New Unrivaled league delivers a jolt of love at first sight
Tweaks to the rules, fast style of play make for some fun basketball
When you’re lucky to have a life chock full of love, it’s sometimes hard to fathom how it’s possible to fit in any more of it. But then somehow, miraculously, you do.
A syrupy sentiment to precede Valentine’s Day? Heck no, I’m talking about basketball.
Oh sure, there’s the regular flurry of high school and college games that make winter so fun (or bearable). But I’m talking about the new league, Unrivaled, and my adoration for it has caught me as off guard as the dorky friend in “Four Weddings and a Funeral” who meets a woman he immediately fancies and says, “Golly. Thunderbolt city.”
To be clear, I didn’t expect to dislike this league. I thought, oh, hey, cool, more basketball and if there wasn’t some other game I wanted to watch of course I’d check this out. Yet last Friday, on a night I expected to be channel-hopping between the Drake women’s basketball game at Missouri State and the LOVB volleyball match between my hometown Madison team and Omaha, I just mostly tuned in instead to Phantom vs. Mist followed by Laces vs. Vinyl in Unrivaled.
Because golly. Thunderbolt city.
Unrivaled is as much a new concept as it is a new league. It’s 3-on-3, but (almost) full court. It’s player-owned, inasmuch as they have equity because there are several big-moneyed initial investors. It’s all in one location, Miami, and teams are training and hanging together. It keeps a pretty regular schedule of Friday-Saturday and Monday-Tuesday nights. Ownership is in the league, not with individual teams.
Besides the game itself, it’s intriguing to me that instead of trying to copy what men’s teams and leagues have found success with, the women created something of their own. That’s not unlike what has happened with Athletes Unlimited basketball, softball and volleyball. To go way back in history, that’s what administrators tried to do with the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women but got swallowed up by the organization they tried to differentiate themselves from – the NCAA. In this way, Unrivaled is truly living up to its name because it has no peer.
Why all the love? Why the thunderbolt? For me it comes down to a few things:
The court
A 3-on-3 game on a nearly full-sized court is a ton of fun to watch. Players have plenty of space with which to work so it’s a far less physical game than the WNBA or the NBA. Way less banging around inside, along with some beautiful passes to teammates cutting through the lane for easy baskets. The game is wide open, and the shorter court (about three-fourths of a standard court) also makes for a truly fast fastbreak.
The camaraderie
With the teams staying in Miami and playing all their games at the 850-seat Wayfair Arena, the atmosphere can sometimes feel like an All-Star Game. That’s a good thing; players really look like they’re having a good time. You have to wonder how much they’re talking to each other in great detail about what their WNBA teams do and don’t do for them, not to mention what Unrivaled might do better, and how that might impact the W’s free agency, player movement and labor negotiations now and in the future.
The TV
I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that there is a women’s sports league that was essentially made for TV (how else to explain a puny 850-seat arena and, blissfully, a commercial-free first quarter?). As recently as a couple years ago, no one would have believed that. The ease of finding a game on TNT or truTV (and replays on Max) is nice compared to the hunting one must do for anything on ESPN+ or wondering just which dang channel any given college or WNBA game might be on.
Ratings have been decent but not eye-popping, a little less than the WNBA in the pre-Caitlin Clark era but more than the pro National Women’s Soccer League draws on ESPN, according to Sports Media Watch. TNT is bragging that it’s the network’s most-ever viewers for women’s basketball but since I can’t recall any women’s basketball ever being on TNT, I think that’s like saying it’s the most-watched French film ever on Telemundo.
The teams
Generally, I like the team names: Laces, Phantom, Vinyl, Lunar Owls, Rose, Mist (announcers have an aversion to using “the” before the names). Love those Laces, not because former Iowa Hawkeye Kate Martin is on the team but because the “L” logo reminds me of every bit of clothing Laverne DeFazio wore on “Laverne and Shirley.” Cracks me up.
Since the teams have no geographic location, there is no built-in fan base for any of them. Iowans know how that goes for pro sports; people here become fans of a team not just for location but because of a team’s star, their style of play, their traditions or any number of other things.
If you need a guide, the entertaining women’s sports podcast “Good Game with Sarah Spain” devised a formula to help people choose a favorite team.
The winning shot
This is the best bit of all. There are three traditional quarters, 7 minutes long. But at the end of those three quarters, 11 points are tacked on to what the leader’s total is and that will be the winning score. For example, if the Laces lead the Lunar Owls (sorry, it just sounds better with the “the”) 64-54 after three quarters, the first team to hit 75 wins. Doesn’t matter which team. This setup guarantees there will always be a winning shot, and it’s great. Even though the Laces’ opening game was an 86-48 cakewalk over the Phantom, Kate Martin hit the basket to get that score to 86 and win the game. Fun stuff.
The future
The season is only two weeks old, but there is already scuttlebutt about next season. League president Alex Bazzell has said Unrivaled will add a four-city touring model next season, reportedly targeting popular women’s college basketball areas that don’t have a WNBA presence. Hello, Iowa?
It’s a good idea, because as much as a made-for-TV league that plays in a custom-created 850-seat arena is kind of cool, it sort of elbows out fans who want to attend games. Because that’s what fans do.
There’s been no word of adding teams to the league, which seems inevitable if Unrivaled succeeds. If it gets to that point, might I make a suggestion?
Thunderbolt City.
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Jane Burns is a former sports and features writer for the Des Moines Register, as well as other publications and websites. She’s a past winner of the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association’s Mel Greenberg Award for her coverage of women’s basketball. Over the course of her career she’s covered pretty much everything, which is why her as-yet-to-be-written memoir will be called “Cheese and Basketball: Stories From a Reporter Who Has Covered Everything.”
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Another fun Substack, Jane! The game, with the 4th quarter revision, is so much fun to watch. I agree with you that having less scrambling battles over the ball. It smooths out the game. I hope Unrivaled has a long life ahead.