Jonquel Jones And The WNBA’s Untold Stories
In a very good piece written for ESPN by Katie Barnes, 2021 Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) Most Valuable Player (MVP) Jonquel Jones summed up many of the challenges of becoming a basketball superstar last week.
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Excellence on the court can get you noticed, but many other factors dictate the current path to WNBA superstardom.
Jones is an example of the type of player that can get left behind by a league that’s marketed a very straight, white, buttoned-up image to the world for a long time.
“Even though our league is predominantly Black, I think it’s hard for our league to push us, in a sense, because they still have to market, in their mind, what is marketable,” 2020 MVP A’ja Wilson says in the story.
“Sometimes a Black woman doesn’t check off those boxes.”
Jones, who also identifies as a lesbian, spoke to Barnes about feeling the pressure to conform to a certain image to succeed.
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It’s important that the landscape that influences marketability, whether it be media, brands, or the league itself take into account the material effects of not truly embracing diversity.
Factors like overage, whose jersey is available on team stores and more can turn marketability into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Meanwhile…
The whole piece is worth a read, not least because Jones herself has the personality and the game to take her public persona to new heights.
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“She deserves way more attention than she’s gotten as a WNBA MVP,” Breanna Stewart says.
“She’s a three-level scorer and makes an impact on the defensive end. It’s tough to match up with her because of her size first, and then the skill she has.”
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