{"id":2832,"date":"2023-06-07T00:31:31","date_gmt":"2023-06-07T00:31:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/?p=2832"},"modified":"2023-06-07T00:31:31","modified_gmt":"2023-06-07T00:31:31","slug":"how-was-it-not-a-sellout-wnba-coach-shocked-furious-large-crowd-didnt-show-up-for-griners-return","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/2023\/06\/07\/how-was-it-not-a-sellout-wnba-coach-shocked-furious-large-crowd-didnt-show-up-for-griners-return\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cHow Was It Not a Sellout?\u201d: WNBA Coach Shocked, Furious Large Crowd Didn\u2019t Show Up for Griner\u2019s Return"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Brittney Griner, the WNBA player who protested the national anthem, got locked up in Russia for a drug smuggling offense, and was then freed and welcomed back by President Joe Biden, returned to playing for the WNBA the other night. Despite being in Los Angeles, a city of millions, the game didn\u2019t sell out, as Griner\u2019s coach got angry about in an interview.<\/p>\n<p>Watch that here:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">After Brittney Griner played in her first WNBA game last night since coming home from prison in Russia, Phoenix Mercury head coach Vanessa Nygaard was angry Los Angeles didn\u2019t sellout the arena for her return:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow was it not a sellout??\u201d<a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/b2GgnsjlIN\">pic.twitter.com\/b2GgnsjlIN<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Greg Price (@greg_price11) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/greg_price11\/status\/1660084745701584897?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">May 21, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>For reference, ESPN\u00a0reported\u00a0that 10,396 fans showed up to watch the game. That\u2019s a little under double the\u00a0average\u00a0attendance, ~5,600 of a WNBA game, but far under the\u00a0average\u00a0NBA attendance of ~18,000 fans a game.<\/p>\n<p>Further, Griner\u2019s team lost, with the Sparks beating the Mercury 94-71. Speaking about the game afterwards, Griner\u00a0said, \u201c<em>Not good enough \u2014 didn\u2019t get the W. Whatever I did out there, it was nice to be back. The love from the fans when I came out was amazing. I definitely felt that. I mean, I felt it when I was over there.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Despite the stadium being far from sold out, there was one noteworthy person there: VP Kamala Harris. Reporting on her appearance, Inside the Games\u00a0reported:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\"><p><em>\u201cThank you for all that you did in supporting Brittney,\u201d the vice-president told the Mercury players.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cI know that was rough and so difficult.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Harris also spoke about how \u201cteam is family\u201d and how important it was for Griner that they kept \u201cher story alive\u201d while she was in Russia.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Los Angeles player and WNBA Players Union Executive Committee president Nneka Ogwumike presented Harris with a Sparks jersey and thanked her.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cTonight is a game, but we\u2019re also celebrating the return of one of our own, and what the Biden administration did to make that happen is really important,\u201d Ogwumike said.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cWe know that wasn\u2019t easy.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cBut we want to say thank you so much for us to be able to play against BG tonight.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So with the Vice President and a player responsible for a weeks-long news cycle that became a ancillary battle of the culture war, why were so few people watching the game? Why wasn\u2019t it sold out like many other sports games? Because not that many people watch the WNBA, as comedian Bill Burr joked about,\u00a0saying:<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201c(The WNBA) have been playing in front of 300 to 400 people a night for a quarter of a century,\u201d said Burr in a now viral rant that he made in July. \u201cNot to mention, it\u2019s a male-subsidized league!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cWe gave you a league, none of you showed up! Where are all the feminists? That place should be packed with feminists! Faces painted, wearin\u2019 their jerseys. Goin\u2019 nuts! Like the guys do. None of you went to the games. None of you. You failed them. Not me. Women failed the WNBA. Ladies, name your top five WNBA players of all time. Name the WNBA team in your city. You can\u2019t do it. You don\u2019t give a (bleep) about them. They play night in and night out in front of nobody, and it\u2019s a tragedy.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>The Real Housewives shows? They\u2019re makin\u2019 money hand over fist. Cause that\u2019s what women are watchin<\/em>\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Brittney Griner, the WNBA player who protested the national anthem, got locked up in Russia for a drug smuggling offense, and was then freed and welcomed back by President Joe Biden, returned to playing for the WNBA the other night. Despite being in Los Angeles, a city of millions, the game didn\u2019t sell out, as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2833,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2832","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-daily-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2832"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2832"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2832\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2834,"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2832\/revisions\/2834"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}