Welcome back to Celeb Shot, our freelance feature series at No Cap Space. Here, we welcome Erin Crownover and Kyle Martin from the University of Texas. Erin is a PHD candidate at UT while Kyle works with the H.J. Lutcher Stark Center for Physical Culture and Sports.
What began as a review of Diana Taurasi’s docuseries became a collaborative essay about how fandom is created, cultivated and maintained in women’s basketball. Ahead of March Madness, one of the seminal sporting events that hits our emotional chords in a particularly pointed way, we wanted to leave you with this piece to end the week. Let the feelings in, enjoy the highs and lows, and bring others along for the ride. It’s how the game keeps growing.
Let’s turn it over to Erin and Kyle…
My name is Erin Crownover and I love basketball. My romance with the sport and culture of hoops began when I was still in elementary school, and books were still checked out with a stamp on a card catalog. My dad took me to visit the public library in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, where we searched for books about the game of basketball.
This was my official introduction to the sport. I had never played before, but I was eager to learn after my dad encouraged me to study the game, knowing I wanted to play but did not yet know the rules. We had gone to a few Milwaukee Bucks NBA games, but the student in me wanted to understand more than what I saw on the court1. This was all before we had the internet at home, so the library was my playbook.
The books we found were limited to two categories: biographies on NBA Superstars like Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan; and instructional “how-to” manuals on developing skill sets or understanding rules. Sadly, we found zero books with evidence that women could play the game. So, we asked a librarian for help finding resources about women’s basketball. She pulled up a CD-ROM video from a historic WNBA game. In it, Los Angeles Sparks player Latasha Byears makes a defensive stop, stealing the ball from a Miami Sol guard.
She immediately chucks the ball ahead to Lisa Leslie who is running the floor on a breakaway play, well ahead of any other player. Leslie secures the ball, dribbles it twice, and elevates with the ball extended in one hand for a slam dunk, the first in WNBA history. My imagination was ignited with new ideas; I felt on fire with the thrill of new possibility. I played in an organized community rec league the next year. And, I went on to have a pretty solid career. I was a four-year starter and captain of the Menomonee Falls High School varsity women’s basketball team. I played AAU for a dominant program, WBA Prestige, and was named all-conference. I was a scholarship athlete at Division II women’s national championship program Ashland University (Ashland, Ohio).
For a while there, all signs pointed me towards a future where I could play basketball professionally. But an unfortunate injury ended my playing career earlier than I had intended.2 Today, I am a doctoral candidate at The University of Texas at Austin in the Physical Culture and Sports Studies program.
Most readers of this journal will not be shocked that women’s sports are at a growth
point—women’s basketball, in particular. These hoopers are finding new avenues into the wider world of sport and sports media, entering the mainstream popular culture at large3. Caitlin Clark seems to be nearing a level of ubiquity only achieved by generational athletes like tennis’ Serena Williams.
This article celebrates women’s hoops, it’s superstars, and the newfound access and influence by reporting on the personal experience of two new spaces where women sports and the opportunity of consumption are expanding: Kyle, my co-author4, and I watched and reviewed the new Taurasi (2025) docuseries on Amazon Prime and we also visited 1972, a women’s-focused sports bar in Austin, Texas, to watch Game 5 of the WNBA semifinals between the Las Vegas Aces and the Indiana Fever5. As hoop junkies and avid viewers of women’s sports and media, we hope to answer the question: “What do we owe the culture?”
The first time I saw Diana Taurasi play in person was at a 2010 regular-season game
between the Phoenix Mercury and the Minnesota Lynx, the first WNBA game I ever attended. My AAU teammates and I had floor seats (one of our coaches was a former WNBA player!), and we lined up along the baseline as the teams came out for warm-ups; when Taurasi jogged by, she broke her rhythm just long enough to slap our outstretched hands, a small gesture that felt monumental to a group of young hoopers. Years later, when Taurasi, a new three-part documentary series directed by Katie Bender Wynn premiered, centering on the career, legacy, and everyday life of Taurasi, a veritable GOAT in women’s basketball and, for many reasons, a major inspiration to the authors of this paper, I was ready.3 Within minutes, possibly even seconds, of its release, I was in front of a screen, pressing play on the first episode. I anticipated an in-depth, captivating, chaptered biography of someone I had idolized for decades. Taurasi retired at 42 years old, closing out an iconic career spent entirely with the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury, a rare and remarkable feat in modern sports that speaks to her loyalty and the franchise’s belief in her. She bridged eras of women’s basketball history and with it, major developments in the progress of women’s sports and equality. So, a multi-part series dedicated to her life, career, and legacy seemed to be the feast that would finally sate my appetite for stories focused on women’s hoops.
Across its three, brief, roughly forty-minute episodes, Taurasi traces her family
upbringing, four years of college basketball dominance at the powerhouse University of
Connecticut, twenty-year WNBA career with the Phoenix Mercury where she was a 3x WNBA Finals Champion, two-time Finals MVP, and eleven-time All Star, twenty years of Olympic triumph and six gold medals, plus her international play in professional leagues across Russia and Turkey. But, to my disappointment, each phase of her life and career was basically skimmed over. With its hasty pace, the series often feels as if it is barely breaking the surface rather than diving into the complexities and tensions of Taurasi’s experiences on and off the court. Each episode felt like a movie trailer and a bit of a “teaser,” leaving me constantly wanting more. For a player who played in the NCAA championship game all four years of her collegiate career, whose professional journey spans two decades and multiple continents, whose young life was shaped by a first-generation immigrant experience, Italian-Argentinian-American culture, whose personal life and queer identity was shut in the closet for a long time, the limited runtime is surprising to say the least. The choice to confine her story to three short episodes limits the extent to which viewers can appreciate her evolution and influence. It’s all pretty shallow and the compression raises a larger question: does the docuseries truly do justice to Taurasi’s struggles and accomplishments, or does it flatten a singular legacy into a streamlined highlight reel?
The lack of sustained behind-the-scenes access contributes to this sense of gloss. There
are glimpses of Taurasi’s personality, humor, and vulnerability, but they are brief, and the
viewer is seldom invited to linger with her in moments of real conflict, doubt, or contradiction.
Consider the missed opportunity of Taurasi’s swagger and sharp tongue, long critiqued as
arrogance, but regularly celebrated in NBA superstars. Rather than examining the gendered double standard that polices women athletes’ emotional range, the docuseries seems to laugh it off. For that matter, the entire series feels carefully managed, perhaps understandably so, given the involvement of agents, brand relationships, personal family matters, and a retiring star whose narrative carries commercial as well as cultural stakes. Note, also, that Taurasi, herself, is a producer of the series. At times, this caution makes the storytelling feel “bland.” It also raises a gendered question: why do stories about women athletes so often appear tightly controlled, as if protecting them and their institutions from controversy, while comparable projects about men more readily foreground conflict, critique, and uncomfortable truth? The docuseries does
feature a strong supporting cast of voices, including former college and Olympic teammate Sue Bird, agent Lindsay Kagawa Colas, wife Penny Taylor, parents Mario and Liliana Taurasi, sister Jessika, college coach Geno Auriemma, and Taurasi herself, who collectively underscore themes of loyalty, competitiveness, and community. These interviews weave the fabric of a deeper narrative on queer family, labor, immigration, and the evolution of women’s basketball as a global enterprise, but the series does not pause long enough to fully develop Taurasi’s threads.
Placed alongside other sport documentaries, directorial and editorial choices that shape
Taurasi become even more striking. The Last Dance (2020), for example, devoted ten nearly
hour-long episodes to Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls, luxuriating in archival footage, interpersonal conflict, and behind-the-scenes tension. Shorter but more incisive projects like Lusia “Lucy” Harris’ The Queen of Basketball (2021), University of Southern California Cheryl Miller’s Women of Troy (2020), Candace Parker: Unapologetic (2023), and team-centered works like Power of the Dream (2024) demonstrate that women’s basketball stories can sustain both emotional depth and structural ambition. 7 Even Sue and Dee (2022), the Nike x TOGETHXR eight-episode series also featuring Bird and Taurasi, leans into personality and banter in ways that feel more intimate and authentic. Against this backdrop, Taurasi feels both significant and insufficient: significant because a mainstream platform has finally dedicated a “lengthy” docuseries to a WNBA legend, insufficient because it leaves viewers wanting a fuller account of her complexity and the broader ecosystem that shaped her. That lingering desire points to a larger absence: where are the multi-part, expansive series on Lisa Leslie, Maya Moore, Tamika Catchings, Simone Augustus, and other WNBA greats? The gap between what Taurasi offers and what feels possible and necessary in women’s sports storytelling becomes part of the argument for why woman-athlete-focused documentaries must continue to grow bolder, longer, and more willing to sit with difficult, culture-shaping stories.
1972 is a sports bar in Austin, Texas, which focuses on showing women’s sports and
providing a safe space for women to consume sports. It is located on Guadalupe Street, basically across the street from the University of Texas campus where Kyle and I work. So, on October 1, 2025, we ventured over to the still-newly opened and celebrated 1972 where we ate veggie burgers and watched Game 5 of the WNBA semifinals. In the game, the eventual WNBA champions Las Vegas Aces led by four-time WNBA MVP A’ja Wilson defeated the Indiana Fever, who seemed to be living a Cinderella story while their superstar Caitlin Clark cheered wildly from the bench as she recovered from a serious right groin injury, along with a subsequent left ankle bone bruise, which forced her to miss the entire post-season. It was an overtime thriller. For a game that was win or go home, seasons on the brink, with two exciting storylines at play, it was disappointing that the bar had so few patrons.
The walls inside 1972 are lined with photos, jerseys, and references to Title IX. The
space frames women athletes not as novelties or exceptions, but as the unquestioned center of the sports universe. In this way, 1972 echoes the Taurasi docuseries’ emphasis on legacy and community while grounding themes in a physical space. But on our selected night, there might have been 10 basketball fans present and watching such a tremendous game. The size and volume of the crowd was such that we, disappointingly, found it very easy to engage in quiet conversation with Debra Hallum, who owns and operates 1972 with her partner, Marlene du Plessis.4
Both the Taurasi docuseries and 1972 function as platforms for “consuming” women’s
sports and building community, but they do so in distinct and complementary ways. The
documentary offers a narrative of individual excellence, inviting viewers into Taurasi’s world and giving her long career a coherent, emotional arc. The women sports-focused bar, by contrast, creates a multi-directional space where fans bring their own histories and attachments into conversation with what is on screen. The bar’s name itself insists on a particular historical awareness. By invoking the year 1972, it gestures directly to Title IX and to the longue durée of women’s struggles for access, resources, and legitimacy in sport and education more broadly. The casual presence of this date, on signage, merchandise, menus, and social media, turns what could be an obscure legal reference into a conversation starter, bringing a history lesson into the common experience of grabbing a (veggie) burger while watching a game.
When a fan asks, “Why 1972?”, they open the door to discussions about the expansion of girls’ and women’s athletic opportunities, the uneven implementation of the law, and the ongoing fights over equity in pay, facilities, and media coverage. 9 In this sense, 1972 does more than honor Title IX; it uses the bar as a pedagogical space that invites people to engage critically and joyfully with women’s sports. It proves that banal experiences can be on fire with sanctity and community, if we choose to open our eyes to their possibilities. For that reason, it is absolutely crucial that we ask ourselves whether these vantage points truly amplify women’s athletic achievements and foster solidarity and activism, or whether they risk becoming another branded moment in a trend cycle epitomized by slogans like “Everyone Watches Women’s Sports.” The growing body of research on women’s fandom and buying power suggests that this is a high-stakes question.
Recent industry reports argue that women are “changing the game,” not only as athletes but as fans whose economic power and loyalty can reshape how leagues and brands think about programming, sponsorship, and scheduling. 10 These reports emphasize that women are passionate but time-starved; fandom cannot become another chore layered onto work, caregiving, and community responsibilities. 11 When teams, leagues, and sponsors recognize that women are the engine of future sports growth, by centering women’s games in prime viewing windows, creating genuinely welcoming venues, and nurturing the long-neglected appetites of fans, they are rewarded with sustained engagement, advocacy, and spending.5
This dynamic extends beyond sport into broader struggles over gender equity and
representation. Analyses of women’s economic power, for instance, highlight how closing
gender gaps in labor, pay, and care work could unlock trillions in global value. 13 These insights resonate with the ways women’s sports are packaged and sold: whose stories become flagship series on major platforms, which bars get branded as “first-of-their-kind,” and how often history is framed through a handful of icons rather than through collective movement work. Scholarship on sport and second-wave feminism underscores that what appears as a sudden boom is often the visible crest of decades of organizing, advocacy, and everyday resistance. 14 Placing 1972 and Taurasi within this broader context clarifies their promise and their limits. On the one hand, this growing garden offers community and diversity: accessible entry points for new fans and affirming spaces for long-time supporters who rarely see their passions prioritized. On the other hand, the garden risks instability and inconsistency if built on a monolithic bedrock: white, attractive, feminine, heterosexual stars. 15 Or, if it caters to a highly restricted demographic that brands already emphasize: white, attractive, feminine, heterosexual, upper middle-class viewership. The challenge, then, is to treat these sites not as endpoints but as tools: ways to deepen knowledge, widen the circle of who is seen and celebrated, and connect contemporary enthusiasm to a much longer history of women making, reshaping, and claiming space in sport and beyond.
So, what do WE as the fans, the passionate, the crowd ravenous for progress and
opportunity owe the culture? Consuming women’s sports is not just about entertainment. It is about honoring histories, building solidarity, and inviting new generations of athletes and fans into a culture that has long fought for legitimacy.
What we owe the culture is more than celebration alone. We are required to watch and
attend, but more importantly, we are required to be critical of what we watch and where we attend. Asking whether these documentaries and gathering places adequately represent, honor, and educate about women’s sports, both culturally and historically, and whether they truly broaden who feels seen and who belongs. When done well, they can inspire young athletes to imagine themselves in these narratives, encourage fans to demand better coverage and equity, and connect routine viewing practices to ongoing activism in and beyond sport. The ultimate hope is that projects like Taurasi and spaces like 1972 do not simply mark a timely trend in a “boom” era, but instead help build an infrastructure of memory, critique, and joy that sustains women’s sports for a longer duration, inviting all of us to watch, question, and work toward a more just sporting world. All we have to do is show up, watch, think, and dream.
Some extra notes!
1 We scored Milwaukee Bucks tickets through my “perfect attendance” in elementary school, but mainly because the Bucks were in a continuous losing season and needed to boost their attendance…they were free tickets to say the least. To me, at the time it was an excuse to bribe my dad for a popcorn and soda! I had no idea what it meant to attend a professional sporting event at that time.
2 Recovery required five anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) surgeries on my left knee. After
Ashland University, I tried playing basketball at the DIII level, for The University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. I never recovered to the level I was accustomed to play at. I found that I was not mentally or physically happy and so, I decided to take a semester off before finishing my undergraduate studies at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. At UWM, I was a student assistant with their DI women’s basketball team and head coach of the 8th grade girl’s basketball team in Menomonee Falls. My love for the game was still there, fully intact. We just had to restructure our relationship.
3 Kyle R M is a third generation Calabrese-American and the son of a woman basketball player, so in his childhood home, Diana Taurasi and her college coach, Geno Auriemma, (both of Southern Italian heritage) were regularly referred to with the same adoration as Catholic saints. It was not uncommon for family members to facetiously cross themselves after speaking the name of either idol.
4Scoring a table was easy—we landed in the center of the bar, front row to a massive television screen, in the hub of all the unfolding action, but with several open seats on either side of us. In contrast, a few doors down, another sports bar was packed to the gills with fans drinking beer and watching the Yankees and Red Sox American League Wild Card Series Game 2 projected broadly on the side of the building, which for us, as we left 1972 and walked to our cars, seemed to be meant as some sort of colossal taunt. The New York Yankees defeated the Boston Red Sox 4-3, preventing a series sweep by Boston and forcing a Game 3.
5 Note: Kyle returned to 1972 for Game 4 of the WNBA finals in which the Aces defeated the Mercury and won the title. The game occurred on a Friday night (October 10) as opposed to the first game he watched with Erin on a Wednesday night. The Friday night game had much better attendance, fans wore jerseys, cheered, and created an environment of joy in the competition. He enjoyed the same stellar veggie burger and quality seats.