‘They deserve more than what they get’: The Wizards dish on their favorite team, the Mystics
By Fred Katz
Oct 13, 2019
NEW YORK — A few days removed from his favorite team winning a title, John Wall has a message he wants the world to know: Women athletes deserve more than what they get.
Wall stayed in D.C. on Thursday, along with Bradley Beal and his coach, Scott Brooks, to watch the Mystics close out the WNBA Finals with an 89-78 win in Game 5 over the Connecticut Sun at the Entertainment and Sports Arena in Southeast. It’s the first championship in team history.
Beal, who went to Game 5 in Washington even though his Wizards had a preseason match Friday in New York, described the atmosphere at the arena, where the Mystics and the Wizards’ G-League team, the Capital City Go-Go, both play, and where all three basketball teams practice, as “electrifying.” Brooks called it “one of the best series I’ve ever seen.” Wall went more millennial with his description.
“It was lit,” he said. “It was popping.”
But during a conversation about his time at the game, the basketball-obsessed Wall, who along with Beal has been an outspoken WNBA supporter, had a related topic he wanted to get off his chest.
“I wouldn’t say we’re going out of our way (to promote the women’s game),” he said. “I think it’s just our love for the game. … I feel like they deserve more than what they get. I had a lot of girls writing me on Instagram talking about appreciating me for supporting the WNBA, but I got to. It’s like, ‘Y’all deserve more than what y’all get.’”
And he’s not just talking about just basketball. The WNBA didn’t start until 1996. Wall is an avid watcher and a decade-long Mystics fan. (There was no way he was missing Game 5, by the way.) And he thinks now is the time to expand women’s professional sports.
“That’s a thing I don’t respect that I speak on, because if you look at women, what’s the difference for them going through high school and then getting a scholarship to go play softball, volleyball, tennis, whatever, basketball, whatever — but why don’t they have a lot of professional sports for them? That’s taken away from them,” he said.
It’s hardly out of character for the Wizards’ two biggest stars to use their platforms to speak out for women athletes.
Beal, who sat on the baseline next to Wall during Game 5, wrote about the subject less than a week ago at the Players’ Tribune, mentioning that his mother was the one who taught him how to shoot a basketball, breaking down the Mystics’ roster and calling for a female head coach in the NBA as well as for WNBA players to receive pay increases.
“A woman taught me how to play basketball,” Beal told reporters Friday. “A lot of people kinda raise an eyebrow or they look at me like I’m crazy when I say that, but my mom taught me how to shoot. My mom taught me everything. I wouldn’t be here today without her. I’m sure a lot of players are like that, too. But for me, I have to give credit where it’s due. And even the women in the WNBA now, they’re getting better. Their skills are getting better. They’re way more talented. There are women who give men a run for their money in my opinion.”
Most of the Wizards were in New York on Thursday readying for Friday’s game against the Knicks. And the team members there held a Game 5 watch party at a bar near their hotel.
“It was an incredible night. … it’s inspiring,” Jordan McRae said.
The relationship between the Wizards and Mystics – like the Go-Go, each owned by Monumental Sports and Entertainment – makes the teams more connected than in your average WNBA/NBA relationship. Following the game, for example, McRae tweeted a picture taken in the teams’ practice facility of him wearing Finals MVP Emma Meesseman’s jersey while Meesseman pointed at the name on the back of the uniform. He scripted just three letters in the tweet: MVP.
“That’s the G.O.A.T., man. She’s my favorite player,” he said. “She has the best footwork on, like, both teams. Her footwork is crazy.”
Wall added, “To me, I feel like you have K.D. and Dirk basically on the same team with her and (Elena) Delle Donne. There’s nothing you can do.”
Admiral Schofield, who live-tweeted his heart out during the Mystics’ win, is already a fan — not because he just arrived in D.C. a few months ago and quickly latched onto the bandwagon, but because he’s been an Aerial Powers fanatic since she played in Dallas.
“I’ve been a big fan. Natasha Cloud followed me in college, so I’ve been following her as much as I could,” Schofield said. “So to have them both on the same team, two people I’ve been following, and for them to be the hometown team is great.”
Wall was particularly pumped for Delle Donne. The two-time MVP played through three herniated discs in her back to drop 21 points and grab nine rebounds in the series’ decisive game.
“The crazy thing is she improved and got better and better each game,” he said. “The reason why I think she went out there and did it was because in 2014 (in the Finals) she had the same problems. She couldn’t play. Last year (in the Finals), she was hurt, so everybody said, she can’t win the big game. So, you know what? I was super excited for her to fight through that and get through that and finally win, because she’s been to the Finals three times. Both times she was hurt. The third time she was hurt, but the winning just gives her another boost to another level. That’s big time.”
• Expanding the staff: The Wizards haven’t said yet when Mystics point guard Kristi Toliver will jump to the other league to join Washington as an assistant coach for the second consecutive year. But now that WNBA season is over, the move is coming soon.
“I told her she had a 9:00 meeting this morning,” Brooks joked the day after the Mystics’ win. “But she wasn’t on the 6 a.m. train with me, so I didn’t think she was gonna make it.”
Toliver spent last year as a player development coach and proved especially helpful with the guards. Now, Brooks is advocating for her to be a head coach.
“She’s a Hall of Famer,” he said. “Won a title in college, won two in the WNBA, played many years overseas. Brad said it best when he wrote that letter. It’s all the same, man. We’re all basketball. We’re all hoopers. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. Men, women, we all love the game. The game is played the right way and it’s beautiful. And K.T. has that factor.
“She’s gonna be a head coach. Whatever league that she wants to be (a head coach in), she will be. I’m just hoping that she hires me so I can give her all the crap that she gives me.”
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