There’s nothing wrong with trash talking in women’s sport: it’s the reactions that sometimes turn sour

Sunday night I went to the popular Chicago baseball bar Nisei Lounge with an out-of-town guest, and the bar was relatively quiet except for us and a few regulars. The televisions were tuned to either the “Sunday Night Football” game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Miami Dolphins or the Texas American League Championship Series between the Rangers and Astros.

As we sat and sipped, a woman at the bar started telling us about a WNBA segment from the Peacock series “Brother From Another.”

“I didn’t realize there was all this drama behind the scenes in the WNBA!” she exclaimed. “I mean, I watched the games but I didn’t know everything that was going on.”

In the segment she referenced, host Natalie, cultural commentator Dawn Montgomery, Fox Sports Radio’s Kelsey Nicole Nelson and Grow the Game founder Subria Whitaker discussed trash talking during this year’s WNBA Finals. year between the Las Vegas Aces and New York Liberty.

All four women recalled previous instances of Liberty trash talk and detailed how “personal” the teams’ rivalry was.

Last week, the Aces became the first repeat WNBA champions in 21 years. During the celebration following their 70-69 victory in the deciding Game 4, Aces superstar A’ja Wilson was overcome with emotion while sitting courtside.

All season, Wilson and the Aces were on what looked like a collision course with the Liberty. New York held a 3–2 lead in the regular season series, including the in-season Commissioners Cup tournament, and the final was one of the most anticipated in league history.

Liberty star Breanna Stewart was named regular season MVP in what most considered a three-way race between Stewart, Wilson and the Connecticut Sun’s triple-double queen Alyssa Thomas. Wilson received just one fourth-place vote; otherwise, they were the top three in each ballot. Thomas received the most first-place votes, but Stewart won the award with the weight of 23 second-place votes.

So the stage was set for the finale and the start of a rivalry that I hope we talk about for life.

The Aces won the first two games and were looking for a sweep when the series moved to Brooklyn for Game 3 – but the Liberty didn’t say so quickly. In what seemed like a last-ditch effort to do something, anything, at home, Stewart, former Chicago Sky veteran Courtney Vandersloot and 2015 Sky draft pick Betnijah Laney helped the Liberty beat the Aces to force another match.

At the end of the Game 3 victory, Liberty goalkeeper Sabrina Ionescu mimed the “night-night” celebratory gesture and social media started buzzing. Could the Liberty, who added Stewart, Vandersloot and former MVP Jonquel Jones in the offseason, even the series at home?

Taunting your opponent down 2-1 and facing a second elimination game was certainly a bold choice, but in sport, it’s simply the mark of a competitor who feels it. And some fans of the game really liked it.

“Oh, they were a mess,” one customer said Sunday. “They have real beef.”

The conversation at the bar was lively – you would hear about other sports at any sports bar in America. Everyone in the small group had an opinion. The discussion moved from Liberty to Aces.

After winning a close battle in Game 4, the Aces appeared to have built up a file of things said about the team that they were now responding to. Guard Sydney Colson grabbed the mic from ESPN’s Holly Rowe and said, “People wanted to count us out because we had two of our starters down, but they don’t know we have dogs on this team.” So I have two words to say: night-night!

Colson, who was not-so-subtly trolling Ionescu, later revealed that the Liberty star told him to “put his ass on the bench” during Game 3.

After overcoming injuries and favorite trash talk throughout the season, the Aces, who were favored to win from the start, cheered. In the days between the final game and the championship parade, players took to social media and let everyone know they had seen and heard it all.

And some fans just couldn’t stand it.

Aces have been called “classless”, “uneducated” and many other insults. But people, whether they liked Aces or not, were watching. They were talking about it. The rivalry, the trash talks, were good for the league.

Because let’s be clear: there’s nothing wrong with women talking trash. This idea that women’s sports are tricky is ridiculous. These are athletes competing at the highest level of their game and letting off steam.

As we’ve seen for years, athletes can take any perceived slight and use it as motivation. Colorado football coach Deion Sanders said Colorado State coach Jay Norvell “messed up and made it personal” when Norvell made comments before the teams’ September game , insinuating that Sanders was not raised well.

Also, just because they play in the same league doesn’t mean the players have to be friends. I’m sure we’ve all worked in a place where we didn’t like a coworker from another department.

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out another level in how trash talk has been received. The Aces have more black players than the Liberty. Women’s basketball content creator Lauren Dreher said she saw this kind of thing happening from the start of the season.

“Trash talk is good,” she said. “The response to trash talk is the problem. In women’s sport, we often point out male fragility and we can point out misogyny with a fine-tooth comb because we understand its basis.

“But we can’t understand racism. We can’t understand that when you have a women’s league dominated by black women, that comes into play. You can’t have one without the intersections. It played out at the end of the women’s college basketball season, and I see it here.

Dreher was referring to the speech that took place after the 2023 NCAA Tournament final. Iowa’s Caitlin Clark and LSU’s Angel Reese became the faces of trash talk as people asked if it was OK for Reese to make gestures while seemingly unaware that Clark had already done so.

Dreher went on to say that when she points out the intersection of race and misogyny, it bothers others because they view the discussion as an attack on white players. But, she added, “this is not an attack on the players, it is an attack on the system.”

As women’s sports continue to grow in viewership, we as viewers must grow with them. We must understand that it is impossible to separate the game from the humans who play it. Trash talk, at first glance, does no harm. It’s the ugliness underneath that we should fight.

Back at the bar, the lively conversation surrounding the WNBA continued.

“So you all think the Aces can come back next year?”