Commentary: This WNBA season had everything. Were we ready for it?

The conclusion of the New York Liberty’s trophy presentation deserved a slogan, something punchy for the viewers to remember and iconic enough to replay until the start of the next WNBA season. So ESPN’s Holly Rowe provided one.

When her network airs the biggest women’s basketball matchups, Rowe is as much a sideline reporter as the players’ biggest champion. And after the confetti and the crying, and after asking the requisite how does it feel to win a championship questions to the Liberty’s Big Three – then giving shout-outs to the unheralded fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh women – Rowe wrapped things up. A nice, tidy orange bow on the thrilling five-game series, as well as the 2024 season.

“This is what women’s sports can be,” Rowe told a jubilant and jam-packed crowd inside Barclays Center, following the Liberty’s 67-62 overtime win over the Minnesota Lynx.

Meaning: If society can view women and their athletic achievements as equal to men’s, then we can get more scenes like Sunday’s. With Spike Lee kneeling in front of his courtside seat, Robin Roberts standing up and Teresa Weatherspoon breaking down. (If anyone deserved this win, it was Spoon, an original Liberty player who led the franchise to four previous finals appearances but never won.) The WNBA’s winner-take-all game wasn’t pretty – shots just didn’t fall for New York stars Breanna Stewart and Sabrina Ionescu. However, the moment provided all the passion we want in sports.

A superteam shouldn’t evoke this much emotion. Usually we root against manufactured champs who bring in future Hall of Famers like the Liberty did in the hopes of stomping over franchises that built through the draft. So while the victorious Liberty sipped champagne, Minnesota Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve toasted them with sour grapes. She brought up old stuff, like the Liberty chartering flights last season before the rest of the league. “We gave hope to those teams that aren’t willing to circumvent the cap or fly illegally or all the stuff that’s happened over the last five years,” she said.

But when it’s so clearly obvious that this team won because it has an invested ownership group powered by Clara Wu and Joe Tsai, who have used their billions to take women’s sports seriously, the Liberty merit our kudos as the survivor of the league’s seminal moment.

Because, more than in any prior season, W games this year became an event. By averaging around 1 million viewers on broadcast platforms and attracting roughly 9,900 fans every time they opened the doors, the league can rightfully brag about its “record-setting 2024 season.” On the court, the game was the show. Caitlin Clark had a rough start, then played like a star ready to take over the league. A’ja Wilson wouldn’t be ignored as the superstar of the league, becoming the first player to reach 1,000 points while securing her third MVP award. Reeve had the best calendar year imaginable for a coach: Her team won the Commissioner’s Cup; she traveled to Paris and led Team USA to the program’s eighth consecutive gold medal; then she closed things out by coaching her Lynx to the Finals.

However, as much as this 28th WNBA season played out as a celebration for women in team sports, it also felt like a five-month prison sentence. Loyal fans of the W had to share their space with new fans who either came to support Clark, or just stopped by to get their kicks by politicizing the league and its players.

While the 2024 rookie class led by Clark and Angel Reese injected some much-needed jet fuel into a league that had been idling on the runway for years – two of the most watched games of the season featured Clark’s Indiana Fever and Reese’s Chicago Sky – the ratings and records cannot erase the amount of hatred that soiled the good parts of the season. Someone should’ve let WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert in on that secret back in September.

Whether Engelbert wasn’t prepped for questions about the league conversation taking a “darker turn” thanks to hatemongers, or she seriously doesn’t know how to answer questions about racism, she came across in a CNBC interview as just another sports commissioner most concerned about her talking points. When asked directly about trying to potentially turn down the volume of the vitriol directed at players, Engelbert dodged the issue of bigotry, hailed the personalities of the players and focused on the growth of the business. Engelbert answered poorly, then wanted backsies by later releasing a statement that condemned hate and racism as having no place in the WNBA – but only after facing backlash from players.

The truth is, the growing audiences were captivated by rivalries in the worst possible ways, creating divisions and sullying a historic season that should’ve been defined by its gains, including a new media rights deal. For some players like Reese, the hate was a constant. Though Reese blamed “media,” pointing the finger at anyone with a platform for benefiting “from my pain & me being villainized to create a narrative,” the real boogeyman was always social media and unhealthy passion. The ugliness even resurfaced after Game 1 of the Finals when New York’s Stewart said that someone sent her wife “homophobic death threats.”

So it’s hard to pretend that the hatred did not play a central role in Year 28 and merely raise a chalice to this season as a win for women. And if we were to give Engelbert a break and also mind the bottom line, how should fans concerned about the health of this league feel about the prioritization rule that mandates players with two or more years of service report to the start of training camp on the first of May?

In theory, the rule ensures that the league’s premier players will be available for their W teams, which should be a positive. However, the rule strips players of the option of completing a season overseas, where many still go to get a bigger payday. Because in the WNBA, the minimum salary for a player with three or more years of experience is $76,535. Outside of the upper echelon, those players with shoe deals and brand sponsorships, the majority of women still need to supplement their income with other basketball gigs, which makes this professional league feel like part-time work.

In January, a three-on-three league will launch with the hopes of providing a stateside option for players. Co-founded by two of the most recognizable faces of these Finals – Stewart and Minnesota’s Napheesa Collier – the Unrivaled league is expected to offer its participants six-figure salaries and ownership equity. That, as Rowe would say, is what women’s sports can be.

By becoming more of a marquee league and must-watch sport, the WNBA and its players are moving forward. Maybe next year, society will be better prepared to come along.