Stop Inventing Rivals for Sabrina Ionescu
She'll find her own, in time.
Three games into her sophomore WNBA campaign, and surprise, surprise, Sabrina Ionescu is still the GOAT.
First, she opened the season with 25 pts, 11 assists and 6 boards. And then she followed that performance up with a perfectly adequate 12 point performance (albeit with 8 TOs). AND THEN on Tuesday night, in her sixth career game in the W, she turned in a superb 26-12-10 triple double—like she is one to do.
Triple doubles are Sab’s thing, we’ve known this for a long time, but this one is especially big. It’s her first as a pro, it’s just the ninth all-time in the WNBA, and it’s also the first in the history of the New York Liberty franchise.
A NY franchise that won just two games in all of 2020, but now find themselves sitting at 3-0, thanks to the next face of the league (and a stellar supporting cast).
She’s also the youngest player in league history to ever do it. Records are reduced to rubble at the feet of Sabrina Ionescu.
On top of all that, Sab hit an ice cold game-winning three on opening night—the same night that Diana Taurasi (aka The White Mamba) hit a GW for Phoenix.
The Past and The Future, rising to the occasion.
If the 25th Anniversary Season of the WNBA—which saw a 25% bump in viewership on opening weekend—could’ve scripted a more poetic start, they probably would’ve had to reanimate Bill Shakespeare himself to write it.
But is the Old Guard of the WNBA ready to welcome in a new class of ballers into the fold?
Ever since Sabrina, Ruthy, Satou & Co. smashed Team USA back in 2019, I’ve been vocal about noticing that players like Taurasi and Sue Bird had seemed relctant to publcicly welcome/compliment/celebrate Sabrina.
In an Instagram Live prior to the 2020 WNBA Draft, Bird, Taurasi, and retired WNBA baller Penny Taylor came together and talked about which player in that draft would end up with the “best career” when it’s all said and done.
Bird it would be former Texas A&M star, Chennedy Carter.
Here’s part of the transcript that follwed from that IG Live:
I watched this in real-time, and I could tell that Bird was playing up the “oh c’mon, don’t just go for the easy answer” angle among the group. And she was right that if everyone just went around the circle and said Sabrina’s name three times in a row, it would be a very boring video.
But I had always felt like there was an air of honesty in her voice, too. It was as if all three of them had already grown tired of the Sabrina Discourse before she had even entered the League.
Even DT, who defended Sab, seemed to do so through gritted teeth.
And my case for my custom “DT-and-Sue Bird-Hate-Sabrina” story grew even stronger this past college basketball season; where both players were quick, vocal, and relentless in singing the praises of UConn freshman Paige Bueckers.
Taurasi, [recently] appeared in a video from Bird’s new media company saying Bueckers “is the best player in [college] basketball already.”
They were so resistant to jumping on the Ionescu Bandwagon, but now we’re the first aboard the Bueckers’ Bus? Egregious.
So my case had three main pieces of evidence:
The Ducks embarrassed Team USA.
Bird and Taurasi were kind of hesitant to universally agree on Sab’s WNBA upside.
Bird and Taurasi were more than eager to take part in way-too-early GOAT talk about Paige Bueckers.
And with these three components, I thought I could write this blog and start a fresh petty war. I thought I could create a brand new enemy for Oregon fans and staunch Sabrina defenders like myself.
I thought—quite insanely—that I could trace these two giants of basketball’s “disdain” for Sab all the way back to a 2019 Team USA Exhibition in Matthew Knight Arena—where I was sure that these first ballot basketball Hall of Famers were salty enough to then spend the twilight of their careers denying the talent of one of their undeniably talented peers.
Turns out, you’d be right to call me insane.
I was clearly reaching at straws. I plastered on my green and yellow glasses, and I simply decided that the best players in the game were “out to get” Sabrina, when in reality, every other statement they’ve ever made about our GOAT has been nothing but complimentary, respectful, and full of excitement.
Let this be a lesson in echo chambers. Or in confirmation bias. Or some other media phenomenon that drives people like me to shut their brains off and marry themselves to an opinion.
Trust me, I tried really hard to find more evidence of shit talk. I dug deep into the internet in a desperate attempt to validate what I thought I already knew.
But all I found along my search was that Sue Bird is apparently completely secure in her career accomplishments—as she should be—and that she welcomes the next generation with open arms:
"If Sabrina and Paige are the ones to take the reins, the game's going to be in great hands and my work here is done.”
- Sue Bird
Hell, Diana Taurasi stood side-by-side with Sabrina as they both eulogized Kobe Bryant in front of the entire world. If that’s not solidarity, I don’t know what is.
I was clearly insane to think that two Olympians and National Champions ever gave an exhibition with a college team a second thought.
I will always be delusional any time that hold up the tone of someone’s voice in an IG Live clip as proof of anything.
And of course two UConn greats are going to get out ahead of the next UConn great, and profess to the world that she’s a star.
I don’t have to tell you that this is just the beginning of Sabrina’s warpath. When she reaches the stage of her career that Bird and DT are at right now, the record books will look like a colossal Wreck, boundless and bare.
And I don’t feel as desperate any more to make anyone Sabrina’s enemy, either. She’ll find her rivals on the court in due time, and those matchups will be legendary. And she’ll also have her moments of real pettiness and actual shit talk, and those stank faces will be legendary, too.
She doesn’t need anyone—especially not clear Duck-Anon crackpots like me—inventing new rivalries for her.
In the mean time, I’ll try my best to keep myself far away from any sort of conspiracy theories of my own creation. I’ll stop looking for beef where there ain’t any.
Go Ducks.