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Starting Five: Thoughts and Takeaways from Athletes Unlimited’s first week

Photo Credit: Jade Hewitt/Athletes Unlimited

The debut of Athletes Unlimited’s women’s basketball offering has capitvated many a women’s hoops fan – particularly given the laundry list of notable players and coaches within the offseason league that have been through the WNBA’s ranks.

The more women’s basketball there is – the better. The more women’s sports there are – the better. It appears based on the rave reviews that Athletes Unlimited’s women’s basketball league has received in its first week that it is capitalizing on every opportunity it has to make a great first impression.

Here are a few takeaways that we have noticed from the action in Las Vegas so far.

A second wind for pro careers

It is not hard to look at the list of players that are competing within Athletes Unlimited and automatically recognize said names from watching WNBA basketball. In fact, the four teams that participated in the first week of play all had team captains with W experience.

Team Sims (Blue) was named for Odyssey Sims, Team Russell (Orange) was named for Mercedes Russell, Team Mitchell (Gold) was named for Kelsey Mitchell and Team Carrington (Purple) was named for DiJonai Carrington. This upcoming week, Team Blue is Team (Isabelle) Harrison, Team Orange is Team (Lexie) Brown, Team Gold is Team (Natasha) Cloud and Team Purple is Team (Mercedes) Russell.

The onset of Athletes United is reminding people that those with WNBA careers who may have gotten off to rocky starts are certainly worthy of having a spot on a W roster. Kalani Brown, formerly of the Atlanta Dream, appears to be a textbook example.

Another example of this appears to be Lexie Brown, who won her first WNBA championship during the 2021 season with the Chicago Sky.

Then … there is Carrington, who has not only provided plenty of skill to Athletes Unlimited, but plenty of swagger.

As of the conclusion of the first week of play, Natasha Cloud (1451), Lexie Brown (1345), Isabelle Harrison (1291), Mercedes Russell (1050) and Jantel Lavender (1044) are the top five in points. Taj Cole, a name that may or may not have been on the casual fan’s radar, is at 990 points – seventh among all players and it may have led to renewed interest in her in terms of WNBA free agency.

An AAU Feel

Many of the players probably fondly remember their days when they were in middle school and high school when they would be playing basketball year-round at the preps level. Once their regular seasons had concluded, it was time to hit the AAU circuit with their respective travel teams. In fact, throughout history, many major players who eventually hit the big time at either the college or pro levels begin as teammates in the AAU ranks.

“Unlimited” may have been in the names of some of the AAU teams many of Athletes Unlimited’s participants used to be in or play against growing up. Even the solid-colored uniforms have to be reminiscent of the travel days for lots of Athletes Unlimited’s participants.

Even Athletes Unlimited’s initials are AU. Imagine that!

Just as those old AAU relationships may have led to players committing to either a college or eventually becoming teammates again in the pros, these times as teammates in Athletes Unlimited may translate into future occasions as teammates in the WNBA or elsewhere they play.

Unfortunately, for many of the WNBA’s top players, the “elsewhere they play” usually means having to continue a daunting travel schedule overseas since those overseas teams are willing to pay more money for top-tier professional talent than is the case in the WNBA. When the WNBPA inked its updated collective bargaining agreement with the league, an aim was for the players to have more opportunities to stay home and only have to go overseas for ball if it was an option as opposed to a near must.

While the WNBA may not have anything directly to do with Athletes Unlimited, one can see its influence on every imprint of the league from its players to its coaches to its storytellers to even its arena in Las Vegas. In many ways, overseas teams for WNBA players have acted as those AAU teams of their middle school and high school years. Hopefully in the coming years, Athletes Unlimited can bring back that feel of offseason travel ball and perhaps those teams will be the new AAU as opposed to the UMMC Ekaterinburgs and Dynamo Kursks of the world.

Storytelling

With the new league just getting off the ground in its first season, it needed a team of top-notch storytellers to highlight the league as well as its players.

Athletes Unlimited not only got a team of storytellers, it assembled an All-Star team that includes Jasmine Baker, Khristina Williams and Ari Chambers.

When Williams chatted with us at Beyond The W about what she was looking forward to most about the league, she was particularly hyped about how it was empowering Black women to be at the forefront of telling a story about a league that is featuring mostly Black women.

That same shop at the Athletes Unlimited Arena also features a small bookstore featuring reads that are about Black women empowerment. Exactly as it should be and exactly as the players themselves would want it.

Athletes Unlimited understands that the stories of Black women are best told through the lens of a Black woman and that is what we have seen through the content provided in Las Vegas. Williams mentioned to us at Beyond The W that there is a lot of storytelling of women’s basketball players that may be top-notch but is out of touch with what is happening culturally in diverse communities. It is clear that Athletes Unlimited is filling that vacuum that desperately needed filling.

Investment

From the arena to the production quality to the depth of content, it is very clear that Athletes Unlimited decided to put a great deal of investment into this venture.

We often, deservedly, lampoon the WNBA for sometimes doing the bare minimum on the subject of investing money into ensuring it can be a top-tier product. In lots of ways, Athletes Unlimited is somewhat showing the W what it can be if it is truly willing to put its money where its mouth is.

The money is there. In many ways, the money has always been there to ensure that women’s basketball gets treated with the respect it so richly deserves. And there appears to be more money and passion behind the women’s game because, slowly but surely, more people are waking up to the fact that women’s sports deserve every bit of investment and respect as the men’s game deserves.

A slogan for the WNBPA is “Bet On Women.” Athletes Unlimited it proving it is doing that as have other leagues around the world. Imagine what a WNBA could look like if it decided to trust itself and be confident in an investment it could truly make into allowing itself to be just a big, bold, imaginative and fearless as its big brother league, the NBA. Players have been yearning for such a thing from the W and, perhaps, the onset of Athletes Unlimited and what it is putting into the game may be just the thing for the WNBA to wake up and realize there is no better time than now to grow the game.

Not just basketball…

Believe it or not, Athletes Unlimited does have other leagues. There is a softball league, a volleyball league and a lacrosse league. While those are all great leagues in their own rights, this is, without question, the highest profile venture for Athletes Unlimited given the popularity of basketball and the rising popularity of the WNBA.

If Athletes Unlimited is smart, and it seems to be, it would use the platform of Athletes Unlimited basketball to promote its other leagues.

After all, society is slowly but surely rallying around women’s sports – the popularity of this past season’s volleyball national championship game and the continued popularity of softball (particularly in the spring months) are examples of that. Imagine while watching one of the basketball games between Team Gold and Team Purple and we saw spots highlighting Athletes Unlimited softball or Athletes Unlimited volleyball.

Volleyball will be the next sport on the Athletes Unlimited docket. In fact, it begins in just over a month when it opens serve for season two in March. Softball will also be returning for a season two during the summer. Lacrosse will also be back.

It has only been one week since Athletes Unlimited basketball first tipped off and it is already well on its way to being a great success. It may even encourage those at Athletes Unlimited to begin expansion (what a concept, hint hint WNBA) into other sports such as hockey and soccer.

Athletes Unlimited is just getting started – and since it is, likely, enjoying its biggest audience ever with the introduction of basketball (and re-introducing fans to familiar names from the WNBA), it will now want to duplicate that for its other sports. The platform is right there in their faces at the Las Vegas offseason league. As a coach would say after drawing up a well-designed play to get a star scorer the ball in a close game, it is now all about execution.

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