NFL
By: Jeffrey Newholm
Today the Milwaukee Bucks are no more than a sad, mediocre pretender in the Eastern Conference. The team hasn’t even won a playoff series since 2001. But back in the ’70s, when the team had Kareem Abdul Jabbar-AKA “Kareem the dream” the team was a power, and even managed to bring home a world’s title. But the thing about dreams is they get bigger, not smaller. Kareem eventually grew stale of the boring life in a Midwest town, and requested to be traded to a place where the lights shined brighter. The team granted his request, and Kareem went on to superstardom in LA. Well, fast forward to 2017 and Elena Delle Donne, a talented ballplayer herself, managed to swing a very rare big trade in the WNBA from the “Chicago” Sky to Washington. This isn’t the first time a star player ditched the Sky-a few years ago Sylvia Fowles went so far as to boycott games so as to be traded to a better team. But what is it about the Sky that players so find unappealing, so appalling to good tastes? Well I have seen the Sky play in person, and I think I understand. The Sky, just like the Bucks, are a truly snakebiten franchise, and sadly I predict there will be no white knight to save the franchise from perpetual mediocrity.
The first thing one should know about the Sky is that they do not play in Chicago. They play in Allstate Arena in Rosemont. Rosemont is a rather aesthetically unappealing dump, although Allstate is a perfectly suitable arena for a pro ball team. But the Sky, unlike most WNBA teams, have no affiliation with Chicago’s NBA team, the Bulls. This means the team must fend on its own. Well from what I saw last year, they’re not fending very well. I refuse to use any official attendance figures here because the Commissioner’s office, as far as I can tell, spins a wheel-or a rather long yarn-to get numbers you see in the box score. By my estimation there couldn’t have been 100 fans there. First of all, the Sky is surely in the red, and has no deep-pocketed men’s team to bolster the team’s coffers. But I think this isn’t the real problem. Consider this. There are more than 300 division one NCAA college teams, and only 12 WNBA pro franchises. And Delle Donne wasn’t just lucky enough to make it-she is a bona fide star. But what kind of star would play her game, her labor of love since grade school, in front of a 95% empty arena? Soon Washington will move into an arena seating roughly 4,50o seats, making for a much more authentic game atmosphere. Furthermore Delle Donne will be closer to her family in Delaware. It was really a no-brainer decision, and one that Sky fans should understand. But I think this move is more than a setback to a struggling franchise-it’s the killing blow to a bad business decision made long ago.
In now, it’s 21st year, the WNBA is still struggling to find relevance in a crowded marketplace of American sports. But surely by now it should be clear that putting a team in a big city is akin to putting a minnow in a shark tank. The LA Sparks have won several titles by now and draw almost as poorly as the Sky. The best drawing teams are Minnesota and Phoenix-medium sized cities without any other very successful teams. With truly limitless entertainment and sporting choices on the palette, any reasonable Chicago fan would surely have their full in the city proper. I really can’t blame a fan for not wanting to trek all the way out to Rosemont to see a team that really only had two good years with Delle Donne, only for their Blue Hen to become unable to play once the playoffs got hot. Well now it seems the Blue Hen has given the miserable Sky the bird and departed to a surely better life out east. And that’s the thing about average men who dream about the Sky, or the great beyond. We’re always told to reach for it and yet, more likely than not, it comes crashing down upon us all time and again.
