How to Talk About the WNBA Without Yelling at Each Other

Can we talk about the WNBA and stay friends?

What is it about this basketball league that’s turned it into another toxic wrestling match in the culture wars?

(Why is it that whenever you hear the term “culture wars,” it’s a signal to pour a tall bourbon and leave the room?)

I try not to be cynical about anything, besides the Mets and Jets. I think we can get through this. We should at least try.

Let’s start here: What is the WNBA?

Here’s what it can be: the world’s pre-eminent women’s basketball league, filled with players performing at the highest level.

Here’s what it is: a daily parade of arguing, from people who watch and care about the WNBA as well as from people who wouldn’t watch an WNBA game if it was happening on their front lawn.

Some of the debate is earnest, well-intentioned. Some of it is theater for the recreationally offended.

To discuss this league is to leap into a free-for-all of combative feelings about politics, gender, biology and race. You know, exactly the sort of light fare sports fans crave in summer.

Round and round it goes, turning the league radioactive. I feel like I should be typing this column while wearing a Hazmat suit. I may need to open my emails with metal tongs for the next 48 hours. And that’s not even counting the ones saying please stop the bike racing columns.

Why does a conversation about the WNBA go from reasonable to crazytown in 60 seconds? How has a basketball league turned into a relative to avoid at Thanksgiving?

It doesn’t need to be this way. The WNBA has a positive story to tell, about ratings and attendance growth, and a new generation of players and fans. Hardly a night goes by without a few starry performances or a riveting game.

There’s a ton of talent, from four time MVP A’ja Wilson (named for a Steely Dan song, Journal readers know) to rookie wonder Olivia Miles to Fever star Kelsey Mitchell to Michell’s teammate, Caitlin Clark. Clark is so popular that the Fever are a ratings behemoth, their games upgraded to larger arenas. It wasn’t hard to see Clark’s impact on the recent salary breakthrough for players.

She’s been good for the business. Period.

And yet Clark, too, has become a lightning rod, a role she’s never courted. She’s been knocked around in the court so much that politicians clamored to have it investigated by the Justice Department. She finds herself condemned for what she says, but also for what she doesn’t say. She’s feuded with referees, she gets accused of complaining and flopping too much, she’s dragged into every league drama, and somehow, impressively, she’s kept her head screwed on straight enough to be the league’s assist leader and third in scoring.

A theory: Clark can take care of herself.

Same for Sophie Cunningham, Clark’s teammate, who reignited the trans-in-sports dialogue after making comments in an ESPN profile about wanting to “protect young girls in the locker room.” Trans athletes in sports, if you haven’t been following closely, is an increasingly settled issue: Olympic sports are now limited to biological females, as are all NCAA sports, and the Supreme Court has upheld the right of states to do the same.

That hasn’t stopped another go-round of the rodeo, partly because the policy for the WNBA remains unclear (it limits the league to women and doesn’t define women), but also because this topic is political gold and clickbait heaven, something discovered to great effect a couple of years ago.

The WNBA, which has never had a trans woman player, has convened a task force to look at its policy, a sensible move. That won’t chill the opportunism, like a couple of attention-seeking ex-NBA players pledging to try out for the league.

Yeah, it’s as silly as it sounds. The WNBA has become Woodstock for trolls.

And the league can’t dig its way out. Every time there’s momentum there’s a self-inflicted setback. A league owner confronts fans whose politics she doesn’t agree with. A Black player hard fouls Cunningham, gets ejected, and then posts “white privilege.” The Fever’s coach doesn’t back Cunningham vociferously enough and gets jeered by a home crowd.

That last act was enough to pull Clark off the sidelines.

“I hated that our fans booed her before the game,” Clark said. “That made me a little sick, to be honest.”

The old move is the easiest one: Tune out the noise. But it isn’t so easy. With so much talent, it feels like the league is punting away an unprecedented opportunity. The WNBA needs executive and player leadership to shift the focus from the off court contentiousness to the on court fun.

Where’s the commissioner? Where are the network partners and the sizzle reel PR machine? Where’s the consistency with officiating? There’s no shortage of suggestions. Never has a league been barraged with so much unsolicited advice, my own gas included. (It’s really been a mansplainer’s ball.)

Surely some of this is the doldrums of late summer and the lack of sports stuff to yell about. Mid-August is a bleak desert. It’s hard not to wonder if the current shouting will evaporate as soon NFL and college football arrive.

I suspect it will. The parade will push on, the rancor will die down and the WNBA can play basketball and get some relief. Caitlin Clark can be Caitlin Clark and the fever (and Fever) will calm. And we can all stay friends.

Email: jason.gay@wsj.com