Believing in a Cause

I've already given the WNBA plenty of praise on Caught Looking, so even though I did attend another entertaining Liberty game last night at The World's Most Famous Arena, I'll spare you from having to hear me go on and on about how talented these women are, how impressive they are to watch in person, or how more people should be giving these athletes the respect they deserve.  Instead, I want to talk a little about the WNBA game presentation, which I also found to be top-notch.  We were lucky enough to see the Liberty play the Washington Mystics on Breast Cancer Awareness night, and I thought the home team did a great job with the event.  While we see breast cancer awareness events all over sports these days - MLB does the pink bats thing on Mother's Day every season and the NFL had an entire month where players wore pink gloves, cleats and various other pieces of flair this year - the Liberty game seemed to be more significant than others I've seen.  While male athletes seem to sport the pink because their team forces them to, or at best to honor a member of their family who has suffered through breast cancer, you could tell that the women of the WNBA took breast cancer awareness more seriously.

The Liberty wore pink uniforms, which was a nice, if unoriginal, touch.  What caugtht me, though, was a brief ceremony the team did before the game.  A number of breast cancer survivors took the court, and each was presented with a pink-and-white WNBA ball by a Liberty player.  Then the players lined up to greet and hug each of the survivors, and you could tell the players did it not only because they had to, but because they wanted to.  The players seemed to understand that they were fortunate to have the healthy bodies that they had been given, and that diseases such as breast cancer could potentially take it all away at a moment's notice.  Unlike the high-priced male athletes that seem to think they're indestructible, these women seemed to respect and revere the fragility of their careers, which in turn lead me to gain repect for them.

The rest of the game followed the breast cancer awareness theme - with pink logos and LED banners filling the arena, breast cancer awareness was the center of the event, rather than just a minor afterthought like at MLB or NFL games, where fans lazily wonder if Justin Tuck's bright pink Reeboks are some sort of new fashion statement.  The Liberty also honored some pioneers of women's basketball, put smiles on the faces of the fans with the "Timeless Torches" dance routine (basically some old, mostly overweight women dancing to hip-hop, which no one can resist), and overall put together an event that was entertaining, fun and meaningful.  It wasn't the best basketball I've seen recently - both teams were sloppy and New York nearly surrundered a 20+ point lead in the closing minutes before hanging on - but I left MSG feeling like all of us took in something more important than just another basketball game.