WNBA’s Off-Court Action Showcased in ‘The Power of Dreams’ : NPR

Minnesota Lynx players lock arms in a moment of silence to honor Breonna Taylor before a game in July 2020.

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Phelan M. Ebenhack/AP

You know how you know women’s sports are finally breaking into the mainstream American consciousness? When your 82-year-old grandmother tells you, “They’re showing more women’s basketball on TV these days.”

With women’s basketball viewership at an all-time high, “Power of the Dream” — Amazon’s new documentary directed by Dawn Porter highlighting the WNBA’s fight for fairness and representation — has came at the peak moment.

Provides a candid look at the off-court activities of WNBA players during the COVID-ravaged 2020 season — as players mourn the black lives lost to police violence and corruption involved in the Georgia Senate race — the drama is not what you would expect from a basketball club. There is almost no dribbling in the film and very little action on the sport itself. (Perhaps that is conveyed in the title, which is more poetic than sporting).

However, this is not a glossy look at the league’s imperviousness. It’s about the evils of professional sports in America: the struggles that even the world’s most successful, elite basketball players face, their fight to influence larger social change and their sacrifices to improve conditions for marginalized communities, while also meeting their own unmet needs. is accommodated as a unionized workforce of 144 employees.

With a mix of news clips, original documentary footage, and interviews with renowned sportswriters and WNBA icons (including Angel McCoughtry, Layshia Clarendon, and Elizabeth Williams), the film reveals many aspects of player-led change.

Rather than glorifying the WNBA’s public image (the film shows the league making the mistake of penalizing players for their social actions), the camera focuses on the players in a state of genuine vulnerability and uncertainty—if not outright frustration—as they band together to stand up for their core beliefs. It helps that two of the featured athletes, Nneka Ogwumike and Sue Bird, widely considered among the best female basketball players of their generation, were behind the film’s production. The documentary shines brightest in its intimate moments: moments of genuine urgency and (figurative) locker-room access that can be achieved when the players themselves get their hands dirty.

Layshia Clarendon in The power of dreams.

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Prime Video/Amazon MGM Studios

Ultimately, the film asks: What responsibilities do modern professional athletes have? How do those responsibilities evolve, change, and deepen as they relate to issues of gender, race, and economics? And how do high achievers respond when their dreams are challenged and disrupted?

The legacy of WNBActivism

“Power of the Dream” builds a framework that begins with the opening scene, as a group of key players prepare to discuss their political views on live television while wearing black T-shirts that read “ARMED THE POLICE WHO KILLED BREONNA TAYLOR” and “SAY HER NAME.”

From the start, the film provided a micro-history of the social advocacy legacy of WNBA players – despite being targeted by fines and criticism by league officials, the media and fans. and criticism. In 2016, the Minnesota Lynx drew the ire of the Minnesota Police Department after group members spoke out against the killing of Philando Castile in nearby Falcon Heights. The team’s franchise player and four-time WNBA champion, Maya Moore, has become the face of the player-led protests. The audacity of the Lynx – at the time, the WNBA version of Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls of the 90s – initiated a string of protests in the sports world that culminated in Colin’s infamous NFL kneeling Kaepernick later that year.

Moore would eventually take her fight for justice further, stepping away from basketball in 2019 to spend time freeing a wrongly convicted man (Jonathan Irons, her now-husband), and finally retire together to fully pursue social justice goals. Moore’s story is not entirely new, but, through the insight of journalists like Jemele Hill, the documentary argues that the significance of Moore’s actions has not been fully grasped. Her work is seen as a reflection of the WNBA’s larger philanthropic ethos in ways rarely seen in other major leagues.

Moore isn’t the only WNBA luminary who has risked his life to do the right thing. Much of the documentary focuses on the coordinated efforts of the tournament’s players at the height of “Wubble” in 2020.

With the murders of Breonna Taylor and, months later, George Floyd, the league’s biggest stars took a unified stance. With games scheduled to be televised, they collectively refused to compete as usual, instead gathering on the lawn of IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla. — site of their quarantined and shortened season — to hold a vigil. Every WNBA player was present. This is one of the most touching things you will ever see in professional sports. Imagine any other league being able to do that.

Holly Rowe, an ESPN reporter who was tasked with covering the WNBA’s COVID season, says in the documentary that those WNBA players embody the most politicized group of professional athletes in American history. These aren’t just individuals sharing comments on social media, or bystanders taking recordings of post-match press conferences out of context – it’s an organized, tactical gathering of the entire league spoke as one. And they maintained that throughout the season.

Labor politics in the “W”

For WNBA New Players, “The Power of Dreams”” is a showcase for the ability of players to work together to effect change. Indeed, the WNBA offers a case study in labor organizing that no other major American sports league can match.

Ogwumike — a league mainstay, Stanford alum and the No. 1 overall pick in the 2012 WNBA Draft — led the Women’s National Basketball Players Association in key contract negotiations in 2019 and 2020.

Nneka Ogwumike is featured in The power of dreams.

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Prime Video/Amazon MGM Studios

The filmmakers show Ogwumike and her colleagues strategizing, and then, like a quick burst in the open field, going big. Surname guaranteed unprecedented salary increase of 53% and maternity leaveamong the biggest and most progressive reforms in the history of U.S. sports bargaining. (There’s still a long way to go: The WNBA’s highest-paid stars will earn about $250,000 in salary this year; just a fraction of what the NBA minimum salary of more than 1 million dollars.)

The victory of the WNBA players, although a subplot in the film, serves as narrative: it lays the groundwork for legitimizing the WNBA’s tireless efforts to improve conditions on multiple fronts — forming the spearhead of their multi-pronged demands for change that finally reached Congress.

Georgia US Senate race

The WNBA’s Atlanta Dream program — named after Dr. Martin Luther King’s timeless monologue — is the climactic end point of the documentary (see: “The Power of Dream“)Although the filmmakers chose to explore issues involving athletes on various teams leading up to that moment, the overall plot ultimately points to Atlanta.

Amid the social turmoil of the 2020 season, Atlanta’s then-majority owner, Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler (who declined to be interviewed for the documentary), became a major source of disruption for the players when she disparaged the WNBA women’s team for its support of the Black Lives Matter movement.

As the 2020 election rolls around in Georgia, Loeffler is favored to win the key Senate race as the incumbent. WNBA players, once again, made history: they publicly condemned Loeffler by strategically rallying around her opponent, Reverend Raphael Warnock.

Sue Bird stars in new documentary The power of dreams.

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Prime Video/Amazon MGM Studios

Warnock held just 9% of the vote before the WNBA joined, and the documentary considers the support of his players a key factor in his victory. In the film, Warnock (the only male subject) largely credits the WNBA for his unprecedented victory, becoming Georgia’s first black senator. He remains in office.

Despite her immense success on and off the court, Bird still wrestles with the larger question of the responsibilities of professional athletes, and whether they should wield such a high level of social and political influence. She and her peers haven’t forgotten that in order to make a difference in their communities, they also have to work. For these players, that means talking to family members and people like Michelle Obama, joining organizations like Say Her Name, researching candidates, and actually meeting with Warnock before they officially endorse him. Those tasks certainly aren’t listed in the job description of a WNBA player—or any top athlete, for that matter.

“For us, basketball has never been just an issue,” Bird said to the camera. And with this group of basketball players, how can that be?