Rough Notes: Lavender Scare Volume 3
How to beat the Lynx, press conference revelations, exploring the wilds of the WNBA's (unequal) ecosystem & so much more.
Lavender Scare is a weekly-ish column during the WNBA season from in and around the world of the Golden State Valkyries: expansive observations & provocative ideas about women’s basketball & its power to change everything, including you. Lavender Scare is available in full only for paid subscribers.
It’s another edition of Lavender Scare! I can’t believe we’re here. But as WNBA journalist Zena Keita recently reminded me: “Do it scared.” Like me, playing AAU basketball at age 12:
Now let’s goooo!
Today in rivalries
I’ve been going nuts over the poetics of Golden State rivalries. But who the Valkyries biggest rivals, at this exact moment? Here’s my ever-impermanent list:
#1: Off-ball movementSo far, the Valkyries’ half-court offense relies on seizing every opportunity to shoot from three and/or on a player like Gabby Williams to beat the defense through an isolation play (also called an ISO). Sometimes that totally works, especially when the Valkyries are shooting at or above their 38.1% season average for made three pointers.
But what it leaves out is the robust ritual of off-ball movement (and I mean ‘ritual’ in an Artist’s Way sense, not that I’ve ever actually opened the free PDF version of it that a stranger sent me months ago.) In other words, rather than employing a regular practice of cutting, screening & slashing off-the-ball, meant to unblock passing lanes and attacks at the basket, the Valkyries sometimes fall into a trap of stagnation.
What’s tough is when Golden State’s offense takes the tone of tunnel vision, a kind of severe tight rope. I like the way my press room colleague & friend Conrado Pascual put it in his recent post: “When the team’s offense becomes one-dimensional by design (mainly due to the limitations of the roster’s personnel), the margin for error becomes increasingly slimmer as the game goes on.” And since Natalie Nakase has been preferring “small ball” rotations (aka lineups that favor more agile & sharpshooting types over tall + powerful players who stick to the paint), there’s more potential for off-ball movement than the Valkyries have manifest so far. Will this be a long term weakness that the Valks struggle to overcome? Here’s Conrado’s take again:
I suggest my usual Laeticia Amihere agenda,’cuz that girl can move.
#2: The Minnesota Lynx
After nailing a heroic 8 three-pointers during the Lynx’s 87-84 victory over the Valkyries, you could say our main rival is Olivia Miles. But I think she’s just too much fun (and since people in the Bay Area have above-average taste in most things, we totally recognize this):
a text from one brilliant valks fan/my friend Our issue is with the whole damn Lynx team: their now 7-game winning streak, the way Kayla McBride spreads the floor wider than 106.1 FM’s radio broadcast across the Bay, Cheryl Reeve in her sooo passé 1990’s Berkeley-themed tie die t-shirts, and the fact that this one team keeps breaking Cecilia Zandalasini’s heart (another rivalry, by the way = Ceci vs. what haunts Ceci.) All of this infuriates me! So you know what’s gonna happen when the Lynx come to town on June 19th?
The Bay Area will show Minnesota a really good Juneteenth celebration, give Olivia Miles her flowers for breaking Caitlin Clark’s record (after coming into the game shooting 11% from three on the season so far, just a reminder), and then truly & meaningfully kick Lynx butt like a mob of dive-bombing and highly strategic ravens. And this time, Natalie Nakase, I dare you: put Laeiticia “couldn’t be less afraid of Natasha Howard” Amihere in there too ;)
Press conferences as… scripture?
Okay, maybe that goes too far but: I get a little sappy during post-game Valkyries press conferences. Because unlike Natalie Nakase, not every coach in the WNBA has words for seeing their players so clearly, or exprssing such warm particularity. Like this moment when Natalie Nakase described Veronica Burton after the Valkyries’ win over the Portland Fire:
“I think V just finds joy in making her teammates look amazing… I really do, it’s just the way she is even as a person. She told me the other day, ‘when I see someone maybe a little bit uncomfortable,’ she’s like, ‘I want to help them.’ And I think it’s almost the same thing, how she plays. If she knows she can get to the paint, or she knows she can get Ceci, Ja, Gabby an open three by basically trying to take two on and then distribute it… I think she just takes a lot of joy into it. And you need players like that.”
Sometimes I like to imagine these little fragments as having nothing to do with basketball at all. What if these words were actually a message in a bottle, a scrawled note tucked under your door? What if instead of talking about each other, the Valkyries are really talking about us? When Natalie speaks about Veronica, what I hear is an offering of new hints, like a discarded set of directions, a way to refold myself at the creases. Something to keep close to our hearts, along the way. Isn’t that a form of devotion, too?
You can also just read Veronica’s, from the day of the Indiana Fever game, which seems to have worked, too:
Caption of the week
I put out this photo on Instagram (which is actually so layered, peep the guy behind her) asking for captions, below is my favorite one. However due to the follies of technology, I can’t remember who submitted it. I will do better next time!
Here’s the next amazing Valkyries photo for you, in need of a caption. Send in your submissions, and I’ll pick a fave (email me, or leave a comment, and I’ll also post on IG!)
WNBA ecosystems
Gen Z has reminded me to get off screens and “go touch grass” regularly, a concept I recently applied to sports journalism (& kind of everything in life?) What I mean is that WNBA writers spend so much time surrounding each other while typing silently on our computers, which is weird when you recognize that the only way writers first experienced basketball games was through fandom (unless you were born into the basement of Chase Center.)
So when I forgot to apply for a press credential in time for a game a few weeks ago and when a friend offered me a free seat next to her, I found myself suddenly… free.
