BEFORE THIS YEAR, the last WNBA AllB Star Game I covered in person was in 2009 at Mohegan Sun, the casino off I-95 that has been home to the Connecticut Sun since 2003. I'd paid my own way to be there, and I never got paid for the story I published afterward. The Houston Comets, the most dominant team in league history, had folded less than a year earlier, and the WNBA had just cut team rosters from 13 to 11, amounting to a 39-player layoff. It was the Great Recession, and distinctly not a time for growth, or even optimism, in women's basketball. "The big vision is to grow this business," then league president Donna Orender told reporters before the 2009 season. "Sometimes in order to do that, you have to take a little bit of a step sideways."
Fifteen years later, the league is moving forward, and at a remarkable clip. In July, I found myself covering another WNBA All-Star Game, this time in Phoenix. The three-day event was dizzying and overscheduled in all the ways an event of this magnitude is supposed to be-but for the WNBA has simply never been before. Tickets sold out six weeks before tipoff, and downtown signage announcing the game and ads for players' sneaker deals were as unavoidable as the baking desert heat. Around the city, there were enough panels and private parties to get lost in-or turned away from at the door.
"If you're in the city, you know it's All-Star," Jess Smith, the incoming president of the Golden State Valkyries, the league's first expansion team in 17 years, told me in Phoenix. "I had four parties last night! That seems typical, but it wasn't."
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Denne historien er fra December 2024/January 2025-utgaven av GQ US.
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SHABOOZEY THE BIG SHA BANG
Shaboozey spent months at the tippy-top of the charts with a hit song about dealing with hard times the easy way: by hitting the bar. He sang on a couple songs with Beyoncé too. So we asked the one and only SHANIA TWAIN to help country's biggest new star make sense of his explosive year.
HANNAH EINBINDER BORN STANDING UP
With her star turn on Hacks, the comic turned actor has established herself as one of Hollywood's most exciting young talents-much to her own surprise.
Katt Williams The Man Who Opened The Portal
In January, the comic delivered an instantly iconic podcast interview that threw pop culture into crisis-and seemed to predict all manner of messy celebrity gossip to come. At home on his farm, Williams explains why he said what he said— and why he'd do it again, and again, and again....
JOHN DAVID & MALCOLM WASHINGTON A NEW HOLLYWOOD DYNASTY
The Washington brothers built their careers apart—until an irresistible project drew them together. In The Piano Lesson, they tackle a father's thorny legacy.
FUTURE & METRO BOOMIN'S HISTORIC Hit STREAK
What happens when the best rapper alive reunites with the hottest producer of the moment? You get a back-to-back-to-back run unlike any since the Beatles.
PHARRELL WILLIAMS Designer of the Year
Riding along from Paris to Hollywood to New York with the Louis Vuitton *men's creative director, whose prolific and often prophetic contributions to fashion, film, and music have once again thrust him to the center of the pop culture Venn diagram.
JOHN MULANEY. KID GORGEOUS GROWS UP
After immortalizing the whirlwind of the past four yearsrelapse, intervention, recovery-in his awardwinning standup special, John Mulaney has emerged as one of the most popular comedians on earth. For his next trick, he's embracing his surprising new role as a suburban dad.
DWAYNE JOHNSON THE WORLD'S BIGGEST Actor
It's hard for Dwayne Johnson to hide. Wherever he goes, there he is― as conspicuous out in the world as he is on the silver screen. But after two decades of playing a version of himself in huge movies, suddenly Dwayne Johnson is ready to do something entirely new: vanish.
How the WNBA Became the Most Fun, Complicated, and Exciting League in Sports
Caitlin Clark! A'ja Wilson! Angel Reese! This year, women's hoops emerged as a dominant popcultural force. But the road to sports-league supremacy has been long and winding. This is the inside story of how the W finally broke through.
A Companion for Your Wrist
Audemars Piguet's new release with artist Brian Donnelly, a.k.a. KAWS, brings high-art hype to the world of pop-watch collabs.
