SLAM, one of the most prolific basketball storytelling brands of the past 27 years, announced Wednesday the launch of the first-ever WSLAM Magazine.

While SLAM has long told the stories of the top women’s players in the game, WSLAM will have 82 pages dedicated to the very best of women’s basketball. The magazine builds off of the success of the WSLAM vertical that launched in 2019 and now draws an online audience of 300,000 readers.

“We always had a vision of wanting to do a magazine, especially because SLAM is so cemented in the print world,” said WSLAM director Camille Buxeda. “Just in two years we were able to make that happen, so it’s been a really exciting year.”

“Our WSLAM vertical has been creating and curating amazing women’s basketball content for two years, and we’re incredibly excited to add an annual print magazine to that content slate,” Adam Figman, Chief Content Officer of SLAM, said in a release. “The magazine is filled front to back with amazing and important women’s hoops stories, and the issue is the first of a franchise that we hope continues for many years.”

SLAM’s print subscribers will receive the magazine for free. The special issue will also be available for purchase on SLAM’s ecommerce site, slamgoods.com, for $8.99. SLAM will use the same production, design and sales resources allocated to its magazine issues for WSLAM.

The goal is for WSLAM to become the one-stop shop for everything women’s basketball and culture. Buxeda has already seen a growing interest in SLAM’s women’s high school and college coverage, with many continuing to follow top recruits like Paige Bueckers as they transition to the NCAA level.

“These are superstars in the making,” Buxeda said of the high school athletes. “I think [our coverage] really allows audiences and new basketball lovers to understand who the next ones to watch are because, in the end, that’s the fandom that’s going to transfer.”

But first, the inaugural WSLAM Magazine will focus on telling the stories of players in the WNBA at the intersection of culture and basketball.

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(Courtesy of SLAM)

From a look into Tina Charles’ incredible season to a review of the Houston Comets paving the way for some of the best in women’s basketball, WSLAM highlights many of the most important moments in the WNBA’s 25-year history. The magazine also emphasizes stories that go beyond player statistics, including the WNBA’s role within social justice movements.

“It’s a little bit different from what I would say SLAM normally does, which is really focus on the now,” Buxeda said. “This is an homage to the past while looking to the present and future.”

“You gotta start somewhere,” Chicago Sky guard Diamond DeShields said. “I think that we do a very good job of paying homage to those that came before us. I wish that they would’ve gotten to experience this, and then I’m sure the next generation is gonna look at us and be like, ‘Dang, I wish they would’ve gotten to experience what we have.’ It’s just about the role they played, being the first.”

While the magazine may focus on the WNBA’s past, its cover features three present and future stars: DeShields, Arike Ogunbowale and Betnijah Laney.

“They really represent the faces of the next 25 years,” Buxeda said.

The players also recognize the importance of honoring those who came before them.

“They definitely paved the way for us,” Laney said. “To find ways to pay homage any way that we can … I think as we continue to evolve, we want to make sure that everybody knows what they did for the game, what we’ll do for the game and what that will mean to the players in the future to keep having the league evolve.”

Just as today’s WNBA players build on the past, Buxeda hopes that WSLAM’s print edition will inspire the next generation of women’s basketball stars.

“I think it connects people a little bit more than just reading it on a screen,” she said. “It’s a physical copy and representation that young girls can really put on their walls and say, ‘I want to be on the cover of WSLAM one day.’”

A new clause in the WNBA’s collective bargaining agreement is a cause for concern among the league’s top players.

WNBA All-Star Game MVP Arike Ogunbowale stopped by JWS’ Tea with A & Phee podcast to talk with Napheesa Collier about the challenges of juggling a domestic career in the WNBA with more lucrative opportunities overseas, which could be further complicated by a new league policy.

The WNBA’s CBA, agreed upon by the league and the players’ union in 2020, has a clause going into effect in 2023 stipulating that WNBA players coming back from international duty late could be penalized by their teams. If a player does not report to preseason training camp on time due to a conflict with their international team, they could be suspended for the season without pay.

“I came back two weeks already into training camp, and the seasons gonna start in like a week, so really didn’t get that much time to train,” Ogunbowale says of her start to the 2021 season with the Dallas Wings. The 24-year-old also plays for Dynamo Kursk in Russia.

The overlapping seasons often mean players who also compete abroad don’t have much of a break, if any. Ogunbowale tells Collier she plans to have only “ten or something days” off between the end of the WNBA season and her return to Russia.

When asked by Collier about the CBA’s impending restrictions on international play, Ogunbowale expressed concern.

“That’s tough, especially for players who can make a lot of money overseas like us,” she says. “Like, that is cutting into primetime playoff and championship, and that’s honestly when they really need you.”

Ogunbowale says she still doesn’t know what will happen when she and other players are forced to choose between competing overseas and staying in the WNBA.

“If the WNBA paid as much as overseas then I would do that, but that’s not the case, so we’ll have to see,” she says.

“I think they’re going to be surprised how many people choose not to play in the WNBA,” Collier adds, “because for a lot of people, it’s not like you make enough to live off that for the rest of the year.”

Ogunbowle says that the decision for veteran players like Diana Taurasi is less complicated, but for “people like us, we have more decisions because we’re young. Like, this is primetime you’re getting good contracts.”

On top of the international decision, Ogunbowale and Collier were a part of the last WNBA draft class to fall under the old CBA in 2019. That means their salaries in their third year of WNBA service are significantly lower than they will be for the current crop of young players.

“We are the last year of the old CBA, like the rookies getting more than us,” Ogunbowale says. “It’s just actually sad.”

Listen to Collier’s full conversation with Ogunbowale here.

Arike Ogunbowale put on a clinic in the Wing’s 85-74 win over the Mystics Saturday afternoon.

Ogunbowale dropped a season-high 30 points and a career-high five steals, adding three rebounds and two assists. The Dallas guard shot 50 percent from the field and was four for eight from beyond the arc.

Ogunbowale is currently averaging 20.3 points per game, scoring in the double digits in all of her outings with the Wings this season.

The Dallas Wings added to their win streak Friday night, rolling past the Phoenix Mercury 77-59 to secure the team’s third consecutive win of the season.

Dallas has gotten the better of Phoenix so far this year, winning two of the teams’ three matchups.

Arike Ogunbowale led scoring for the Wings with 20 points. Friday night was Ogunbowale’s fourth 20-point game in a row and her eighth for the season. Satou Sabally added 17 points to the Wings’ tally as well, shooting 75 percent from the field.

Brittney Griner contributed 19 points for the Mercury, but a late 13-4 Dallas run kept the game out of reach.

Dallas will hope to extend their win streak when they face off against the Aces on Sunday. The Mercury will look to change course after back-to-back losses when they host the New York Liberty on Sunday.

If it’s a matchup between Seattle and Dallas, you can pretty much count on it being a thriller. Sunday night was no exception, as Arike Ogunbowale buried a last-second three to win the game for the Wings. 

The teams’ first two meetings were both won by the Storm in overtime, with last Friday’s matchup ending on a Jewell Loyd buzzer-beater.

Arike Ogunbowale returned the favor on Sunday, snapping Seattle’s six game win streak en route to a 68-67 win. She scored the final 10 points for the Wings, finishing with 24 points, six rebounds and three assists. 

Dallas is now 3-5 on the season, half a game out of the final playoff spot. They next play the Phoenix Mercury on Tuesday at 10 p.m. ET.

Arike Ogunbowale is one of the most electric scorers in the WNBA, and she has the record to prove it. 

The guard recorded her 41st consecutive double-figure scoring game Thursday night against the Dream, setting a Wings franchise record.

While the Dream’s scoring was too much to overcome for the Wings’ defense in the 101-95 loss, Ogunbowale was a bright spot, scoring 24 points. Her triple with 14.5 seconds left to bring the Wings within four showcased her fighting spirit.

Ogunbowale, the WNBA’s scoring leader in 2020, is averaging 23.2 points per game on 40.3 percent shooting through Dallas’ first four games.

Just Women’s Sports is excited to announce that it has raised $3.5 million in seed funding, which will help the company continue its mission of building the media platform in women’s sports.

The round was led by Will Ventures, with participation from Kevin Durant and Rich Kleiman’s Thirty Five Ventures, Drive by DraftKings, OVO Fund, Supernode Global as well as an all-star roster of women’s sports superstars, including Elena Delle Donne, Hilary Knight, Sam Mewis, Kelley O’Hara and Arike Ogunbowale.

In addition to their investment, Thirty Five Ventures will also utilize its network and resources to help amplify Just Women’s Sports through its Boardroom media platform. As a result, Just Women’s Sports founder Haley Rosen will be a featured guest on Boardroom’s “Out of Office” podcast with Rich Kleiman and Kevin Durant.

“In order to grow women’s sports, fans need to see how great the games are, and they shouldn’t have to look hard to do that,” said Thirty Five Ventures co-founder and two-time NBA champion Kevin Durant. “Just Women’s Sports is creating a much-needed platform centered around game and player highlights and analysis that shows fans exactly how good these players are and why they’re worth watching.”

O’Hara has long been part of the JWS family as host of the “Just Women’s Sports” podcast, which features in-depth conversations with some of the world’s top athletes in women’s sports. Additionally, Mewis co-hosts “Snacks” with teammate Lynn Williams, a recently launched podcast taking fans behind the scenes of life atop the soccer world.

Other JWS content includes “Off the Ball,” featuring Olympian and NWSL star Ali Riley, and “The Soccer Show,” a first-of-its-kind digital weekly highlights-driven show covering the FA Women’s Super League through an exclusive premium content partnership with Ata Football. Additionally, later this month Just Women’s Sports will feature “Tea with A & Phee,” the popular podcast hosted by 2020 WNBA MVP A’ja Wilson and 2019 WNBA Rookie of the Year Napheesa Collier.

You can also follow Just Women’s Sports on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube.

The funding enables Just Women’s Sports to expand its production of high-quality content and continue to lead the way in promoting equality in sports. JWS will also continue to build out its executive, production and editorial teams. Recent hires have included former Google and Uber Eats exec Ali Braverman as Head of Revenue, former ESPN producer Ashley Braband as Head of Content and Production, and former The Athletic editor Hannah Withiam as Managing Editor.

Read more about what to expect from Just Women’s Sport’s coverage.

After the “Wubble” season triumphantly concluded in mid-October, with zero positive Covid-19 cases and a 68% increase in viewership, a large portion of the W’s players began their annual voyage to leagues across the globe, where they earn the bulk of their annual basketball income.

Surprisingly, the ongoing pandemic had little effect on the total number of athletes who went overseas this “off season.” Both this year and the one before, roughly 90 WNBA players took their skills abroad. It appears the substantial income (relatively speaking) and valuable court time were too important to pass up. As the WNBA’s reigning points leader, Arike Ogunbowale, explained to Breanna Stewart on a recent pod episode of Stewie’s World, “I’m still young and I need to make money and there’s a lot of money overseas for me.”

 

STEWART AND OGUNBOWALE: WNBA STARS GETTING BUCKETS IN RUSSIA

Both Stewart and Ogunbowale are playing in Russia this winter. While Stewie feels much the same way as her counterpart, she also emphasizes the need to get minutes on the court since her 2019 Achilles rupture.

“For me it’s like, coming back from an injury, I can’t imagine not playing basketball just by choice,” she tells her listeners. “I want to be able to play as much as possible. In the situation where in our country so many people are unemployed, if we have a job, we need to take that job and go and do what we need to do.”

Someone may want to tell Stewie her “recovery” appears well behind her given the outstanding season she had in Bradenton, Florida. She placed fourth in the league in scoring, fifth overall in blocks, and won her second WNBA Championship in three years with the Seattle Storm.

Unfortunately for Stewart, and all her colleagues abroad this year, the risk of Covid-19 is very real. Stewie tested positive within a week of arriving in Russia despite strict travel precautions and safety measures from her UMMC Ekateringburg team. Luckily, she had no symptoms and was able to return to play after a thorough quarantine period. Alongside the contagion risk is a wide disparity in players’ confidence in their team’s testing protocol.

“It’s pretty much up in the air for us to be honest. There was like weeks and weeks I went without getting tested and another week I got tested like three times,” Ogunbowale laments to Stewie.

Within Russia, Stewart’s UMMC Ekateringburg has been a ridiculous gold mine of WNBA talent. Alongside Stewie, who has a claim to being the best player in the world, is Brittney Griner (6x WNBA All-Star), Emma Meeseman (2019 WNBA Finals MVP), Jonquel Jones (2x WNBA All-Star) and WNBA power couple Courtney Vandersloot and Allie Quigley (aka The Vanderquigs).

Quigley, a three-time WNBA All-Star and two-time 3-point contest champ, and Vandersloot, an assist queen who set a new single game assist record (18) this past season, both play stateside for the Chicago Sky.

Even with all that talent, it’s actually Ogunbowale’s Dynamo Kursk squad, which includes NY Liberty center Amanda Zahui B, that has the best record in the Russian Women’s Basketball Premier League. They sit at 12-1, while UMMC, though undefeated, is only 11-0.

 

WNBA PLAYERS’ NEW FAVORITE DESTINATION: TURKEY

Russia’s track record of recruiting some of the best WNBA talent goes way back. (For an entertaining look inside the world of Russian women’s basketball, check out this 30 for 30 podcast featuring Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi discussing their years playing together for a kind but crooked team owner in Moscow.) But while Russia attracts some of the WNBA’s biggest stars, it’s the aptly-named Women’s Basketball Super League in Turkey that attracts the largest number of WNBA players.

This year almost 30% of all those playing overseas are in Turkey. With roughly three WNBA players per team, it’s the place to go if you want non-stop competitive minutes on the court. Second overall 2020 draft pick from Oregon, Satou Sabally, and her stacked Fenerbahce team, which includes Kayla McBride, Kia Vaughn, Jasmine Thomas, and Kiah Stokes, currently hold the top spot in the league with a 17-0 record.

In the WNBA, both Sabally and Ogunbowale play for the Dallas Wings. (If you’re a fan of young, talented teams which have the potential to make the jump to serious league contender will before anyone really expects it, then keep your eyes on Dallas.) Several of Sabally and Ogunbowale’s Wings teammates are likewise honing their craft internationally this year. Allisha Gray, Bella Alarie, Ty Harris, and sharp-shooter Katie Lou Samuelson are all WNBA players currently hooping overseas.

After not following in her two older sisters’ Stanford footsteps and playing for rival UConn instead, Samuelson and her older sister Karli are finally able to play some family ball this year on Team Avenida in Spain.

LIZ CAMBAGE LOOKS READY FOR HER WNBA COMEBACK

Hopping down to the southern hemisphere, Australian-born Elizabeth Cambage spent 2020 putting on a clinic in the Australian Women’s National Basketball League after receiving a medical exemption for the WNBA 2020 bubble season. Cambage and her Melbourne-based Southside Fliers won the league championship in mid-December on the shoulders of the 3x WNBA All-Star’s 23.5 PPG and 8.7 rebounds per game.

The Las Vegas Aces 6’8” center is one of a handful of Australians in the WNBA. Alongside last year’s league MVP, A’ja Wilson, Cambage looks ready to help lead the Aces to another Finals run in 2021.

Fellow Aussie and Seattle Storm back-up guard Sami Whitcomb left the Wubble prior to the Finals in order to make it home to her wife in time for the birth of their first child. A week or so later, she watched from her hotel room as her teammates beat Cambage’s Aces in three straight to win their fourth WNBA Championship, tying them with the Minnesota Lynx and the legendary Houston Comets for most all-time league titles.

 

SOME WNBA PLAYERS TOOK THE OFFSEASON OFF

Whitcomb, who usually plays the off-season either in Europe or Australia, is taking a break this year to be with her new family of three. She isn’t the only veteran player sitting this international season out.

While the total number of players abroad held steady, there are several athletes who went overseas last year but decided against it this season. Among them are DeWonna Bonner, Jewell Loyd, Sydney Weise, Teira McCowan, Ariel Atkins, and Bria Hartley, to name a few.

 

AND SOME COULD STILL HEAD ABROAD

If you’re a Minnesota Lynx fan, keep your nose to the grindstone to hear whether 2020 Rookie of the Year Crystal Dangerfield and 2019 Rookie of the Year (and co-host of a gem of a podcast) Napheesa Collier head overseas later this winter or spring.

There are also mumblings that number one overall 2020 draft pick, Sabrina Ionescu, is considering going abroad soon to get some playing time. Ionescu missed most of her rookie season after severely spraining her ankle in just her third professional game. The injury robbed us all of the dream of what Ionescu’s rookie WNBA season could have been, especially after she dropped 33 points in her second game. It was also salt in the wound of 2020 after the pandemic first robbed us of watching Ionescu and her Oregon Ducks compete for a NCAA Championship.

Then there’s a long list of vets who have closed the book on their year-round playing days: Diana Taurasi, Sue Bird, Candace Parker, Nneka and Chiney Ogwumike, Elene Della Donne, Sylvia Fowles, Skylar Diggins-Smith, etc. But the one vet we’d love to hear any and all whispers about getting back to the court? The one and only Maya Moore.

If 2021 is going to redeem the dumpster fire that was 2020, re-gifting the world the honor of watching Moore do her magic on the hardwood would be a fantastic start.

That may just be a pipe dream, the result of too many hours in quarantine. But while the pandemic has turned normal life upside down for most Americans, the year-round grind of the WNBA’s biggest stars remains a constant. And though we love catching highlights on Twitter, we can’t wait to see them all stateside for this next WNBA season.