own the men's team when we're done. Mm-hmm. You can get a piece of the Bellagio. We could throw concerts at the Sphere. Like, we got this. We got this all mapped out if you do it the right way. Wait. Okay, this is what. This is what happens. James Dolan figures out that LeBron is on the verge of signing with the New York Liberty. He absolutely cannot have that. So he convinces them to sign. him to sign with the Aces. And in exchange, LeBron gets. That's a piece of the Sphere. Yeah. That's some dirty GMing, man. That's some dirty ownership. But I. That's an aspiration level shit. When you get to. When you get to them levels, you gotta play a little dirty, I guess. That's how it's done. That's how it's done, Big League. That's how it's done, Big League, I guess. Stefan, sorry for kidnapping you. I wouldn't trade it for the world, sir. I'm glad I could do this. This was fun. Me too. I had so much fun. Listeners, this was incredible. We'll be sure to do a mailbag before the end of the season where I can come in and we could just chat a little about some random things. Let's do it. We should absolutely do a mailbag. Listeners, let us know if you want a mailbag. We can get you a mailbag, for sure. And positive affirmations need to come back, sir. We do. We need a session. We need to talk to some people. We do. We got some teams that are down bad right now. I mean, the whole league is down bad right now. Maybe our next positive affirmations is actually just for the WNBA as a whole. Yeah, honestly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll work on it. That might be next. Okay. Stefan, thank you so much for joining the show and also for producing the show. You're the best. I'm glad we got to do this. I'm deeply sorry, but I'm also not that sorry because I made you do it. I had a blast. Thank you for having us here. Anything is possible. This is U.S. Bank's Cozy Cashformations with your chief financial playmaker Fernando Ramos. We'll see you next time. You are worthy of financial security. Budgeting is not restriction. It's freedom. You are smart. You are capable. You are giving your money a purpose. You are learning the language of saving, of growing, now streaming. Member FDIC Copyright 2026 U.S. Bank. This episode is brought to you by Whole Foods Market. Follow us here and Whole Foods Market has everything you need for cozy food, cozy meals, seasonal treats, and easy entertaining. Elevate your hearty dishes with tasty bone-in beef short ribs or New York strip steaks with no added growth hormones or antibiotics. And as the fall evenings draw in, why not get ahead of cold season with immunity shots, herbal teas, lozenges, and supplements. Make sure you look for sales throughout the month. Shop fall flavors with higher standards at Whole Foods Market.