Women's Hoops Blog

Inane commentary on a game that deserves far better


Sunday, May 23, 2004

Right now, the WNBA page on ESPN.com has this up:

"2003 MVP Tina Thompson topped a couple of records Sunday night in her Comets' 68-62 loss to the New York Liberty, sinking a career-high 35 points and scoring 56.5 percent of her team's points -- a WNBA single-game mark."

This may not seem like a big deal, but ESPN can barely show a WNBA highlight. On Saturday, Diana Taurasi had at least 5 plays worthy of showing, but somehow the WNBA cannot crack SportsCenter, even though ABC, ESPN, and ESPN2 (all owned by Disney) carry WNBA games and already have the footage. Now, ESPN.com cannot even bother to get the information correct...Lauren Jackson was the 2003 MVP, while Ruth Riley was the MVP of the 2003 WNBA Finals.

This isn't the first time ESPN has done this. Heck, ESPN even employs game announcers (Mark Jones and Ann Meyers) who constantly referred to Lisa Leslie as the 2002 MVP (Sheryl Swoopes was the 2002 MVP; Lisa Leslie was the 2002 Finals MVP) during games last season.

Look, we are grateful to ESPN for showing WNBA games and for the coverage. We wish it was more, especially when SportsCenter will show every baseball game played that night, but cannot show 30 seconds of WNBA highlights...and there have been plenty of highlights so far this season. But there is no excuse for inaccurate information or blatant errors.