Bethany Donaphin, a former player and now the head of league operations for the WNBA, remembers what it was like to grow up in New York City in the 1990s loving basketball. As a tween she would make it a point during recess to play basketball out on the blacktop.
Donaphin was always the only girl playing, something that looking back was a bold choice. It was a decision that took a ton of confidence and a boat load of risk to participate in a situation where she was the only girl. It took a lot of guts for a 12-year-old Donaphin to want to set herself apart, especially at a time when most girls are looking to fit in.
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Donaphin’s early memories resonate for many former and current WNBA players. This idea that young girls always had something to prove and were underestimated when they stepped onto an outdoor court in a park or blacktop at school has been the inescapable reality, the status quo.
This summer the WNBA is looking to challenge that common experience with the launch of their new nationwide initiative “Line ‘Em Up,” which will paint the official WNBA three-point line on outdoor park basketball courts across the United States. The league will launch this officially in New York on Thursday at the outdoor courts of Brooklyn Bridge Park, and later in July the league will take the campaign to Indianapolis for WNBA All-Star Weekend.
“This is so necessary in order to represent the league in spaces that are iconic,” WNBA Chief Marketing Officer Phil Cook told NBC Sports about the initiative. “There’s not a basketball player in the world who hasn’t spent some time dribbling on an outdoor space, and we, [the WNBA] belong in that space. And women, young women, have been going to the park for as long as park basketball has been happening. They just haven’t had their representation in that space.”
The program has been teased by WNBA players including Atlanta Dream star Allisha Gray, Lynx point guard Courtney Williams, Phoenix Mercury point-forward Alyssa Thomas and Sparks sophomore wing Rickea Jackson in addition to personalities associated with the league including GMA’s Robin Roberts and ESPN’s Arielle Chambers. Last week on Instagram the teases included photos of a mysterious looking blue background which included a bright orange curved line.
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Last July at WNBA All-Star in Phoenix was when Cook and his team began having conversations about how the WNBA could lay down its legacy in a tangible and more vibrant way. How could the league create something that’s representative and “replicable” but also represents the work the league has done to grow the game of basketball for women, girls and nonbinary people on a larger scale?
Over breakfast in Phoenix, Cook and his staff discussed how the league could pursue a project that wouldn’t just last during tentpole events including the WNBA Draft, the WNBA All-Star Game, the Commisioner’s Cup, the playoffs and WNBA Finals. The league was looking for something permanent.
The league enlisted the independent creative marketing company JOAN to come up with a campaign that could represent the ways in which the WNBA has attempted to challenge the status quo, grow the game and encourage empowerment of girls and young people everywhere.
Representatives from the marketing agency came back to Cook and his team with the idea to paint a WNBA three-point line on outdoor courts at parks across the country working in conjunction with different cities and parks and recreation departments.
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“It’s a very simple replicable idea that we hope every single outdoor park across the country, and every driveway across the country chalks up their three point line in orange chalk,” Cook said.
Beyond New York City and Indianapolis as the first two major places to get these new orange three-point lines, Cook sees a huge opportunity for the league’s two upcoming expansion cities in Toronto and Portland to get involved in the campaign.
All of the league’s current 13 teams including the newest in the Golden State Valkyries have been briefed on the campaign and how they can look to execute painting orange three-point lines in parks within their local communities. As part of the campaign, the league will make a donation to each park that participates in painting an orange three-point line on their courts.
To accompany the WNBA’s launch of the “Line ‘Em Up” campaign, the league enlisted Korean-Canadian director Iris Kim to create a film that would introduce the program and illustrate the need for orange WNBA three-point lines across the country.
The nearly four-minute video includes shots of some of the most famous outdoor parks in the country including Rucker Park in Harlem, Venice Beach in Los Angeles, and two other New York City parks in Dykman and The Cage. Later the film introduces former players Epiphanny Prince, Chamique Holdsclaw and Sue Bird in addition to current Connecticut Sun center Tina Charles, who traveled to New York during Sun training camp to be a part of the film. The four native New Yorkers explain what it was like growing up and playing on outdoor courts and the challenges that came with often being some of only young women.
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“Growing up in Queens, NY at that time, it was really hard to be a female to get on the court,” Charles said in the film. “I know I had something to prove. We’ve all been through it. All the greats, all the ones that you’re fans of.”
And that includes Holdsclaw who told the story of how she used to hustle all the guys who underestimated her.
The film also features two New York community leaders in Sharon Bond and Alex Taylor who have both founded and led organizations that try to encourage participation in basketball for women and girls. Both Bond and Taylor explain that having the new orange three-point line painted on outdoor courts is boon for representation and it sends the message that women and girls are wanted in these spaces. Bird ends the film by stating the mission statement of the entire campaign, which is that the next generation of players won’t know a world without a WNBA orange three-point line painted across America.
The campaign represents the very fact that the WNBA has become more mainstream and more accessible in the past few years. The league isn’t distant and it’s much easier now more than ever to understand that the WNBA isn’t going anywhere and will be an institution that stands the test of time.
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Donaphin thinks about what it would have been like if she had an orange three-point line to accompany her during those days when she was working hard on her game and often the only girl out there doing it.
“If I had had an orange line while I was going through that process, I think it would have given not just me, but the other kids around me, an understanding that, yeah, what I was doing was completely part of of what any person would do if they if they love something,” Donaphin told NBC Sports. “And that there was a place for me there.”
Check out the new “Line ‘Em Up” website and see if the WNBA’s three-point line is coming to a court near you.
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