Former SportsCenter star Elle Duncan reflected on the toxicity of covering the WNBA as the league nears the end of a trying and troubling season.
All year long, the top women’s pro basketball league in the country was inundated with issues and attacks regarding fouling, transgender inclusion, racial issues and threats to players.
The Netflix and USA Sports anchor spoke at Front Office Sports’ Tuned In Summit and reflected on the latter three issues, saying that the league has opened itself up to a ‘disgusting culture war.’
‘It feels like open season to dunk on Black women because we do not have protection. Because no one cares. Because we are low-hanging fruit,’ Duncan, the studio host for USA Network’s WNBA coverage, said on Tuesday.
‘Because it is very easy to dunk on us since we are, I would say, outside of transgender people, the most marginalized of the marginalized groups.’
WNBA commentator and reporter Elle Duncan branded the culture around the league as ‘toxic as hell’ as racist and homophobic incidents on social media have continued to rise
Duncan believes the people who continue to launch racist and homophobic attacks also uplift ‘one person’ that they ‘see in their own image’ – referring to Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark
This season saw Phoenix star Alyssa Thomas get threatened and abused for this incident
Duncan, who has covered the WNBA for years at ESPN and now USA, called the air surrounding the league ‘toxic as hell’ and blamed ‘opportunists’ using the discourse as an opportunity to criticize Black and queer women.
She also noted that those same people seem to uplift ‘one person’ that they ‘see in their own image’ – referring to Caitlin Clark.
Ever since Clark entered the league in 2024, multiple WNBA players have spoken about the racism they’ve faced after on-court incidents with the Indiana Fever guard.
This was seen this season when Phoenix Mercury star Alyssa Thomas was threatened and racially abused by anonymous Clark fans after she hit the Fever player in the throat while diving for a loose ball.
‘It’s twofold for them—so you get to lift this one person up, and you get to, ultimately, reduce everybody else that isn’t her to nothing,’ Duncan said.
Duncan added that racism aimed at Black players is also directed to women like herself, saying she’s been branded a ‘DEI hire.’
‘It’s frustrating to talk about because I know this is going to get clipped. This is going to be me saying goodbye to my mentions for the next couple of days,’ Duncan said.
Duncan believes the next WNBA commissioner needs to ‘wrestle the narrative back’
‘But it’s going to be me lamenting that being a Black woman is so hard, and someone’s going to tweet at me that I work at Netflix and I’m fine and I don’t have any struggles in my life. And it’s just this constant cycle where we’re getting nowhere and no one is listening to anybody.’
With change on the horizon for the league as commissioner Cathy Engelbert is set to leave her post, Duncan says the toxic culture around the league must be addressed.
‘The goal of the next commissioner should be twofold. The first thing is figuring out how we work on this divisiveness, how we wrestle the narrative back,’ Duncan said.
‘The second thing would be connecting the players and owners. If there’s criticism of Cathy, it’s been that some commissioners are player-friendly, and some commissioners are very team-friendly, and maybe Cathy is neither.’
