Bird is an out, proud lesbian, however she identified that, to a few, “I pass as a straight woman.” She persisted, noting that she could also be white, “small and, therefore, not intimidating, compared to Syl, who is Black, dark-skinned and of a certain stature, yeah, that is 100 percent at play here.”
Fowles said as a lot, however did not appear within the temper to dissect it.
“You think you’re supposed to do everything right, and then when you do everything right, that you’ll get noticed,” she mentioned. “But for multiple reasons, that’s not the case.”
Fowles’s voice trailed.
“Why do I have to work twice as hard just to get noticed?”
She needed for a greater long term: that the following generations of greats who seem like her will probably be a ways higher recognized, that the WNBA will have the ability to advertise all of its avid gamers. “Eighty percent of us are Black women, and you have to figure out how to market those Black women,” she mentioned. “I don’t think we do that quite well.”
Fowles has finished what she will to pave the best way for the ones adjustments. She has carried out in some way that may stand the check of time. “I’m proud of myself that I have been the same person from 2008 to 2022,” she mentioned. “I’m no longer a pushover. I’m a pacesetter, and no longer a follower. I get up and talk on issues that I imagine.”
In her last season, playing the role of on-court coach to a young and struggling Lynx team, she was averaging nearly 15 points and almost 10 rebounds per game through Minnesota’s 81-71 win Sunday over Atlanta.
The battle for recognize will now fall to different avid gamers as Fowles units off for a career that matches completely with a character Bird described as motherly.
