Another question is whether Griner will become as transformative off the court as she has been on the court.
Even before she plays her first game, her influence has been significant. A decade ago, W.N.B.A. officials might have been reluctant to celebrate as a standard-bearer of the league someone who did not conform to conventional standards of femininity, said Mary Jo Kane, the director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sport at the University of Minnesota.
“You cannot ignore her athleticism, and the W.N.B.A. has not tried to isolate or marginalize Griner,” Kane said.
“That is a rather remarkable and fundamental shift.”
To be determined, Kane said, is whether Griner and her towering skill and engaging personality will defy the odds and attract corporate sponsors as part of widespread public acceptance four decades after passage of the gender-equity legislation known as Title IX.
It is rare for female athletes to receive endorsements, especially in team sports, and particularly among those who do not play up their feminine side, yet significant shifts are occurring in the appreciation of women, Kane said.
“That’s the $64,000 question,” Kane said. “Tiger Woods just said, ‘Winning takes care of everything.’ We’re about to see with Brittney Griner.”
The 6-foot-8 Griner is expected to be the No. 1 overall draft pick by the Phoenix Mercury. She has become a focal point of a league that has a new logo, an extended television deal with ESPN and an orchestrated drive to promote three highly visible rookies: Griner of Baylor, Skylar Diggins of Notre Dame and Elena Delle Donne of Delaware.
Although the W.N.B.A. and Griner’s agent declined to discuss specific marketing campaigns and endorsement possibilities, Lindsay Kagawa Colas, her agent, wrote in an e-mail: “It’s the age of innovation, of advocacy, and ‘authentic’ is what sells. And here comes Brittney, equal parts provocative, brave, playful and humble, a skater kid in a basketball player’s body who is true to herself and dressed in tomboy clothes. She’s radical in the most charming and relevant way because she embraces what makes her different.”
Griner, 22, sometimes appears shy or reserved at news conferences, but she can be funny and endearingly goofy when she lets her guard down. She rides a longboard, eats bacon at pregame meals for good luck and surely is among the world’s most accomplished shot-blocking kayakers.
“I’m up for the challenge,” Griner said of being central to the league’s rebranding effort. “I changed stuff in college basketball, I guess you could say, so I’m up for it. I never shy from anything. Whatever’s thrown at me, I’m ready for it.”
The W.N.B.A. has far outlived other women’s basketball leagues in the United States. It remains the gold standard internationally. The level of play and coaching has never been higher. Yet it remains a summer league whose players spend the rest of the year with professional club teams in places like Russia, Turkey and China.
Television viewership has dropped considerably since the league’s inception in 1997. And, after drawing more than 10,000 spectators a game in two of its first three seasons, the W.N.B.A. hit an average attendance low last year of 7,457, which league officials attributed largely to a struggling economy and a shutdown during the London Olympics.
Laurel Richie, the president of the W.N.B.A., said she thought it was time to reassess everything about the league.
“I think we’re going to look back at 2013, 10 to 20 years from now, and say it was a really important year in the history of the W.N.B.A.,” she said.
The league replaced its logo, a design that resembled the N.B.A. emblem of a player dribbling the ball. Jerry West with a bob, some called it dismissively. The new W.N.B.A. logo depicts a player driving to the basket and is meant to reflect the league’s ethnic diversity and athleticism.
The campaign to spotlight Griner, Diggins and Delle Donne is a continuation of ESPN’s “3 to See” promotion during the recent college season. It suggests a realization that women’s basketball must provide a united front to succeed.
“It seems they’re beginning to figure out a triumvirate of relationships needed for a 24-hour, 12-month season for women’s basketball,” said Helen Wheelock, who operates the Women’s Hoops Blog. “That means there has to be a conscious connection between the N.C.A.A., ESPN and the W.N.B.A. It has not been a really successful partnership. It’s been push-pull.”
The league’s contract extension with ESPN — worth $12 million a year, or $1 million a team — runs through the 2022 season. The network is satisfied with the league’s following, said John Skipper, ESPN’s president, although broadcasts reached a low of 262,000 viewers a game in 2012.
One W.N.B.A. challenge, Skipper said, is fending off unrealistic expectations. It took the N.B.A. 15 seasons to average 10,000 fans, officials said. And as recently as 1981, more than three decades into the league’s existence, the N.B.A. finals were broadcast on tape delay.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/14/sports/basketball/brittney-griner-could-be-a-game-changer-for-the-wnba.html?partner=rss&emc=rss