"sue bird: in the clutch" erases the Black women who helped her win

it's a deeply uncomfortable watch tbh

Thank you, as always, for being here. Paid subscriptions allow me to dedicate more time to this newsletter. It’s not just the time I spend writing, but the time I spend planning, researching, and reporting that is supported by upgrading.

If you want to pay for a subscription but don’t want to give money to Substack, feel free to use my Venmo or PayPal. Just reply to this email and let me know you’ve sent it so I can add your email to my paid list!

We had a BLAST in the live threads for the women’s Final Four and March Madness championship game. Going forward, live threads will become a paid subscriber perk. I’m looking to do more of those threads for more sporting events that people want to watch together, like the WNBA Draft or PWHL playoffs or SheBelieves Cup style events, Olympic stuff, etc. Let me know if you have any requests!

---

I got sick of reading the same quotes and the same profile of Sue Bird over and over and over again. So for Harper’s Bazaar I talked to Bird about her new documentary, what she and Megan Rapinoe work on in couples’ counseling, gay sex and respectability politics, and why being a point guard is the perfect role for a Libra.

The film, Sue Bird: In The Clutch (currently available for digital purchase and rental on Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video, VUDU and Wolfe On Demand) also gives us the women’s basketball version of the Michael Jordan meme, for which I am grateful¹. Thank you for that, Sue Bird!

The Bazaar story is a profile of Bird and where she is at post-retirement, but Bird’s current press tour is related to the release of her documentary. I didn’t write the HED for my Bird profile and it’s not the one I would personally choose, but it is the perception you would come away with if you watched the Bird doc and you didn’t previously know much about women’s basketball so in that way I suppose it’s accurate?

Which is to say: women’s basketball and the success of women’s basketball did not start with Sue Bird. But Sue Bird: In The Clutch kind of implies that a lot of things did actually start with Bird and, for someone who has been so vocal (including IN THE FILM) about the double standard regarding the way white women and Black women are treated in this predominantly Black sport, the erasure of Black women from this film is deeply uncomfortable.

If you were someone who just recently became interested in women’s basketball and you watched Sue Bird: In The Clutch for context, you would come away believing that Bird single-handedly did more for the sport than anyone in history. And while I get that this is a film about Bird and is she one of the most significant players in its history, the too-tight focus on Bird and only Bird ends up inadvertently doing quite a bit of harm, imo.

What do I mean by that? Well, six minutes into the film we briefly hear from Bird’s former Storm teammate Jordin Canada (the only time we hear from her). But we are 47 minutes into the 98-minute film before another Black woman speaks—or is even named—and it is former Seattle Storm teammate and eventual Storm coach Noelle Quinn. But those interviews are short; the Black person we hear the most from in the film is Stephen Curry, who has never even played with or against Bird.