I shoulda known the approaching WNBA season would have stirred Q from his slumber. Yippee! "Rethinking Basketball" is back!

A quick catch up, since he started during the Final Four:

What Difference a Year Makes: Why Ahistorical Analyses of Sport Perpetuate Misrepresentations of the WNBA

If you pay attention to women's basketball, you've probably heard about that March ESPN the Magazine article that included a cover photo of a pregnant Parker.

Of course, this led to some commentary about the state of the WNBA, female athletes, and marketing. The WNBA even made a good move by posting an interview with the editor of ESPN the Mag to get some insight into the thinking behind the article. But there were two articles in the last week or so that really caught my eye.

Of course, there weren't really any new arguments added to the discussion... really just people rehashing the same old arguments in new packaging.

However, the big difference this time around is that given all the media attention given to Parker and the Olympics last year, speaking from a place self-imposed ignorance about the WNBA no longer carries much credibility. Parker's arrival on the national (and international) sports scene last summer was one of those special moments in sports history that even the below-average lunkhead male would have had a hard time just ignoring. This does not mean we suddenly have a whole lot of enlightened, gender-conscious WNBA commentary...it's just a new sort of ignorance I guess...

What the NBA Could Learn From the WNBA: Staying in School FTW

Martin Johnson wrote a nice little piece for TheRoot.com about how the University of North Carolina men's team won the national title primarily on the strength of their upperclassmen...which is further support for the NBA to implement a higher age minimum, as the WNBA has always done. The result could be better basketball:

The response from women's basketball fans: uh, duh....

No matter what critiques one might have about women's basketball this is something that it has right already -- their players stay longer and it makes for the development of great teams rather than the fleeting excitement of great individual performances.

Curious About Kristi Toliver: Is She the Right Pick For the Sky?

And then the unthinkable happened -- I was all set to do some cramming for the draft Thursday morning before my 11 o'clock PST meeting. Then the meeting got pushed to 11:30 PST...then 11:45...then I got there at 11:50...and the meeting didn't start until 12:02... in the end, I missed the entire draft....

So now I sit here two days after the draft almost completely clueless about the newest WNBA rookie class and lamenting the fact that I didn't have the guts to cancel the damn meeting ("Um, I'm sorry, but I really have to watch the WNBA draft right now. Can we put off the meeting about the grant proposal due Tuesday? Thanks!").

But what really sucks is looking around for post-draft analysis on the WNBA.

Kudos to Women's NCAA BB for Actually Graduating "Student-Athletes"

The other day I posted about how the WNBA's age limit is a good thing in terms of keeping basketball in perspective and making sure female basketball players stay in school relative to their male counterparts.

Tangentially related (though not necessarily related at all) is this report from the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport:

What Does NCAA Point Guard Performance Say About Pro Potential?

If you’ve ever paid any attention to any draft in any sport, you’ve probably figured out that drafting is by no means a scientific process – people often make arbitrary decisions or use shaky evidence to justify decisions.

I would argue that there is no position more difficult to unscientifically evaluate than that of the point guard, a position that people struggle to evaluate to begin with. I think a lot of people have gut feelings about what a good point guard “looks like” but have a much more difficult time describing what a good point guard “does”, much less what differentiates a good point from a great one.

Along these lines, I find Chicago Sky coach Steven Key’s comments about his selection of Kristi Toliver over Renee Montgomery particularly interesting.