Souhan: Drama is good, dysfunction is not. What is going on in the WNBA?

I used to host a podcast featuring Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve. We’d frequently discuss the growth of the WNBA.

Reeve thought the key to growth was more mainstream media coverage, to legitimize and promote the league. She wasn’t wrong.

I thought the league was missing a key ingredient to success in the internet era:

Nonsense.

My argument then was this: The NFL became the most popular sport in North America not by providing a quality product or making intelligent decisions. There are and were a lot of terrible NFL games, and the league used to frequently damage its own reputation and credibility with inane or borderline criminal decisions, such as pretending that players weren’t risking brain injury by playing the sport.

The NFL became a superpower when it decided to promote itself 12 months a year, when it fully embraced the nonsense that surrounds the sport — rumor mills, misinformation, hot-take arguments, controversy, conflict, disinformation, inaccurate speculation, any other form of speculation and breathless reporting on every minor ankle injury suffered by a mediocre left guard.

The WNBA didn’t need to improve its product to become a financial success. The product has been great for a long time. What the WNBA needed to do was embrace all the stuff that makes coaches and organizations cringe — and also keeps their sport front of mind among casual fans.

I wanted routine sports nonsense.

I didn’t want professional wrestling-meets-dysfunctional family drama nonsense.

To recap what’s happened in the league in the last year:

• The league commissioner is feuding with the league’s best players over … just about everything, including the upcoming collective bargaining agreement negotiations, which could shut down the sport.

• The commissioner is at odds with the most powerful woman in the sport, Lynx star Napheesa Collier, who has already started a successful alternative league and is a key figure in the players’ association.

• Reeve — the best coach in the sport, if not in the history of the sport — spent the aftermath of that loss blasting the league and the refs in an almost unprecedented rant following a championship game, as league officials squirmed at a nearby table.

• Reeve got thrown out of a key playoff game this year when officials didn’t call a foul when Phoenix’s Alyssa Thomas ran through Collier, injuring Collier and essentially ending their playoff series.

• Reeve again blasted the officials, and drew support from some of the most successful coaches and players in the league.

• Collier blasted Commissioner Cathy Engelbert, in part for saying that Caitlin Clark should feel lucky she could make so much money off the court as a WNBA player. Collier noted that Clark was making a lot of money off the court as a college player.

• Engelbert said that Collier mischaracterized their conversation.

My apologies for speaking (or writing) all of this into existence.

A little conflict is good for the sports business.

The WNBA isn’t in conflict; it’s threatening its own progress, if not its own existence.

The league is at an all-time high in terms of talent, competitiveness, popularity, coaching acumen and gameday production value. The increasing popularity of women’s college basketball means that more fans are watching the WNBA, to follow players from their alma mater.

More games on easily accessible television channels, along with more pre- and post-game analysis, has led to greater familiarity of the players and the best story lines among casual fans.

Because I don’t trust Engelbert, I’m hoping Collier will find a way to save the day.

At this moment in WNBA history, I’d love to experience a calm winter.