Post#38 » by Doctor MJ » Sat Aug 17, 2024 7:30 pm
So, jumping in here, cautiously.
While I like that people are looking to come in to this situation sympathizing with the individual over the management who responded combatively to her, there are some things I've kept chewing on that aren't so clear cut to me.
First generally: The WNBA should have had really clear rules about pregnancy a long time ago. The fact they haven't doesn't mean they are nefarious people, but something like this was bound to happen - frankly the WNBA's just lucky it took this long to happen. This is an unforced error for the WNBA in my assessment.
This doesn't let the Aces off the hook ethically, but if there are super-clear standards and procedures about how to handle pregnancy in the context of contract agreement, then the WNBA would be off the hook in a way I don't see them now.
Okay, a specific point that always feels wrong on a moral level, but I think we have to talk about pragmatically:
In life, oftentimes things are just different when you're a star and when you're not. The star is given more latitude than the "role player" (to generalize the basketball term), and while that may not be "right", it's important to recognize how this might have factored in to the situation.
While Hamby on the Aces made the all-star team, within the team and organization, she was a role player who had typically come off the bench who in 2022 was signing an extension which would allow her to stay with the organization she'd been with for her entire WNBA career. Both sides I'd expect thought that the relationship was on great terms, and we should note that she'd previously had a child while on the team with similar timing and this didn't ruin the relationship - which likely made it stronger.
We can see how that might have led Hamby to believe that whatever she did before was professionally appropriate simply because the franchise didn't object...but in 2017 Hamby was a young player with potential on a terrible re-building team, whereas in 2022 Hamby was a grandfathered-in (from before Hammon) role player on a team trying to do absolutely everything to win titles right now, and they clearly expected that signing a new extension meant that that role player was all-in too, which Hamby quite clearly wasn't. Had Hamby said ahead of time she was trying to have another baby, I think it's clear the Aces wouldn't have extended her.
So then I would say: It's okay that Hamby prioritized something other than basketball, and it's okay that this disappointed Hamby's basketball team. Beyond that we're talking about a) the WNBA's standards and procedures, and b) the bad behavior that came out of the emotions of the original miscommunication.
To be clear I make no claim to know everything about the "bad behavior", and for either party, however righteous their original point, if they responded afterward with cruelty (and especially pre-meditated cruelty), I don't support that at all.
I just think that in general this is something we should expect to be a major concern in labor-management relationships in women's sports, and to the extent "what's to be done if" wasn't thought through by the WNBA before, we should keep in mind that it was that lack of clarity that put these previously harmonious relationship into antagonism.
Last note: One has to wonder about the role Hamby's late 2022 injury had on how they took the information of Hamby being pregnant. Hamby was a starter during that regular season, but in the playoffs, she played a far more minor role.
Had Hamby played a big role in those playoffs, I think it's entirely possible that Hammon is angry with the pregnancy but doesn't pursue trading Hamby away. As it was, I have to wonder if the Aces were already seeing Hamby's contract as a thing that might not have been best for the team going forward before they learned of the pregnancy.
(Also, the idea that there's anything wrong with them deciding to trade Hamby is basically a non-starter for me. Maybe the Aces would have been better off on the court in keeping her, but that's for them to decide, and when we're talking about what a now back-to-back champion team was thinking when they dealt away a role player, I'm certainly reluctant to say they weren't correct in their basketball judgment.
But again I'll emphasize: I'm not saying something is immoral to do to a star and moral to do to a role player, only that organizational treatment differing along these lines is ubiquitous and thus certainly something that should be expected in WNBA-type scenarios.)
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