This blog has moved! Yes, already!
As of Thursday, Feb. 12, this little blog has relocated to a new home on AJC.com. It’s the same newspaper, the same Web site and the same writer (feel free to groan) — there’s just a new URL.
New features: Bigger type, more graphics, comments that load 10 times faster and a larger and more recent photo that makes me look pretty doggone old. I think you’ll like it (the blog, not the photo). But I am, as we know too well, often wrong.
Home > Mark Bradley > Archives > 2008 > May > 15
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Wishing the Dream well
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Wish them luck. They’ll need it.
The women of the Atlanta Dream will embark Saturday on an inaugural season in a 12-year-old league that has seen four teams fold and two others move. They’re based in a city that has only occasionally embraced pro basketball and has never really warmed to women’s sports. The last Atlanta women’s pro team — the soccer-playing Beat — put a good product on the pitch but its league didn’t make it to Season 4.
But there’s also this: The Dream play a sport more to Americans’ liking, and their league has a better television package than the women’s soccer league ever had. (Remember how WUSA games were on something called Pax TV?) The WNBA gets splashed on ESPN, which everybody recognizes, and eight Dream games will be carried on CSS, which most of us can find.
And there’s also this: hope, a concept closely (and conveniently) allied with Dream.
Ask Ivory Latta, the point guard and centerpiece of the Dream’s marketing campaign, if Atlanta is primed for women’s hoops, and her eyes dance and she flashes a beacon of a smile and she says: “Everywhere we go, whether it’s the mall or out to eat or to the park, people will say, ‘We’re ready! We’ll be there May 23 [for the home opener].’ It’s overwhelming. It’s great.”
A cynic might say the Dream is attempting to fill a niche that doesn’t exist. The women of the Dream aren’t cynics. These players don’t care how many teams have failed or that, after 11 seasons of operation, the WNBA’s average attendance last season was but 7,742.
Says Marynell Meadors, the Dream’s coach: “They don’t know basketball existed except in this moment. The only way they know Cheryl Miller is because she’s on TV doing the NBA playoffs.”
Meadors has a wider frame of reference. She has worked for half of the WNBA teams — the Charlotte Sting and the Miami Sol — that folded.
Of the Dream, she says: “This franchise can definitely make it. There’s a lot of buzz … but we can’t make it if we don’t get support.”
Here’s her pitch: “The city has been wanting to get women’s basketball back since the ‘96 Olympics … We’re very different from the NBA — we’re fan-friendly. If a kid walks up to one of us, she’s going to get an autograph. The NBA has actually learned some things from us. People are taking note, but we need men to take note: This is not like the [women’s] games they saw in high school. This is a good product. We’re fun to watch.”
In an ideal world, a female athlete could work as hard as a male counterpart with the expectation that her labors would someday be similarly compensated. Alas, reality is rather different: The average WNBA salary is around $50,000, or roughly 100 times less than the average NBA salary. Says Latta: “The money is not where it’s supposed to be, but this is about entertaining the fans and winning and having fun.”
And there’s worth in that. Like the Beat before them, the women of the Dream are playing not because they’re making a fortune but because they’re earning a living doing the thing they do best. Like the Beat before them, they present themselves not as limo-driven prima donnas but as real people, and good for them.
Sometimes, though, the Dream would welcome a little pampering. After Thursday’s workout at the Philips Arena practice court — the team will play games at Philips but keeps having to scrounge for rehearsal space — Meadors informed her team there’d be no hot water for showers.
The players groaned. Said Katy Steding, Meadors’ assistant: “Think warm thoughts.”
So should we all. Think warm thoughts for the Dream.
Permalink | Comments (16) | Post your comment | Categories: Hawks/NBA
Andruw’s struggles not surprising
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Andruw Jones hit .222 the year he became a free agent. He’s hitting .179 after signing for $36 million over two seasons. Are you surprised?
He arrived at spring training - new team, new job, new bosses presumably to impress - weighing nearly 250 pounds. (He was listed at 185 when he broke in with the Braves in 1996.) Were you surprised?
He has struck out 39 times as a Dodger. He has 21 hits, only one of them a home run. He has six RBI in 6 1/2 weeks. Are you surprised?
The Dodgers don’t know what to make of their new hire, who’s getting booed by his new constituency. (And aren’t Los Angeles fans supposed to be jaded?) Last week Jones told the L.A. Times, “I don’t care what you think.” This week he told the Associated Press: “It’s eating me up … I’m embarrassed.” Are you surprised?
Me, either.
Jim Edmonds hit .178 with one homer and six RBI and 16 hits against 24 strikeouts for the San Diego Padres this season - and got cut. That’s the kind of low company Andruw Jones is keeping, the same Andruw Jones (plus 40 or so pounds) once likened to Willie Mays. The difference is that Edmonds is 37. Jones just turned 31.
People used to call Andruw Jones a potential Hall of Famer. At the rate of his dizzying descent, he’s about to acquire a singular new tag: The greatest waste - or is that waist? - of talent in the history of the sport.
Permalink | Comments (103) | Post your comment | Categories: Braves/MLB
