NFL
By: Jeffrey Newholm
How difficult is it to fail on purpose?
Just don’t show up, right? Alas, when it comes to missing a free throw on purpose, it’s more complicated. As now-Dallas Wings star Arike Ogunbowale learned when accidentally making a costly point in the 2019 championship game, there is sometimes an art to losing correctly.
In that contest, Notre Dame never got the ball back while still down one. The world spun around twice more, and UConn faced a similar opportunity in the 2021 Elite Eight.
With a different outcome.
Months earlier, but seemingly a lifetime previously, the nation’s #1 recruit appeared in Storrs. What should have been a time of celebration and packed crowds proved only the first, with none of the second present. Earth had locked itself in a clumsy embrace while responding to the Coronavirus pandemic, forcing Paige Bueckers’ hooping to impress only the television audiences.
The calendar turned to March. The NCAA tournament, thanks to ingenious planning by the NCAA, went on. All 64 teams balled in satellite “wubbles” in San Antonio. UConn barked past three underwhelming foes but faced a stouter foe in Kim Mulkey’s Baylor Bears. After trading runs, the Huskies gained possession after an, ahem, controversial collision’s no-call. Christyn Williams secured the loose basketball and needed only to brick her second free throw to allow time to run out.
Oops! Like Ogunbowale before her, Williams was too good and made the toss. On the ensuing inbound, Bueckers made what proved the most vital steal of her career. She threw the ball towards the Alamodome ceiling in celebration, taking her Huskies one step closer to their seeming birthright of a championship.
Failing, though, happens more often than success in basketball, or any other difficult task. First, it was Arizona shocking UConn five days later. Then, it was knee injuries that enforced difficulty on Bueckers in her sophomore season and ended her junior campaign before a minute on the court. In an emotional senior day ceremony during her fourth season, she had a memorable message for her growing fanbase.
“Unfortunately, this will not be my last senior night ceremony.”
Not because she had to repeat a class! Rather, there was a combination missing on the business trip suitcase. NCA_: the last ace, a championship, eluded Bueckers. And it appeared that her transcript may remain incomplete after the Huskies had to settle for a #2 seed in this year’s big dance. To make matters more difficult still, the #1 seed in UConn’s regional, USC, boasted a comparably talented hooper in JuJu Watkins. Even Connecticut’s coach Geno, after a round of 32 rout, quipped “get me some JuJu!” in his hurry to get to the TV before the Trojans’ game.
Luck: when an opportunity arises, and one is ready for it.
JuJu tore an ACL early in that contest. USC still impounded the Mississippi State Bulldogs before taming the Kansas State Wildcats in the Sweet 16. UConn, meanwhile, took longer than expected to defeat the Oklahoma Sooners but still advanced thanks mostly to Bueckers’ 40 points. Without JuJu, and with Geno forcing his Huskies to relentlessly practice before facing aTrojan press, UConn closed the fourth quarter, and the regional, with tremendously effective form.
Survive and advance? In Storrs, those three words sum to an obscenity. Rather: death warrant signed. With the Huskies finally boasting a healthy roster after three ankle-bitten seasons, even the mighty UCLA Bruins experienced little success in a shocking, yet precedented, 85-51 UConn rout. South Carolina, a foil for every team in the third century of women’s basketball, had experienced two, and too many, regional close calls. Arecount promised to remove the champions from office and, for the first time since 2016, place UConn as top dogs again.
As Geno hugged Bueckers tightly during her final substitution, he mouthed (as Geno relayed to ESPN minutes later): “I love you, Paige.”
How hard is it to lose on purpose?
Then-LA Sparks coach Derek Fisher helpfully clarified defeat after one Sparks loss: “just because you lose, that does not make you a loser.” Everyone who puts in the unthinkably difficult hours of practice, study, and gameplay for varsity women’s basketball understands Fisher’s sentiment completely. Because every woman loses sometimes. It may not be a defeat on the court. There will always be losses, however, in the cynical public’s eye, a lighter than deserved pocketbook, or the everyday inequality endured by “the second sex.”
When Bueckers stepped onto a New York stage on draft day,earning the soon-to-rise Wings’ first choice, it was fitting that shewould join Ogunbowale.
In the new dawn of WNBA basketball, there are no longer needs to lose to win, rent to own, or short-sell America’s fastest growing sport.
What happens when Bueckers triumphs? On the court, it will be a loss for the Wings’ opponent.
For the wider women’s world? A win with a purpose.
