Also available on youtube.

Song: Tightrope by Janelle Monáe

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Okay so. I have a lot of emotions about this.

The 1995-1996 Women's USA Basketball and Women's Olympic Basketball team changed women's basketball in the USA; they are part of the reason the NBA announced the WNBA in 1996. These were twelve women many of whom could have earned six-figure salaries - some could have earned $400,000 - playing basketball in countries with established women's professional leagues. And instead they took $50,000 from USA Basketball to play an unprecedented 60 games, some exhibition games against college teams, some in international tournaments, before the Atlanta Olympics. They once played eight games in eight days in three cities. Their job was grueling. They hated their coach. They traveled all the time and stayed in shitty hotel rooms with roommates. They held open practices for fans to prove they could bring in audiences. They sold jerseys and signed posters for USA Basketball. They were guaranteed just 24 hours off a week: so if practice was done at 3 PM on Friday, they might start again at 4 PM on Saturday. They femmed up and wore makeup and smiled and took out their braids and took off their hoop earrings and wore sleeveless dresses and did awards shows and stayed in the closet and showed up at interviews every day. They shouldn't have had to do it. But they did. They worked so hard to demonstrate that women's basketball had a level above college basketball, that women's basketball could drive fan engagement and not lose ~middle America~, that they could sell shoes for Nike and basketballs for Champion and basketball itself for the NBA.

Their goal was to go 60-0 and they did: they didn't lose a single game.

And it worked. They changed women's basketball in America.

(Curious about the international leagues these players could have played for? Check out the WNBL (Australia, founded 1981), the Russian Women's National Basketball Premier League (founded 1992), Lega Basket Femminile (Italy, founded 1930), Liga Femenina de Baloncesto (Spain, founded 1964), and Kadınlar Basketbol Süper Ligi (Turkey, founded 1980). Women basketball players from the United States still play internationally because the pay is better in other leagues.)