Politics

The 2024 WNBA season may have been the best ever. Now for the playoffs.

Published

2 years ago

November 12, 2024

The 2024 WNBA season may have been the best ever. Now for the playoffs.

UPDATE (Sept. 22, 2024 10:45 a.m. E.T.): The WNBA announced Sunday that A’ja Wilson was the unanimous choice for league MVP.

When she was interviewed on CNBC’s “Power Lunch” on Sept. 9, WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert was asked about racist and homophobic bullying from different players’ fan bases and gave an answer that was insufficiently empathetic and filled with corporate jargon. Her response upset players and fans in that it didn’t seem to sufficiently condemn the bullying or stand up for the league’s players.

And to be clear, they care for reasons other than the exciting play of rookie phenoms Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese.

While she didn’t adequately answer the question about a topic that affects the well-being and safety of the WNBA’s players and has since apologized for not doing so, there’s no denying the truth in something Engelbert did say in that interview: “There’s no more apathy,” she said about the WNBA. “Everybody cares.”

And to be clear, they care for reasons other than the exciting play of rookie phenoms Caitlin Clark and Angel Reesethe subjects of so many headlines this WNBA season. This season wasn’t just about the league’s future but also about its exciting present and its iconic past. And the WNBA playoffs, which tip off Sunday, will make that clear.

A’ja Wilsonwho plays center for the back-to-back champion Las Vegas Acesput together one of the most dominant seasons in league history, becoming the first WNBA player to reach 1,000 points in a full season and putting up the best numbers of her career, averaging 26.9 points per game, 11.9 rebounds, 2.6 blocks, 1.8 steals and 2.3 assists. This season might be the last we see of Diana Taurasi, the league’s all-time leading scorer.

The New York Liberty, the only original franchise without a title, is still looking to win one. The Connecticut Sun, which has been in two of the last five WNBA finals, is also still looking for its first championship. The Minnesota Lynx is a team that few predicted would be in the running for a WNBA championship, and the team will begin the postseason with the No. 2 overall seed. And despite underperforming during the regular season and forcing Wilson to take on a much heavier load, the Aces are entering the playoffs hoping to three-peat.

To Engelbert’s point about there being no more apathy, this season, six teams recorded an average attendance of more than 10,000 fans per game, which hadn’t been done since the league’s second seasonin 1998. ESPN reported that the 2024 WNBA regular season has been the most viewed regular season on its family of networks, which includes ESPN2 and ABC, since the network televised games during the league’s inception in 1997. The ION Network, which began showing WNBA regular-season games in 2023, reported on Thursday that the league doubled its viewership on the network this season and aggregated 23.72 million total viewers.

Engelbert also announced two new expansion franchises for the WNBA, one in Toronto and the other in Portland, Oregon. The ownership group that will oversee the Portland team paid a $125 million fee for the team. Compare that to the $10-14 million Joe and Clara Wu Tsai spent in 2019 to buy the New York Liberty, an original WNBA franchise. The Portland ownership duo of Alex Bhathal and Lisa Bhathal Merage are paying around 8 to 10 times more.

In addition to who will win the 2024 WNBA championship, there’s so much more to look forward to before these playoffs end. Will Wilson, a shoo-in to win her third MVP award, be the unanimous pick of the members of the media who vote for the award? The only time that’s ever happened was in the league’s inaugural season in 1997, when the award was granted to Cynthia Cooper-Dyke.

Is this it for the 42-year-old Taurasi? The Phoenix Mercury, with its social media posts titled “If This Is It,” is encouraging us to think so, even as Taurasi says “I don’t know.” She said, “The last couple of weeks have been a little nerve-racking for myself. I don’t want to make any emotional, rash decisions. I know the end is near. When that is, I don’t know.”

Will Wilson, a shoo-in to win her third MVP award, be the unanimous pick of the members of the media who vote for the award?

On Thursday afternoon, the team posted photos of the free T-shirt fans received at the Mercury’s final regular-season home game. The front features a silhouette of Taurasi with text calling her the greatest of all time, and on the reverse is a long letter to the WNBA legend thanking her for 20 seasons of stellar WNBA play. Taurasi’s family, friends and former coaches were all in attendance on Thursday night to watch her be celebrated by her home crowd for potentially the last time.

The 2024 WNBA season has given us a long list of compelling storylines, people and teams to root for and against. This has always been the case throughout the league’s history, but the issue was the lack of mainstream attention. In the past, networks have refused to put these games of meaning and consequence on television because of a bias that the casual sports fan doesn’t want to watch women’s sports.

The executives at the top of the league who preceded Engelbert didn’t try hard enough to alter those biases.

The dual phenomenon that is both Clark and Reese took the WNBA’s exponential growth in recent years to new heights. Clark led the league in assists this year with 8.4 per game, as did Reese in rebounds, with 13.1 per game. Both rookies broke records. Clark broke the rookie season scoring recordand Reese set the record for the most consecutive double-doubles.

Clark’s Indiana Fever averaged 17,035 fans per home game this season, the highest attendance average across the league. Reese has expanded her personal brand and helped expand the WNBA’s. She partnered with well-known brands like Reese’s candy and Reebok, launched her own weekly podcast and even appeared in a commercial promoting the highly anticipated movie musical “Wicked.” She and Clark are expected to be honored as members of the WNBA’s All-Rookie team, with Clark most likely to earn the rookie of the year honors.

And while there’s been a lot said about how veteran WNBA players have responded to the attention Clark and Reese have attractedthere’s an understanding that the exposure and sometimes uninformed hot takes serve a purpose.

“I think that is a sign of growth,” Lynx star Napheesa Collier told me on Sept. 16. “And having all these controversies, while sometimes obviously it’s really frustrating, it gets people talking … and you need people discussing what’s going on. So for better or worse, and what they’re talking about, I think it’s great for the game overall.”

But don’t forget there’s still work to do, including making sure games of consequence during the final week of the regular season are shown on national television, the league continues to find ways to protect its players from online harassmentthat 50-50 revenue sharing becomes a reality rather than a targetand so much more.

If anything, this season was a glorious rebuke to all the haters who claim that nobody cares about the WNBA.

Jackie Powell

Jackie Powell has covered women’s basketball since 2019, including college basketball, WNBA and international and high school prospects. Her work has appeared in Bleacher Report, Yahoo Sports, The Next, Sports Illustrated, Hartford Courant, SLAM, Harper’s Bazaar, and she hosts the Locked on Women’s Basketball podcast every other week. She also is a Lady Gaga stan, a connoisseur of pop music and a mental health advocate.

Politics

Paxton is trying to cut into Talarico’s lead with Latino voters. It’ll be tough.

Published

7 hours ago

July 25, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

MCALLEN, Texas — Just miles from the U.S.-Mexico border, Ken Paxton is trying to inherit President Donald Trump’s historic gains with Hispanic voters.

The Texas GOP Senate nominee, speaking to hundreds of supporters last week at his first campaign rally in this region that’s almost entirely Latino, revealed how Republicans believe that’s possible: by touting Trump’s closure of the border and hitting Democrats over the head with the culture war — while ignoring the drag his mass deportations have had on the region.

The GOP faithful, clad in signature MAGA red and a few scattered Trump 2028 hats, gathered at a beer hall outdoors in 100-degree heat to greet the Republican Senate nominee and other candidates. Attendees ate up the Republicans’ constant jabs at Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico. Eric Flores, the challenger to Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, called Talarico a “gay vegan” and “low T.” Paxton belittled Talarico, a seminarian student and critic of Christian nationalism, for referring to himself as a “Christian who hates Christianity.”

It’s an approach key to Paxton’s strategy, as Republican Senate nominee, to slice into Talarico’s widening polling lead with Hispanic voters, who could prove decisive for who wins the competitive Senate seat and a litany of other races that will determine which party takes power in Washington come November.

“Once this community knows what [Talarico’s] views are on transitioning boys into girls, and girls into boys, and boys and girls sports, they’re not going to support it,” Paxton told reporters after the rally, in response to a question of how he intends to keep Hispanic voters in the fold after they swung toward Trump in 2024.

Ken Paxton talking to Tano Tijerina at campaign event in McAllen, Texas.

This has worked before for the Texas GOP. Sen. Ted Cruz blitzed the airways in the 2024 Senate race with attack ads against former Rep. Colin Allred about transgender youth participation in sports. Republicans branded Wendy Davis “abortion Barbie” following her successful protest against an anti-abortion law in the state legislature.

But outside the carefully choreographed event is a community getting pummelled by the president’s increasingly unpopular immigration agenda — a reality that’s given Democrats a strong opening with Latinos as they attempt to end a decades-long losing streak in statewide races. Interviews with local lawmakers, business leaders and voters on both sides of the aisle reveal that Democratic candidates like Talarico and gubernatorial nominee Gina Hinojosa have so far been successful at appealing to Hispanic voters feeling the economic strain under Trump.

Talarico, who appeared in McAllen for an event 16 hours after Paxton’s, kept his pitch focused on the cost of living, handing out hot plates of food and calling for a reversal in health care cuts under the GOP budget bill enacted last year.

“He’s pretty steady and focused on the issues that matter to families,” said Democratic state Sen. Juan Hinojosa, whose district spans Corpus Christi to McAllen.

“Democrats get sidetracked on all these cultural issues, and they need to stay focused on what I call the bread butter issues, issues that impact families directly, the kitchen table issues,” he said. “Democrats need to stay away from biting the hook that’s being put out by Paxton.”

A community being squeezed

A portion of the wall along U.S.-Mexico border is seen.

The Rio Grande Valley is buckling under the weight of Trump’s policies, and the economic strain is visible in McAllen.

Deportations have dried up workforces in critical industries like construction that drive the local economy, leaving cement slabs half-poured. A traffic chokehold at the border has slowed business in retail and restaurants as Mexicans have been deterred from hopping over to the U.S. for the day.

The entire border is being squeezed. Laredo, located more than 150 miles from McAllen, is one of the nation’s top trade hubs, and its leaders are warning that Trump’s tariffs and his threat to eliminate the USMCA trade agreement stands to devastate international commerce that flows through the city.

“When the U.S. doesn’t provide economic opportunity for the people at the border, it will create this situation,” said Laredo Mayor Victor D. Treviño, a Democrat, in an interview.

The Paxton campaign dismissed concerns of Democrats’ gains with Latinos, especially in the Rio Grande Valley — and once again emphasized the culture war, which Republicans say resonates with socially conservative Latinos.

“Look, Hispanic families aren’t voting for a woke vegan who says God is nonbinary and wants to Latinx our children,” said Alex Alarcon, director of Hispanic outreach for the Paxton campaign, in a statement. “We’re proud of our culture and our faith, and Ken Paxton has spent his career fighting for us: a secure border to protect our families, a cost of living we can actually afford, and the freedom to live by our values.”

Still, the tide seems to be turning toward Democrats.

Supporters of Democratic Texas Senate nominee James Talarico carry flags.

A dozen residents along the border said in interviews that they are satisfied illegal border crossings have dropped to record lows, a realization of one of Trump’s top campaign promises and one of the reasons he won over Hispanic voters in the region. But they also believe the crackdown has gone too far. More than 60 percent of Hispanics said Trump’s mass deportations campaign — including his widespread deployment of ICE agents across the U.S. — has been too aggressive, according to a July Blue Light News Poll.

In McAllen last week, the community was still aghast over a nun who was recently arrested by ICE while walking to church. She was later released after GOP Rep. Monica De La Cruz and Democrat Rep. Henry Cuellar intervened, but interviews with residents revealed they still live in fear: Even U.S. citizens are checking their pockets for ID before venturing out, and they try to steer clear of the border if possible.

Across Texas, one in five Hispanic business owners said they’ve had an employee deported in the past year and 70 percent have been impacted by Trump’s tariffs, according to a June survey commissioned by the U.S. Hispanic Business Council and shared first with Blue Light News. Talarico holds a seven-point lead over Paxton among those surveyed — even though a plurality of them self-identified as Republican.

A national Republican close to the race, granted anonymity to speak freely, countered that Paxton stands to benefit from some of the most competitive House races taking place in South Texas — where Republican Tano Tijerina and Flores are trying to oust Reps. Henry Cuellar and Gonzalez, respectively, and Rep. Monica De La Cruz is fending off a challenge from Tejano music star Bobby Pulido. GOP campaigns have stood up multiple field centers in those districts drawn to favor Republicans under a new Congressional map, a ground game that is expected to boost Paxton at the top of the ticket, the person said.

They added that internal message testing shows some of the attacks on Talarico, specifically those regarding his past comments on gender, “is unlike anything we’ve ever seen with Hispanic men, just in terms of the amount that it moves them.”

Daniel Garza, president of the LIBRE Initiative, a grassroots conservative group based in South Texas, said Trump’s closure of the border has affirmed Hispanic’s support for him, and Democrats aren’t offering viable pro-growth economic plans.

“Democrats have failed to give Latino voters something to vote for, and that they’ve only focused solely on something you know for us to vote against. And that’s not good enough,” he said. “[Latinos] want less tax burden, less regulatory burden, more energy production.”

Talarico’s pitch to Hispanics

A Talarico for Texas bus parks in McAllen, Texas.

Talarico was also in McAllen, just one day after Paxon’s rally, to host a fundraising benefit — the final stop on a 750-mile bus tour hitting small towns along the border to deliver a message about lowering costs and creating jobs. In an attempt to cast himself as a tough-on-immigration Democrat, Talarico unveiled a border security plan that includes hiring more Border Patrol agents, a major employer in South Texas, and adding immigration judges to reduce the asylum backlog.

It’s part of his attempt to widen his current edge over Paxton with Hispanics, with a New York Times poll in June showing Talarico is winning the demographic by a 61 percent to 29 percent margin — a significant shift after Trump won 55 percent of Hispanic voters in Texas in 2024.

“You could drive a truck through the margin of error on the Times’ subsample,” Alarcon, Paxton’s Hispanic outreach director, said. “The fact is nobody is winning Hispanic voters by default this cycle. We’ll be in Spanish-language media from the Valley to Dallas, talking about groceries, gas, health care and a secure border.”

Still, Talarico’s lead has given Democratic party leaders hope amid their national tug-of-war with Republicans over Hispanic voters: If Talarico can hold onto Texas’ large Latino population by these margins through November, that would prove gradual gains over the past decade for Republicans were a temporary blip ahead of the 2028 presidential race.

James Talarico talks to a volunteer at the McAllen pit stop of his bus tour.

Under the midday sweltering sun in McAllen, Talarico handed out hot plates of food to a line of people who had donated to a local woman struggling to pay for cancer treatment. The Democratic Senate nominee, while speaking to reporters later, dismissed Paxton’s attempts to appeal to Hispanic voters by making personal attacks against him.

Republicans are attempting to divide people, Talarico said, “so we don’t notice that they’re picking our pockets, that they’re closing our public schools, that they’re gutting our health care, that they’re raising taxes on working people while they cut taxes for billionaires. It’s the oldest strategy in the world.”

Talarico’s campaign is leaning hard into its outreach to the Hispanic community, including efforts like running a Spanish-language ad during the World Cup talking about his background as a teacher, plans to defend Medicaid and social security, and push to raise taxes on billionaires. He also ran an ad during the Mexico vs. Panama soccer match and launched a Spanish-language social media channel.

Local Democratic party officials have begun targeted organizing efforts to turn out Hispanic voters throughout the Rio Grande Valley. But the challenge, they say, is convincing Hispanics running away from Republicans to instead run toward Democrats and not stay home in November.

Democrats are heartened by an uptick in primary turnout in the region, which in March saw more than double the number of primary voters than in 2024. Trump carried all four counties in the RGV that year, the first time in history a Republican has won them at the presidential level, but Democrats won at every level down ballot.

Campaign signs are seen in the Hidalgo County Democrats' office.

“We’re hoping to carry that momentum,” said Hidalgo County Democratic chair Richard Gonzales, referring to the high primary turnout. “Republicans beat us because they made it seem like they could solve the problems. They got in and then they just created more problems.”