Aside from the fact that this playoff series has been pretty disappointing in general, Thursday night's game in particular was one of the most unsatisfying games of final’s basketball that I’ve seen in a long time. The Golden State Warriors who won 73 out of 82 games in the regular season literally trailed the whole game. The teams star player, Steph Curry ended up losing his temper because of a few bad calls by the referees which resulted in him getting ejected from the game.
As if the game didn’t provide ESPN’s sports news shows like First Take and His and Hers with enough to talk about, they chose to focus on something else instead.
Curry’s wife, Ayesha Curry tweeted a “heat of the moment” tweet that caused an uproar in both the Twitterverse and in the sports world. The tweet, that was deleted shortly after it was posted, accused the NBA to have rigged the game that her husband’s team look a 14-point loss in, forcing the series to go to game seven after the Warriors took a 3-1 lead early on in the series.
By Friday morning, ESPN had three pixelated pictures of Mrs. Curry as their studio backdrop and were talking about the situation as if they were recording an E! News breaking news special.
As if it wasn’t enough for viewers to have tuned expecting to see an ESPN analysis show and seeing something that resembled TMZ instead, the things that commentator Stephen A. Smith was saying were extremely misogynistic, reminiscent of the patriarchal society we live in today.
Aside from saying that the “adorable” Mrs. Curry stepped out of line for voicing her opinion and saying that she shouldn’t “have a zest to speak out” and express her emotions, he compared Mrs. Curry to the wife of LeBron James (who is the star of the opposing team, the Cleveland Cavaliers), Savannah.
The things that he said implied that women who are wives of NBA players should only be seen (like Savannah James), and not heard. Completely ignoring the advice, Mrs. Curry replied to his comments by pointing out the underlying patriarchal message that Smith was demonstrating, noticing how he attempted to pit the two women against each other because of their differences in personality and the way each of them chooses to use their voice, or not.
While Mrs. Curry explained that she was just defending her family, which she had every right to do, she did acknowledge her impulsive behavior, adding that she had a very long night in general because of a situation that happened prior to the game even starting.
Regardless of if it was wise for her to share her opinions about the game being rigged to the whole world via social media, she has the right to speak and express her views freely.
The only time that pitting two women against each other is ever acceptable in any situation, especially on a show that is supposed to be about sports, is when discussing match ups between Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova or some other highly anticipated sporting event. Maybe it’s just me, but if I wanted to wanted to watch celebrity gossip, I’d turn to E! News and if I wanted to get an earful of patriarchal jargon, I’d search YouTube for footage from the latest Trump rally.
