(California) Love and Basketball
How a sport I knew nothing about reminded me about the thing I love most.
Hometown pride is a fickle thing. As we grow up, our sense of home shifts, and therefore so do our loyalties. Don’t get me wrong, I am an Angeleno through and through. I know we have some of, if not the best tacos in the country, our freeway system is only understandable if you were quite literally born here, and ash falling from the sky is more likely than snow. I love the Dodgers and when “California Love” plays after our home game victories, I sing along knowing the sentiments of the song to be true.1 While I was always proud to call this place my home, pride is a fleeting thing. As cities change, and microscopes move in closer, the flaws of places we come from get amplified. While influencers move in to milk the city for all they can then quickly leave (something I refer to as the “Hype House Effect”), those who stay, are here to clean up their messes and continue to love our city even when it doesn’t love us back.2 Housing prices rise but wages don’t. Cops get $3.6 billion dollars but our teachers strike because of low pay and understaffing.3 How was I supposed to be proud of that? It didn’t help that when friends finally visited me, I was met with the same backhanded compliment: “I didn’t expect to actually like LA!” Even though I tried to take critiques of my city in stride, I too had lapses in pride for my City of Angels.
Growing up I wanted to live in New York. It was shiny and new and everyone who lived there touted a sense of belonging I felt I was lacking. Although I have lived in the same house for 22 years in Mar Vista (just inland from Venice), I went to school in Santa Monica. My life revolved around a different city, one which chooses to distinguish itself from Los Angeles. In Santa Monica, I had to pay extra fees to check out books out from the public library and to swim at the public pool. Santa Monica made it clear, this city was not mine to claim. So I didn’t. It was a reminder that the things I loved about my hometown did not outweigh the things I didn’t. So, I applied Early Decision to Kenyon College in Ohio, eager to move on to greener pastures (literally).
One week later, on January 26th 2020, Kobe and Gianna Bryant, as well as seven other passengers, died in a freak helicopter accident. Across the city you could hear a pin drop. Traffic ceased and a cloud of confusion and depression replaced our typical marine layer, our gray skies staying dark out of respect. The city mourned. I wasn’t a basketball fan but you didn’t have to be to understand the loss. They were pioneers for the representation of women’s sports and gave back to the city in countless ways. Kobe was LA. Day by day, week by week, murals were erected across the city, paying homage to the Black Mamba and Mambacita, their faces seared into my memory.4
Two months later, Covid made its way to California and again our community was dealing with loss. It was like a one-two punch. Suddenly, the things I loved most about my city were gone; iconic restaurants were replaced by DoorDash ghosts kitchens or “collaborative work spaces” and my corner store known for 99¢ cans of Diet Coke and a morning Dodgers game recap was bought out by a restaurateur. Despite the bliss of driving down an empty freeway, the absence of daily traffic was eerie. The 405 was a physical manifestation of the loss of our community leaders, members, and spaces.
Everyone grappled with ongoing grief throughout the pandemic, I know that. However, the loss of Kobe followed by this loss of our city created a unique dissonance that I felt deep in my chest. Why was I so eager to leave as my city was in shambles? Though I hadn’t trashed a home in the Hollywood Hills and left when I could no longer make rent, how was I any better than the TikTokers that did?5 But I had made my bed, and off to Ohio I went to lie in it.
Each time I returned home, I would see a new Kobe mural, a constant reminder of what he meant to our city. I had never seen a basketball game (save for those in the movie Love & Basketball), but Kobe represented more than a sport to me. I couldn’t shake the grief I felt when I saw the gold and purple silhouettes as I drove throughout my city, both the fading murals from 2020 and the subsequent ones that continued to pop up.6
Fast forward a bit, I graduated and did what no liberal arts college graduate was brave enough to do: I moved home instead of to Brooklyn. I get my fair share of judgements from loving ex-roommates who just want me to be closer, but for the most part nothing could really convince me to go anywhere but Los Angeles. With free rent and no job, it seemed like the logical thing to do. In July, I visited my sister in New York and she insisted my family go to a New York Liberty game, Brooklyn’s WNBA team. I didn’t live entirely under a rock—I knew about Ellie the Elephant and that the rookies from the LA Sparks had thrown the first pitch at a Dodgers game this year, but my WNBA knowledge started and ended there.7 She informed me that a lot of the players were going to the Olympics so we watched the All Star Game together so I could familiarize myself with the players. I was hooked.
I tuned in to every Team USA game, holding my breath as Gabby Williams shot what I thought was a game tying 3 pointer for France during the Gold Medal Game. I felt silly that it had taken me this long to tune in since I had a longtime appreciation for women’s sports. But watching basketball, something I knew so little about, and seeing these women play so fucking well was awe-inspiring. I quite literally could not unglue my eyes from the screen.
Right after the Olympics, I got Covid. For twelve days I watched every W game on the schedule. It became more than a way to pass time, it became the reason I got up in the morning. I began looking up what “and one” meant, I started listening to WNBA podcasts, and my mom gifted me a basketball for when I was feeling better. This need to eat, sleep, and breathe WNBA wasn’t because I had discovered something particularly new, rather I finally found a sense of community. Enter the Los Angeles Sparks.
I consider myself lucky: The LA Sparks are one of twelve teams in the WNBA, which is not very many for a league that considers themselves the best in the world. During my 12 day quarantine I learned a lot about my team. The Sparks are in last place due to season-ending injuries, but if we remain at the bottom, we will get first draft pick next season. Our rookies are phenomenal—Rickea Jackson (my ROTY pick) is a superstar who plays hard and fast every night and had Cameron Brink, our other incredible rookie, not torn her ACL so early in the season, we may have had a shot at playoffs.8
We have Olympians from all over the world on our team too.9 Dearica Hamby won bronze in the 3x3 for Team USA, Stephanie Talbot won bronze in the 5x5 for Australia, and Li Yueru and Kia Nurse also played 5x5, for China and Canada respectively. Cameron Brink was supposed to play 3x3 for Team USA but was replaced by Hamby due to the ACL injury. Although the Sparks are having a hard season, they haven’t stopped fighting. Once I started to feel better from Covid, I knew I had to go to a game.
I got to the arena early to watch warm ups. We were playing against the first place team, the Liberty, so I was excited to see them play again, especially post-Olympics. Doors opened at 6 and I eagerly found my seat. I watched Liberty’s gold medalists, Sabrina Ionescu and Breanna Stewart, shoot 3 pointers on the visiting side while Dearica Hamby and Kia Nurse made layups on our side. I sat there giddy, recording videos and taking pictures, as though the whole game wasn’t being broadcast on national television.
Something was in the air that night. It was Daddy/Daughter night which struck a chord, as I gazed at Kobe’s retired jersey in the rafters and thought of him and Gianna. To the left of his were Sparks jerseys and their 3 championship banners, 2001, 2002, and 2016. Always a champion for women’s sports, I wondered what Kobe would have thought about the thousands of people that were finally showing up.10 Even though only half the arena gets sold for Sparks games, we were loud and proud. My dad likened it to the small town football games he went to as a kid. Somehow this 900,000 sq ft building felt as tiny as it was huge, and I felt proud about our position in last place. That night the Sparks were on fire; we won the game.
For the first time since the Olympic break, the LA Sparks dominated. All throughout the stadium I saw young girls in Brink and Hamby jerseys, dads in Dodgers caps, and couples in matching Tupac t-shirts, our collective city pride rearing its head. Through the speakers, Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” began to play. I stopped to take a photo with the scoreboard in the background, so I could always remember my first Sparks game. As we left, I could still hear Kendrick’s tantalizing lyrics when a familiar face caught my eye: Smiling and holding a championship trophy next to Shaq, was a young Kobe Bryant. I stared at the banner, my throat caught. It felt like all of the pieces had finally landed in place.
I suddenly understood my hometown pride for the first time in twenty two years. It was so closely intertwined with my love for women’s sports, that it took going to the Sparks game to finally see it. There is a certain Angeleno spirit that is hard to capture, but that these players, and Los Angeles legends before them, understood. It’s a refusal to be discounted, a kind of persistence that you can’t teach. That is what I loved about LA. Sure, we were in last place, but that didn’t stop fans and players alike from showing up. I saw it in the sea of handmade purple and gold signs that were waved by young girls who were watching athletes that looked like them. For those 40 minutes, the women of the Los Angeles Sparks embodied what it meant to be an Angeleno, and we got to watch them in action.
On the train home, I wrestled with why it had taken me so long to turn on the TV and watch as well as why I had fought my love for LA for so long. I hated feeling like I had wasted my time. The universe, though, had a response. Through the window I saw Kobe one final time that night, reminding me not to dwell, there was no time to lose.
My mom let me know “California Love” actually played as Kenley Jansen’s walk up music when he was on the team, but is now periodically played throughout games. “I Love L.A.” by Randy Newman is what actuallys plays after games…but I think the sentiment still rings true :)
Taylor Lorenz, “Hype House and the Los Angeles TikTok Mansion Gold Rush,” NYT, January 3, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/style/hype-house-los-angeles-tik-tok.html.
The Associated Press, “L.A. school district workers have approved a labor deal following a 3-day strike,” NPR, April 8, 2023. https://www.npr.org/2023/04/08/1168831503/los-angeles-school-district-approves-labor-deal-strike; and David Zahniser and Libor Jany, “Union contract would increase LAPD budget by nearly $400 million by 2027, report says,” LA Times, August 22, 2023. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-08-22/union-contract-would-increase-lapd-budget-by-nearly-400-million-by-2027-report-says#:~:text=City%20Administrative%20Officer%20Matt%20Szabo,year%2C%20which%20began%20July%201.
Josh Dubose and Pedro Rivera, “‘Hype House’ influencers sued by former landlord; claims $600,000 in damages done to home,” KTLA, January 20, 2023. https://ktla.com/news/local-news/hype-house-influencers-sued-by-former-landlord-claims-600000-in-damages-done-to-home/
In Southern California alone there are 341 murals, totaling 642 across the world.
Ellie the Elephant is the mascot of the New York Liberty. She is wonderful, stylish, and represents much more than the ballers on her team: “The WNBA is a league of mostly Black women, so we are a reflection of the players in the league, on the court, the women in the community, and that’s something that’s really important to this organization. … When we were thinking about Ellie, it was never a doubt that the characteristics of Ellie would also represent that.”
Rickea Jackson just became the 4th Sparks player in history to score over 400 points in a rookie season. She is in good company with Nneka Ogwumike (462), Candace Parker (610), and Lisa Leslie (445). Jackson broke the record on Sunday, September 1st 2024 in a game against the Atlanta Dream. (I was there, it was so cool!); Cameron Brink tore her ACL during a game against the Connecticut Sun and was out for the rest of her season. She was the second draft pick and set to play on the Olympic 3x3 Team for Team USA.
“Record 139 current and former NBA and WNBA players to compete in Paris Olympics,” July 30, 2024. https://www.nba.com/news/former-nba-wnba-players-in-2024-paris-olympics.
And not just at Sparks games. TD Garden Arena in Boston hosted the Connecticut Sun and the Los Angeles Sparks for a record sold out game. Over 19,000 tickets were sold. However, it’s one step forward three steps back: Although it was a historic game for many reasons (record ticket sales, first W game played in Boston, and the third highest attendance for a WNBA game this season), there was almost no advertisement of the game and it could only be watched through League Pass. While the in person crowd demonstrated how much people actually do care about women’s sports, it also showed the inequalities that are still rampant for female athletes. Sun’s Guard Dijonai Carrington said it best in response to a reporter asking about her tweet promoting the game hours before: