Australian basketball legend Lauren Jackson has been left fuming after some of her greatest achievements were seemingly wiped from the history books. As the city of Seattle celebrated their first ever Super Bowl victory, Jackson expressed her frustration that the two WNBA titles she won with Seattle Storm in 2004 and 2010 were forgotten in the hysteria of the Seahawks’ win. Several news outlets reported that Seattle’s Super Bowl victory was the first major sporting win for the city since the Seattle Supersonics won the NBA title in 1979. Jackson was quick to point out that the Storm’s two WNBA titles should be recognized. The 32-year-old took to Twitter to express her frustration and attempt to right the wrong…. “We were good enough then and we are certainly good enough now to be acknowledged,” Jackson tweeted along with an image of news stories reporting on the Storm’s championship wins.
OK, so we can cut Seattle some slack. They’re not used to winning championships, and they clearly need some practice savoring and celebrating when their local heroes reach the top of the proverbial mountain. Hey, it’s been a LONG time since a team from Seattle has won ANYTHING…amiright??
Well, no…not exactly. The media has been prone to pointing out that no Seattle team in a major sport has won a championship since the Sonics (now the Oklahoma City Thunder) won the NBA title in 1979. (Who in their right mind would leave Seattle for OKLAHOMA #(^%$#@ CITY?? Ah, but that’s another conversation best left for another time….) Turns out that’s not nearly accurate.
The term “major sports” has generally been accepted to include football, baseball, basketball, and hockey. So why are Lauren Jackson and so many others pitching such a fit? Turns out that the Seattle Storm won WNBA championships in 2004 and 2010. So, if basketball is considered a “major” sport, are we to take it to mean that only MEN’S basketball is granted “major” status. Does placing “women’s” in front of “basketball” ipso facto render the game a “minor” sport?
Seattle’s WNBA team was actually the first to give the city a championship since the Sonics when the Storm won titles in 2004 and 2010. The first was sealed before 17,072 fans at KeyArena and had headlines throughout The Seattle Times acknowledging the Storm as the city’s first champion in then-25 years.
But the fact was dismissed nationally on Sunday as Super Bowl coverage steamrolled history.
Given that the Storm’s most recent title came less than four years ago, you’d think that the media- especially in Seattle- would recognize that Seattle’s last championship in a “major” sport wasn’t in 1979, and it wasn’t the Sonics. Lauren Jackson, Sue Bird, and every other female athlete on those Storm teams have every right to be upset at being ignored. If basketball is considered a “major” sport, then placing a “W” in front of “NBA” shouldn’t change anything…or are we really not as committed to equality and gender equity as we’d like to think?
OK, so it probably wasn’t malicious; most likely it was just lazy, sloppy journalism by (male) writers who couldn’t be bothered to do even a modicum of basic fact checking.
It’s not as if the Storm’s championships were won in front of small crowds of committed lesbians and therefore not to be considered “worthy” of recognition. There were more than 17,000 people at Key Arena in Seattle who witnessed the Storm’s first title-clinching victory in 2004. That’s not indicative of a “minor” sport, not by a long shot.
I sat in Houston’s old Summit Arena on 9.5.98 as the Comets beat the New York Liberty 59-47 to win the second of four consecutive WNBA championships. The Summit, which was later purchased by the Lakewood Church and turned into Houston’s largest megachurch, had a seating capacity of 16,611…and if memory serves, the game was close to sold out. The fact that it was a women’s basketball game didn’t seem to bother those who came to see the Comets, still arguably one of the best women’s professional teams in basketball history, though the franchise has since gone the way of the buffalo.
Lauren Jackson has a valid argument, and it would be nice if someone would have the courtesy and decency to apologize for overlooking and frankly disrespecting the accomplishments of the 2004 and 2010 Storm. If we’re talking about championships in Seattle, the Storm deserve to be part of the conversation every bit as much as the Seahawks.
Not that ANYONE would ever think the accomplishments of female athletes to be of lesser importance, right??
