Bizarre column today in the Seattle Times -- David Martin goes off on the league and the Storm for not drafting Mendiola.

There's a lot of weird statements or implications here: that Mendiola is better than Taurasi, that Mendiola is a victim of bigotry akin to discrimination against minorities, that the league set Giuli up to embarass her...

But the basic premise is that everyone passed on Mendiola because of her family. "Many have told me that Giuliana Mendiola was blacklisted because of her family."

Really? Who?

I think it's possible that the off-the-court stuff had some minor relevance. If a team was deciding between Giuli and a comparably talented player, they might have said: "I'm not sure I want to deal with the extra risk, the extra publicity, the mother Alicia, the possibility of another ASU incident... so I'll go with the other player."

That might have happened. It's possible. But from everything I've heard from scouting reports and WNBA team officials, the reason Giuli wasn't draft was just that she wasn't good enough. The primary concern is her conditioning -- she needs to drop a little weight, get faster, get stronger.

Giuli was a great player at UW. But successful college players don't always make successful pro players. Matching up against players in the Pac-10 is really nothing like matching up against WNBA ballers. Pro scouts have doubts about Giuli for the same reason that half of them have doubts about Whalen.

Giuli can (and will, I think) make it in the league eventually, maybe even this year. With the salary and contract structures, getting drafted is a mixed blessing anyway. She can go give it a good shot during camp over the next few weeks, and if she doesn't make it, she can keep working, hit the gym, and get picked up later this year or next.

She can prove the doubters wrong. But it doesn't do any good for her or her supporters to go around trashing the Storm and the league, making loose accusations of bigotry and discrimination. That will only hurt her chances.