r/WNBAVibes

Olivia Miles Father is Jamaica and Mother is Italian. Mlles is a WNBA player who's signatrue look is an AFro and plays the position of guard. Miles is one of the few players with the Afro as a signature look. Why Olivia chooses the Afro as a signature look? This question should be asked Olivia.. What is her Afro a representation of?

Culturally the AFro:

Beyond just a hairstyle, the afro carries deep historical and political weight. Originating as a powerful symbol of Black pride, consciousness, and identity, the afro gained immense popularity during the Civil Rights and Black Power movements of the 1960s and 1970s. It represented a rejection of Eurocentric beauty standards and stood as a statement of racial pride and cultural heritage.

Olivia Mother is Italian/Eurocentric. Is Olivia rejecting her Mother Eurocentric culture? Or Using the AFro as a symbol to gain ethnic cultural basketball fans..? If Miles is using the Afro to gain ethnic cultural fans in order to seem more relatable i say she should stop wearing the Afro as a Signature look.

What are your thoughts?

This was such a great episode. TBH I never caught a game to watch Hannah Hidalgo play but this interview definitely made me want to watch her. You can see her grit and confidence, it was amazing to watch.

The players get the same ballot we do.

That means that they’re not asked to rank the players from 1st to Nth.

They get asked, just like the fans do, to pick four guards and six frontcourt players.

If a guard ranks, say, fifth, that means they were selected the fifth most on player ballots in the guard position.

It does NOT mean they were ranked fifth of all guards.

So no, the players did not rank Caitlin Clark the 11th best guard. It just meant she was selected on ballots with the 11th highest frequency. Same with Azzi Fudd coming in 28th - they don’t hate her, people did still clearly select her, but she was selected the 28th most.

Before you come out with your pitchforks and torches, ask yourself - is there an argument for a MINIMUM of four/six better backcourt/frontcourt players than the player I’m outraged on behalf of that could have justifiably been selected over them?

If the answer is yes, there you go.

There is a valid argument to be made that there are minimum four better guards than both Caitlin Clark and Azzi Fudd that players could have justifiably selected to put on their ballots over them. I don’t care about “viewership numbers” or “growing the game” or “ticket sales”, those don’t matter.

Calm down, y’all.

Addendum - if you want my personal opinion on who those backcourt players are that I believe are better than Clark, because I know that’ll be the point of contention in this post, I believe the following are easily better than her - Paige Bueckers, Olivia Miles, Kelsey Plum, Kelsey Mitchell, Marina Mabrey, Rhyne Howard, Allisha Gray, Brittney Sykes (but she’s injured anyways so likely didn’t generate a lot of votes for that reason). For Azzi Fudd, I could give an even longer list.