(ThyBlackMan.com) As the NBA celebrates its 75th anniversary during the 2021-22 season, the WNBA celebrated its 25th anniversary season months ago. The WNBA launched in June 1997 with eight teams and currently has 12 and while it is still growing in popularity and attention, the WNBA had a successful season on many fronts in 2021. Like its NBA counterparts that had its own anniversary list of greatest all-time players, the WNBA unveiled its ‘W25,’ a list of its top 25 players in its 25-year history. Unsurprisingly, Chicago Sky forward Candace Parker made the list but it was a surprise that her team won the 2021 WNBA championship and were a team full of unique stories.
Candace Parker was one of the most hyped women’s high school basketball players ever and had a terrific college career at Tennessee. She earned individual accolades and won two national titles during her college years and has a skill set similar to LeBron James from a size, skill standpoint. Like James, she was drafted first overall in her respective professional basketball draft but did not even up in the same state for her first career WNBA team like James played for his home state when he was drafted into the NBA. Parker did return home as a free agent in 2021, was on the cover of a major video game, and ended up winning a WNBA championship this season with the Chicago Sky as an Illinois native. One of the sports images of the year was Parker’s celebration in her home state after winning the title.
The WNBA has been ahead of most sports leagues regarding LGBTQIA issues and discussions. There remains a lot of ignorance and homophobia in society so it remains unfortunate that many human beings do not feel open to being themselves. This is particularly true in men’s sports when there are usually only a couple of openly gay active professional athletes in men’s professional sports leagues. That is obviously not the case in the WNBA and the Chicago Sky can tout the interesting fact that they had a married couple win a championship together. Sky teammates Allie Quigley and Courtney Vandersloot have been married since 2018 and teammates since 2013 and are two of the best players on the team. A three-time WNBA All-Star, Courtney Vandersloot had never won a WNBA championship despite playing her WNBA entire career with the Sky since 2011. Her wife, Allie Quigley, is also a three-time WNBA All-Star and is an Illinois native also like Candace Parker.
There are sports legacies all over professional sports like the NBA’s Stephen Curry and MLB’s Fernando Tatis Jr., who followed in their father’s footsteps to play in the same league as their fathers. There are two members of the WNBA champion Chicago Sky who had fathers play professional sports as Lexie Brown is the daughter of former NBA player Dee Brown, who played for 12 years in the NBA and Diamond DeShields is the daughter of former Major League Baseball player Delino DeShields, MLB player for 13 years. It’s worth noting that Lexie has one championship compared to zero from Dee Brown during the latter’s career in the NBA and that Diamond has made an All-Star team in her career but her dad Delino never did. The daughters’ have some athletic accomplishments that can supersede their dads. The Chicago Sky even featured a Black male as a head coach with the names of two former Miami Heat greats. Perhaps, the most unique thing about the 2021 Chicago Sky was their epic troll job of bringing a broken door to their championship parade as a story that you show definitely look into for a good laugh.
Staff Writer; Mark Hines