TD GARDEN — The Connecticut Sun and Los Angeles Sparks made history for becoming the first WNBA teams to ever play a game in Boston. They did it in front of a sold-out crowd at TD Garden, in a down-to-the-wire finish that had the fans on their feet.
DiJonai Carrington calls out WNBA for not broadcasting historic Sun-Sparks game on national TV
The historic game marked the first time a WNBA team played in Boston — and the Sun did so in front of a sold-out crowd.
Photo by Brian Fluharty/NBAE via Getty Images
Noa Dalzell is a senior writer covering the WNBA and all of women’s basketball for Breakaway, SB Nation’s women’s sports vertical, as well as the Celtics for CelticsBlog.
But, unless you lived in LA or Boston, the only place you could watch the game was on WNBA League Pass or on the league’s X livestream.
Sun guard DiJonai Carrington, who had a game-high 19 points and led a late surge that saw Connecticut pull out the 69-61 win, doesn’t think that should be the case. Earlier in the day, she Tweeted that she had to do her own promo for the game, seemingly a reference to the fact the WNBA as a league had not gone to great lengths to promote the Suns-Sparks matchup, and its historical significance.
After the win, Carrington was asked about her Tweet.
“I keep it real all the time, and I feel like Connecticut as a franchise is historically disrespected. So sometimes, if you want something, gotta go out there and do it yourself. So, that’s what I did for us. I think that there could have been a lot more publicity or promo from the top. You know, Connecticut had announced that we were having this game probably almost a year ago.”
The WNBA issued its broadcast schedule in April, and the Fever had by far the largest national television presence. The league announced that 36 of 40 Indiana Fever games would be broadcast on the WNBA’s national broadcast and its streaming partners, while the Aces and Liberty got 8 national television games each.
The Sun’s initial television schedule featured three games on ESPN/ESPN2/ESPN3, eight games on ION, two games on ABC, and one game on CBS.
“The game should have been on the national television broadcast,” Carrington said. “You shouldn’t have to pay for any type of subscription to see a game that’s this historic, in my opinion.”
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