Dawn Staley will be a TV analyst for the WNBA Commissioner’s Cup final; calls out ESPN over Aliyah Boston snub

Dawn Staley is getting into broadcasting work.

The North Philly-bred women’s hoops legend will be a game analyst at the WNBA’s Commissioner’s Cup next Tuesday, when the Chicago Sky host the Las Vegas Aces in the final of the league’s in-season tournament.

“I wanted to be in the gym,” Staley said Wednesday on a conference call previewing the game. “And what better way to do that than to be a part of the crew and learn more about the WNBA, and these two teams, and the Commissioner’s Cup, and our league, and the state of our women’s basketball. I just wanted to learn. So I’m back to using it as a professional enhancement opportunity.”

As if Staley needs any professional enhancement, given her eminence in the sport. But she admitted she hasn’t been to many games outside of this month’s All-Star Game, coincidentally also in Chicago, where she sat courtside with fellow legend Sheryl Swoopes.

When the question came up of how much TV work she’s done like this before, she was quick with a few zingers.

“Not very much,” she said. “Trust me, I’m going to lean heavy on my partners. I don’t even know why I decided to do it. I think it’s just fun. I want to be a part of the game, I miss the game, I miss being on the sidelines.”

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Fellow analyst Sarah Kustok turned the invitation right back around.

“Coach Staley — legend of the game, Hall of Famer, icon — is going to have the mic a whole, whole lot,” said Kustok, a veteran broadcaster who is the Brooklyn Nets’ local color analyst. “We appreciate that she’s excited to join us and thinks she’s going to learn from us, because she’s going to be teaching all of us.”

Staley and Kustok will work with Michael Grady, the New York Liberty’s local TV play-by-play voice.

The game will be broadcast online via Amazon Prime, as part of a multiyear deal Amazon has with the WNBA. If you haven’t gotten used yet to Amazon streaming sports while you shop, you might want to: the site starts an 11-season, $1 billion-per-year deal to carry the NFL’s Thursday night games starting this fall.

The Commissioner’s Cup is an increasingly big deal in the WNBA because it’s got a big (at least by the league’s standards) prize attached. Each player on the winning team earns a $30,000 bonus, the MVP gets an extra $5,000, and players on the losing finalist get $10,000 each.

Teams qualify based on results in designated games early in the season, and it’s no surprise that Chicago and Las Vegas have made it. The Sky are the reigning champion, and the Aces have finished atop the Western Conference in the regular season for two straight seasons. They’re back there again this year with an 18-8 record, with the Sky’s 20-6 mark the only better one in the league.

Staley will analyze players she knows well, starting with Chicago’s Kahleah Copper, a fellow North Philly native.

“She represents North Philly well; she plays like she’s from Philly,” Staley said. “It will be very easy to analyze that part of it: to see her go up and down the floor, to use her athleticism to make an impact on both sides of the basketball. She really is the epitome of a Philly player.”

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Across the floor will be Las Vegas’ A’ja Wilson, who led Staley’s Gamecocks to their first national title in 2017 and was the WNBA’s MVP in 2020

“To see A’ja blossom into who she is as a pro player … to hear about what she does in the offseason and then apply it and be successful,” Staley said, “a lot of times, you can work on your game, you can try to apply it, but it doesn’t always work as it does in your sessions when you’re working in the offseason. But I’ve seen her range increase, I just see her rebounding, pursuing the basketball a lot more.”

It was no surprise that Staley was asked about an ongoing controversy with one of her South Carolina star players, Aliyah Boston. After leading the Gamecocks to this past season’s national title and winning player of the year honors, Boston was nominated for one of ESPN’s ESPY awards, best college women’s athlete. But she was not invited to attend Wednesday’s ceremony in Los Angeles.

ESPN said that was partly because of COVID-19-related restrictions and partly because the announcement of the award winner was not going to be part of the TV broadcast — Oklahoma softball star Jocelyn Alo won the award during Tuesday night’s preview show. But that was far from enough to dent a huge outcry on social media and in mainstream media.

Boston revealed in a Twitter post that ESPN backtracked and invited her, but she declined it on principle.

“It hurt more to see ESPN change course and invite me only after social media caught wind of it,” Boston wrote. “I’m used to this. It’s just another moment when the disrespect and erasure of Black women is brushed off as a ‘mistake’ or an ‘oversight.’ Another excuse for why our milestones and accomplishments aren’t a ‘priority’ this time, even now, 50 years after Title IX.”

Staley didn’t hold back, either.

“For her to be excluded, to me, is intentional,” she said. “If the ESPYs is considered one of the best sports award shows in the country, in the world, or what have you, then it should represent all the best that our sports have to offer — and not come up with excuses as to why you don’t. It’s lame to me.”

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