I had just settled into my seat on the second night of Unrivaled’s 1-on-1 tournament in February, when suddenly it felt like the wind had been swept out of the room. I looked toward the doorway, curious to know if anyone else had experienced the same sensation, and realized four-time Olympic gold medalist and two-time WNBA Champion Lisa Leslie, who was attending in her official capacity as a TNT analyst, had just walked into the gym.
To say that Leslie effortlessly commands the attention of any room she enters isn’t hyperbole; it’s nearly impossible to not notice someone so inherently magnetic. Leslie herself is aware of the impact she has on people, she later told me, and it comes from feeling genuinely good about herself. “I have always been comfortable in my skin,” she explained, “which meant being feminine, thanks to my mom.”
Leslie hails from a long line of “smart, beautiful, and fashionable women” she added — “women with brains, beauty, and brawn.” The idea of not blending basketball with beauty never occurred to her, and she’s a proud forebearer of athletes who have since modeled themselves similarly, such as Cameron Brink, Rickea Jackson, Skylar Diggins-Smith, Chiney Ogwumike, and Azurá Stephens.
“I have loved being a role model my whole career,” Leslie also said. “I will never stop being a vocal advocate for women and girls. God gave me this platform to make a positive impact on our communities while letting His light shine — I don’t take that responsibility lightly.”
But just because she’s willing to carry that weight doesn’t mean Leslie and her fellow WNBA athletes — including the players who will be drafted in 2025 — have always had it easy, and things have often been far dicier for Black players. One only needs look at the comments about any post featuring Angel Reese or Brittney Griner — two very different athletes who are nevertheless controversial no matter what they do — to understand racism and sexism are alive and well in the United States. Stereotypes that have always existed about female professional athletes are still pervasive — to say nothing of what they (and especially Black female athletes) who came into their own in the 1990s and early 2000s went through.
The earlier work of Bill Simmons, former ESPN analyst and founder of The Ringer, perhaps most accurately sums the prevailing attitudes up: “Well, the vast majority of WNBA players lack crossover sex appeal. That’s just the way it is,” the Score credits Simmons with having written in 2006. In the same column, he added that “some are uncomfortably tall and gawky, while others lack the requisite, um, softer qualities to captivate males between 18 and 35. The baggy uniforms don’t help. Neither does the fact that it’s tough for anyone to look attractive at the end of a two-hour basketball game.”
“Then again, maybe these realities don’t matter as much as one would think, because Sue Bird is downright adorable — even when wearing Rip Hamilton’s Schnozzaroo — and I wouldn’t watch 10 minutes of a WNBA game because of her. If Sue was walking around at the ESPYs in a cocktail dress, I’m watching,” he added. “If she’s running a pick and roll with Lauren Jackson, I’m flicking channels.” Reader replies received by Simmons — many of which are still available to read online — offer more of the same.
At the same time, Bird — who is now married to Megan Rapinoe — and many athletes in the WNBA were repeatedly warned not to come out as gay.
(It’s worth noting that in a February 2024 episode of his podcast, Simmons had seemingly reversed course from two decades earlier, saying he “cared more” about the women’s NCAA tournament than the men’s, adding “there’s continuity — the style of play is good. It’s got a lot of the fundamental stuff that it used to have combined with the slash and kick in the threes. But continuity, which in the Men’s now it’s gone.”)
But still, things in 2015 weren’t much better than 2006, at least according to NBA legend Kareem Abdul Jabbar, who observed in a piece for Time that “outside the fanboy world of Xena: Princess Warrior and Wonder Woman, a muscular woman is generally not the ideal… I suspect because our ideal woman continues to be the vulnerable woman unable to defend herself against a man.”
And, unfortunately, in a lot of ways not much has improved in 2025, either, as women of all races who play sports at all levels are likely to encounter some kind of discrimination and misogyny. Cameron Brink learned the hard way after she expressed her distaste for comments on a post by the Los Angeles Sparks that called for male practice players, and people online criticized her for expressing her thoughts. Tennis star Emma Raducanu has a stalker who has gone so far as to show up at matches, a move that scared her into stopping a match before he was removed (Raducanu dropped charges against the man after he signed a letter promising to keep his distance from her).
And, as WNBA fans know, one only needs to search the names Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark on any social media platform to find thousands of horrific comments and posts.
But still, there are bright spots. Women who play professional basketball are flourishing on the court and off, and never have so many different women from so many different persuasions been allowed to fully embrace who they are. Gone are the days when players were stuck in the closet lest they disturb fans; if anything, WNBA fans are clamoring for more details about DeWanna Bonner and Alyssa Thomas’ relationship and their spa days, and Brittney and Cherelle Griner have been met with a wealth of support online since welcoming their son, Bash in July 2024.
Rickea Jackson, a University of Tennessee graduate who’s entering her second year with the Los Angeles Sparks this May, agrees that things are easier in a lot of ways for younger players in the league. “I really haven’t faced a ton of that,” she said of less-than-positive attitudes about women who play basketball. “Especially in the position I’m in now.”
In fact, Jackson added, she doesn’t personally experience a lot of harassment. Instead, she says her generation of players is getting better at ignoring what is out there (to a point) and focusing on their own gains, be they personal, on the court, or in the weight room. “Whatever your game is – you don’t have to be the strongest person in the world. If you’re bucket, you’re just a bucket.”
“I’m just happy to be here, honestly,” she also told me. “As a kid, I was into ballet — I wasn’t into basketball and sports — I was into nails and hair. So to be a basketball player is kind of crazy.”
As for young girls who are looking up to her, Jackson hopes they see her on the court and feel “they can [do] whatever they put their mind to,” she continued. As an athlete who began her career in basketball relatively late, Jackson also said she hopes young girls understand that “whatever you want, you know, chase it – and whatever you put your mind so you can accomplish it.”
When it comes to how families of such young girls can help their daughters grow into strong women who feel beautiful from the inside out, sports psychiatrist Dr. Wilsa Charles Malveaux agrees with Leslie that it begins in the home, and that parents such as Leslie’s mother are crucial to a young woman’s self-esteem and how she carries herself. “Awareness is such a huge piece of it,” she explained.
“If you don’t recognize that you can hold these subconscious biases, such as your messages to your child about how they do their hair, or what is presentable for leaving the house, could be unintentionally reinforcing that other people with negative intentions are giving them about what’s good enough,” Wilksa continued.
“Race is a social construct,” she said, “but that doesn’t mean it’s not affecting your life.” A lot of conversations that families have at home about women, and especially about women who look like them, could end up “chipping away at [young girls’] self-confidence and their self-worth and making them feel that there’s something inherently wrong with who they are,” Wilksa explained.
Bonner, a two-time WNBA champion who is also one of the newest additions to the Indiana Fever this season, sees a lot of promise in present and future perceptions of WNBA players by the public, something that’s likely been aided by families increasingly enjoying the sport and the league together. “We get to express ourselves more now,” she told me. “We were misunderstood for a long time — people didn’t necessarily know we have fashion sense and style. We get to express it more than ever now.”
“I am someone different outside of basketball…we all have a life outside of the court.” Bonner paused, and then emphasized, “We are human.”
