The women of the Association didn't need to do anything special to get that close to our house. They were playing in the Mohegan Sun Arena, home of the Connecticut Sun, our hometown team who have had a miserable first half of the season (if I were being positive).
Don't let that photo fool you too much-this was taken twenty minutes before game time and when attendance was figured there was a hair less than 10,000 folks in the venue. The joint was jumping though not enough for Kate Fagan of espn.com.
The basketball was excellent-which isn't all that surprising when you take the best players in the world, and from around the world, and put them on one of two squads and have them play one another.
Michelle and I were hoping to see the Phoenix Mercury's Brittney Griner and to see again Elena Della Donne (whose Chicago Sky beat the stuffings out of our Sun about a month ago in this venue). We were disappointed but just barely and only briefly.
Griner missed the previous five games with a knee injury to close out the first half of the season and she didn't suit up. But she showed up and cheered and clapped and danced with and for her teammates and for all of us in the stands. And when all the hullabaloo was over, the West had won a very entertaining game.
Women's professional basketball isn't 'spoiled' by the obscene dollars in the men's game which is good news for the fans though not much of a deal for the women trying to earn a livelihood playing it. The disparity is so great that most of those on the WNBA rosters play overseas for much of the rest of the year. The women of the WNBA have no shoe deals or other perks but I hope those days are coming.
They play hard and for one another and they deserve to live well doing what they love to do for a living. As Noel Coward said, 'Work should be more fun than fun." Yesterday, in Uncasville, there was fun for all and all for fun.
-bill kenny
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