What We Talk About When We Talk About Brittney Griner

Full disclosure: I haven't yet read the story, and I don't follow women's sports. But it seems that many stories about how women have a hard time gaining mainstream acceptance want to scold us for our (mostly collective) dislike or indifference to women's sports.

 

Griner is very uninteresting to watch. Miller was a force of nature. Swoopes was dazzling. Holdsclaw had a sleekness, Maya Moore had an all-around game, I loved Candice Wiggins at Stanford.

Griner is just really really tall. And long. That's it.

 

So, like a man among boys?

 

Not good at karate, just bigger:

 

She's a silent assassin. Not everyone is born to have an electric personality between the lines.

 

Also, it's a huge failing of the Internet that I couldn't find a decent GIF of that anywhere.

 

Clocked the shit out of her.

 

Regarding the story, this sentence -- Griner has exposed this sentiment -- If you dunk, we will watch -- for what it is: empty words, hollow as the ball itself. -- is wrong. Nobody says that. They might note that women can't dunk, but that is hardly the make-or-break reason people don't watch.

A lot of those "here's what people are really saying" examples are very off-base, in fact. I don't go much for the direct comparison to the men's game and whether Baylor could beat a group of high school boys; when you get down to it, take the NCAA men's champion and put them against the Charlotte Bobcats and the Bobcats win by 40. And I'll watch a good competitive high school game or even 12-year-olds if I know the kids, and I will get into it and enjoy it.

But NCAA women's basketball is bad. They can't shoot -- and I mean they really can't shoot, like, it isn't just percentage but it's that a large portion of their shots are not even close. On a good team, maybe one player can handle the ball; on a great team, two. The conditioning is poor.

Women's soccer is high quality at the international level. And people get pretty interested in women's soccer when it rolls around. But basketball is very sloppy. The quality is just low.

As I said on the other thread, though, I will watch a good bit of it because I'm in a basketball mood, and also sometimes because watching the ineptitude is entertaining beyond belief. That UConn-Stanford 2010 championship, when UConn went 10 minutes of the first half without scoring and yet trailed only 12-5 at the end of that stretch, was one of the most incredible athletic non-achievements of my lifetime.

 

I think Grinier is going to live with that punch for a very long time. Just as Kermit Washington lives with his punch of Tomjanavich. And a good friend used to play pickup ball with Washington and said he was nice guy. But the Grinier video will live forever.

 

she didn't just clock her, she sucker punched her. It was a disgusting display of some one out of control and thoughtless. A couple of thousand college basketball games have been played since Grinier did that and no one has done that since.

Otoh, she was 18 and not a very experienced person. She deserves to be able to put that behind her, as long as her victim can.

 

Damn Grinier.