WNBA postseason will matter this presidential election

By John Burbridge

sports@charlescitypress.com

Toxic masculinity doesn’t always take overt forms.

Sometimes it appears when there’s an absence of something else.

For the past string of summers such toxicity appeared … or rather didn’t appear … on the SCOREBOARD page of the Charles City Press sports section.

That would be regular postings of standings, scores and schedules of the Women’s National Basketball Association.

Yeah, with there being a month-long repose of prep and local college-related sports we … or “I” … would run WNBA agate to fill space on occasion, but only if there was enough room after the obligatory running of Major League Baseball standings, scores and schedules.

The playoff implications of WNBA games played in July are far greater than that of MLB games played in July with the latter top-tier professional league amidst a 162-game regular-season slog. (The WNBA plays 40 regular-season games.)

So why the preference of MLB over WNBA?

Toxic masculinity is my only answer, or excuse.

Such an excuse is no longer acceptable if it ever was before. With interest and coverage of the league reaching uncharted levels, the WNBA has made itself matter in ways more relevant than the sport itself.

And with the Paris Olympics suspending league play for a few weeks pushing the league’s postseason past mid-October, the WNBA will most definitely matter in the forthcoming presidential election.

For those who would abhor another Donald Trump White House residency and/or would be overjoyed by the epoch of Kamala Harris becoming the first female United States president, the timing couldn’t be better.

Am I one of those grateful people in spite of the toxic masculinity displayed … or not displayed … on my SCOREBOARD page?

I’ll make myself clear while trying to be nice: Trump should never be president again, but he should receive the Nobel Peace Prize for being the foremost catalyst of Operation Warp Speed, which brought forth COVID-19 vaccines — in particular the messenger RNA-based vaccines.

There have been Nobel Prizes already awarded for mRNA breakthroughs. Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman received the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for modifying mRNA to where the body’s defense system doesn’t immediately attack it and cause inflammation upon introduction, making it an effective and malleable therapeutic.

Their award-beckoning achievement culminated in 2005 and made practical the platform conceived 15 years before by Dr. Robert Malone, who should have also received a Nobel Prize for his innovative mRNA work but may have disqualified himself for being a willing shill for the anti-vaxx crowd.

Trump should get his NPP because he was willing — after taking the sound advice of fellow New York City native Dr. Anthony Fauci — to go virtually “all-in” with the dormant decades-old and expensive-to-maintain mRNA science, and for the energy and resiliency abounding from his Made-for-TV personality that he was able to inject into the “operation” resulting in a dire-needed vaccine in an incredibly short period of time (though a day shy of the election-day deadline).

Even Trump’s advice that you should take the “great vaccine” but shouldn’t be forced to do so was spot-on. It helped split the country in half: those fully vaccinated; those not. An unacceptable percentage for some in the know, but it yields a populous-matching control group within a large country where comparisons can be more readily researched to upgrade a science which might be humanity’s best chance to cure multiple types of cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes and other long-standing maladies associated with mortality.

Thanks to Operation Warp Speed, mRNA has proven itself capable of producing, improving and customizing a variety of vaccines on demand instead of having to “grow” them months in advance with the hope that the “weather forecast” of the flu strain to come is accurate.

If it turns out Donald Trump is due the same world-impacting reverence at the end of this millennium as bestowed to Johanne Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press, at the end of the most recent, it would sanction mRNA as a godsend.

So why wouldn’t a second Trump presidency also be a godsend?

Because he’s reckless and undisciplined.

That will not be exposed during the forthcoming WNBA postseason. Rather, that’s when it reaches a critical mass.

Trump has a history of publicly confronting sports leagues, organizations, teams and players. Be it the National Football League for condoning national anthem protests, the National Basketball Association for its Black Lives Matter ad nauseam, Major League Baseball for being “woke” [my word and italics as Trump … to his credit … disparages the term “woke” and its overuse, but he did call for a MLB boycott when the All-Star Game was moved from Atlanta in response to Georgia’s odious and retaliatory Voter Integrity Act] and the U.S National Women’s Soccer Team for not winning another World Cup and dyeing their hair pink and purple.

The WNBA is well populated with outspoken and controversial figures, many of whom wear their politics on their tattoos if not sleeves. It’s easy to imagine some if not most of these figures, emboldened with legions of social media followers and television/streaming ratings soaring through the roof, becoming adamantly involved in the national discourse with a predominant leaning toward Kamala Harris.

And maybe take some (metaphorical) shots at Trump while they’re at it.

This is where he loses it. Trump counters are usually immediate, unfiltered, offensive, incoherent, unfettered from the truth, heavy-handed enough to leave marks and issued with the audacity that no apologies will ever be in order because, you know, that’s a sign of weakness.

That said, to pick a fight or to be suckered into one against WNBA during the denouement of its most celebrated season while running against a (real) woman of color will result in disaster. For Trump.

I’m sure those in Trump’s camp are aware of the danger ahead and may have already suggested not to take any bait cast from the WNBA so close to the election. If so, I doubt he’ll listen or be able to resist returning any two-fold fire.

Trump’s heedless tongue didn’t help him in the last presidential election.

When legendary congressman John Lewis was lying in state in Washington D.C. after his death in the summer of 2020 — during the homestretch of that election cycle — Trump was asked why he didn’t pay his respects. Likely still sore that Lewis was absent from his inauguration, Trump said he barely knew Lewis. When told of Lewis’s civil rights accomplishments, Trump retorted “nobody has done more for Black Americans” than he has.

Really? That obviously must include Lewis, who as a Freedom Rider and Selma-to-Montgomery Marcher activist repeatedly risked his life while facing off against violent reprobates before becoming one of the most respected and influential members of Congress while representing the state of Georgia for 17 terms ending with his death; and who — you can argue — has done more for “Black Americans” than Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Rosa Parks combined if you go by sum totals.

Find you 12,000 more votes? You just found Joe Biden 50,000 to 60,000 more votes after your flippant disregard of Georgia’s favored son, causing your party to not only lose the presidential race in the blood-red state, but two U.S. Senate seats as well.

To paraphrase the Australian 1980s rock band Men at Work, “it’s not the future I can see, just my fantasies.” Reality tends to wrest me from such rose-tinted visions forcing me to acknowledge and accept that Donald Trump will more than likely return to the Oval Office after unceremoniously defeating an opponent appointed in the 11th hour to run against him.

But if the WNBA postseason proves to be Donald Trump’s Waterloo, you heard it here first.