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The Human Condition with Big Citrus

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Published Mar 4, 2025, 8:15 AM

Good Game with Sarah Spain

Good Game is your one-stop shop for the biggest stories in women’s sports. Every day, host Sarah Spain gives you the stories, stakes, stars and stats … 
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Truth bomb: Even our FAVORITE sports figures aren’t perfect. Sarah, Alex and Misha have a meaningful conversation about how to react when athletes we admire for their on-field heroics do harmful things outside of their sport. Plus, the Athletes Unlimited pro hoops season comes to a close, plenty of college hoops chaos, and Diana Taurasi shows off her comedic timing.

Welcome to Good Game with Sarah Spain, where I'm finally heading home after a trip that's served up a haboob in Arizona and an earthquake in La Chicago. Cold's actually looking pretty good at this point. It's Tuesday, March fourth, and on today's show, Big Citrus is sitting down to discuss one of the toughest tasks for diehard sports fans. How do we reconcile the love of a player's game on the court with controversy off of it? How do we react when allegation surface? And how should we respond when athletes we admire for their on field heroics do shitty things away from their sport.

We'll get into it.

Plus, Nashville got its big finale backlash leads to a back out, and in one conference it's love basketball and coin tosses. It's all coming up right after this Welcome back Slices. Here's what you need to know today. Athletes Unlimited Basketball wrapped over the weekend with Matty Siegrist winning the seas In four Championship title. Secrist, in her AU debut, finished the four week season with the league record seven fifty two points, defeating runner up Odyssey Simms by four hundred and fifty seven points with record attendance and community engagement in Nashville. Athletes Unlimited announced that they will be returning on a multi year deal for AU Pro Basketball to be in Music City in twenty twenty six and beyond to Pro hoops. WNBA expansion team Toronto Tempo announced on Monday the team has a new member of its ownership group and it's a name you might recognize, Serena Williams. It's the second women's pro team Williams has invested in. She and her husband Alexis o'hannion also became co owners of the NWSL's Angels City FC in twenty twenty two. Pera Toronto press release, Williams will also play an active role in helping design jerseys and in creating quote unique merchandise collaborations end quote. We are excited the rollout all the visuals for her joining the team. So good to soccer where Naomi Germa made her day viue for Chelsea over the weekend and fifty nine minutes into the contest against Brighton, she suffered an injury.

Germa had to be subbed out.

It's not yet clear how serious the injury is, but you hate to see it.

The match ended in a two to two draw.

Will keep you updated, and we're sending good vibes to Naomi and hoping she gets back on the pitch soon.

More soccer.

We told you last month about BFC's decision to hire Graham Abel as the club's director of domestic scouting, despite an investigation from The Oregonian into his tenure as head coach of the UFO in which more than a dozen players alleged that he was verbally abusive. At the time that that investigation was published, Abel denied the allegations to The Oregonian.

Well.

Just a week after his hiring was announced, and with BFC receiving lots of backlash for the move, Abel has agreed to resign from his post. In a statement to ESPN, Abel said, in part, quote me joining the club has become a distraction, which is not fair to the team and players, so I've made the difficult decision to resign. The team should be focusing on what's most important, playing the game they love and competing for a championship end quote. ESPN also reported that BFC was aware of the allegations against Abel prior to hiring him, and that the league also signed off on his appointment. So while Abele is out, lots of questions still about the hiring practices that led to this in the first place. To College Hoops, USC clinched the Big Ten regular season title over the weekend, and Juju Watkins continued to make her case for Player of the Year honors. The sophomore star recorded thirty points, five assists, two steals, and three blocks in USC's second win of the season over crosstown rival UCLA. And get this, Juju Watkins has now scored thirty plus points in her last four games against UCLA. The win paid off in the EP rankings two, which were updated on Monday. USC and UCLA flip flopped, with USC now at number two and UCLA at number four in SEC hoops, unranked ol misvisited at number seven LSU on Sunday and gave us another upset to buzz about.

Coach yo Lett.

Mcew and squad surged back from a thirteen point halftime deficit. Thanks to a thirty two point thirty quarter and some stifling defense, they pulled out the upset eighty five seventy seven Colorado transferred to Mia Sadler paced Ole Miss with nineteen points and five steals. Starred Jacobs and KK Dean's added eighteen and seventeen points, respectively, also got a shout out. LSU's Anissa Morrow twenty eight points and twelve rebounds and her one hundredth career double double. She's now one of only two players at NC double A D one history to post that. Many also want to note that LSU was without Flaje Johnson for the first time this season.

Due to shin inflammation.

Coach Kim Moulki told Reporter's post game that Flage won't play in the SEC tournament in hopes that she'll be ready to go for the NC Double A tournament, which begins March nineteenth.

We're setting Eland bibes your way, Flage a little more.

SEC Hoops Conference tournament starts tomorrow and don S Day. South Carolina Game Cocks are the top seed thanks to hold on, let me make sure I'm reading this right. A coin flip, Yeah, a coin flip. South Carolina and Texas both finished fifteen to one in the SEC and were named Core Bigler's season champs.

But to determine tourney seating, one team had.

To prevail, and the first two tiebreaker rules couldn't determine a winner. So when teams have the same record, advantage goes to the group with a better record in their head to head matchups, and then did the team with a better win loss record against other teams in the league. While the Longhorns and the game Cocks split the head to head in the regular season, and then they lost to nobody else.

So it's bizarre.

But the last option was to have Conference Commissioner Greg Sankie flip a coin. Dot Staley wasn't a fan of the move until the game Cox won, when she said, quote, I feel a little better about it now end quote.

More college hoops.

Paige Becker's was inducted into Yukon's Huskies of Honor during the program's Senior Day celebration this weekend, and a banner was unveiled to honor her after the team's game against Marquette, which Yukon won ninety two fifty seven.

Take it quick. Listen how she started her speech, thank you guys for.

Coming out, thank you for an amazing four or five six years?

Did she say six years? Six? Interesting?

Just a reminder, Beckers is currently in her fifth year at Yukon, and while all signs indicate she's headed for the WNBA draft next month, she does technically have an option to return for a sixth year if she wants, given that she read shirted a season due to injury. Finally, USA Today has announced its honorees for twenty twenty five Women of the Year, and three women in sports were named national winners. President of the Women's Sports Foundation and Paralympic athletes Scout Bassett, rugby superstar Alon Omar and reigning WNBA champ with the New York Liberty John Quell Jones, also Kansas native and Texas Tech softball star Nijerie Kennedy, Connecticut Sun president Jennifer Rozzotti, and Pacers Sports and Entertainment CEO Mel Rains, who's the top exec for the Pacers and the Fever, were each named the Women of the Year for their respective states Kansas, Connecticut, and Indiana. Congrats to all six winners, but also, seriously, though, what is with all these outlets naming women of the Year before we're even a quarter into twenty twenty five.

It's confusing. We got to take a quick break.

When we come back, it's time for Big Citrus to reconvene and just to quick heads up during our upcoming conversation, I do mention descriptions of alleged sexual assault. It's later in the discussion, but want to give you heads up in case it's something you want to fast.

Forward through welcome back slices.

We felt like nows time for kind of a tough conversation, but a necessary one because we're nearing the NCAA Basketball Tournament. We're super excited about all the parody at the highest level. What is expected to be a thrilling, chaotic, insane march madness, chalk full of superstars, chalk full of teams that could beat the next team. But we're also about to face sort of head on one of the ultimate conflicts for a lot of sports fans. How do you reconcile the love of a player's game on the court with controversy off of it. This is something we've talked about and touched on briefly a couple of times throughout the season. But just to remind you, this year's tournament will feature Notre Dame star Hannah Hidalgo, who notably shared an anti gay post on social media. We'll see TCUs Sedona Prince, who's facing accusations from ex partners of both physical and verbal abuse, and South Carolina had Ashland Watkins return mid season after first degree assault and battery and kidnapping charges were dismissed after she did a pre trial intervention.

Now Watkins is going to miss the tournament.

She suffered an ACL tear, But there are still some questions that folks had about Don Staley and the team welcoming.

Her back after all of that.

So we're thinking about that all season long, and then we get a question from Slice Amanda Vaalo that sort of brings it back up to the forefront, which is, in her words, the human condition. She writes, Kobe Bryant is always included in goat conversations and idolized in the growth of women's sports. He's also a person who admittedly cheated on his wife and very possibly raped a nineteen year old. I can't help but think about this young woman every time I hear another WNBA star Juel Lloyd Sabrina Aliah Edwards pay tribute to him as their greatest influence and mentor, much like they always note the other lives that were lost when the helicopter went down. Shouldn't his legacy include that he harmed women in a lifelong, scarring way. The only journalists I've ever heard speak to this is Sarah. Could you please say more? How did those of us who love women's sport hold both Kobe did some great things for women and the black Mama mentality really hurt and preyed upon them. Amanda, This is a great question, and it's a conversation that I've had for years because of how often I've tried to speak to issues of domestic violence, sexual assault, homophobia, you know, issues that intersect with sports so often and are very hard to talk about and are very hard to reconcile with the players that we love, particularly if they come up after we've been watching them for years and have already made very definitive fandom decisions about them. So I wanted to bring big citriest together to talk about this and see if the way that we personally handle it is useful or helpful to anybody else in there trying to, you know, hold both things and figure it out. We can maybe talk about the Kobe thing later, but I think it's useful to see if either of you have very specific ways you process this stuff, or if it's a case by case spaces.

Honestly, Sarah like the underlying response for me, I don't have like a here's your step by step how to parts out whether or not you can be a fan or not be a fan, Like, I don't have a checklist for anybody. But one thing I will say is, and I've had to change this over time, right, so some context, I've grown up watching women's basketball, specifically my entire life, you know what I mean. Like, I'm a fan fan, capital fan fan. But I got a job beat writing for the Washington Mystics, not for the team, but for a blog that covered the team, and very quickly I had to flip that switch in my brain to be like, oh, these are whole people, and that's the issue I think that's underlying here. I think a lot of folks, a lot of sports fans, a lot of fans of celebrities and entertainment generally, we have a tendency to put people on this pedestal, right, and we never really talk about the whole person. So when we have controversy come up or allegations come up, it's like, uh, it throws us into a tizzy.

So that's where to me it all starts.

It's like, first and foremost, we have to get out of the habit of treating athletes, entertainers, musicians as like heroes and what have you.

The myth makes is what does it It's like because they're great at this thing, they must be a great person, which when those things are not correlated at all.

No, And the better we can be generally speaking about understanding that, the less I think this would shock people's systems, but also I think the more we could openly talk about stuff like with Sedona for example, I hadn't heard Jack squat about what was going on with her in big media publications. I had seen a lot on TikTok I you know, was it verified confirmed? Not necessarily, but you know, those rumors were swirling. And when all of this came out and I can't remember who wrote the story that we just talked about.

Molly Hensley Clancy of the Washington Post.

Thank you for that that we just talked about recently on the show. Molly mentioned, Yeah, people have been talking about this for months, but nobody had talked about it on ESPN or you know, wherever else you get your wide ranging vetted sports Yeah, you're vetted sports news, and so you know, it just has this weird vibe to it where some people are like, well, we know what's happening, but y'all are still continuing to celebrate, you know, this young lady, and some people turn that into well we shouldn't be talking about her at all. It's like you have to talk about her because she's one of the best players.

In the country.

But the more we can understand people as whole people, I think, the easier it becomes to have real conversations about the fuck them should they do?

I agree, and I want to quickly just point to something you said, like, I think what's very difficult as journalists is to understand that there can be TikTok's made and tweet scent that are saying with surety that they know what happened, and if you actually were to follow up with them, they would say, well, this is what I heard from this person who heard it from this person, And when you are trying to operate in a journalistic sense, you can't go off of that. And also, in fairness to all people, understanding how rumors can spread online, understanding how much people who don't have skin in the game and aren't working in the.

Business can say things and not care whether they're true or not.

There's no accountability for spreading a rumor if you're not someone in the biz, and so I think you have to try to be aware of accusations and consider it of them when you're talking about these athletes and having these conversations, but also to presume facts based on things like tiktoks, which is where a lot of these people say like, oh, it's been out there, everybody should know this by now. Is a very slippery slope and it's very unfair to a lot of people who might get caught up in it.

And to that end, though, this is why I think we need We always say we need more women's sports media, but this is why we need not less vetted sources necessarily, but more shows that get into okay, but what is the pulse of what's happening in this space like it.

That's a big part of the gap in women's sports media. I think, well, and.

Alex you always talk about the gap in just people who are covering these things, who are getting paid to do the work and be there every day and actually be able to report on this correctly.

Yeah. When I did account last year of the number of reporters who cover women's sports as their full time job, I couldn't get past fifteen.

That's all of North America. I had to include a couple of Canadians in there.

I think the number's probably gone up by you know, two, a handful. So for me, one of the things that I often come back to here is the role of the media, and I think one of the things that doesn't often get talked about is the inherent conflicts of interests that occur in sports broadcasting. It's a field unlike any other in that you have these companies NBC and Fox and ESPN and Amazon and all the rest of them that are paying leagues millions, billions of dollars in order to broadcast a product, a product that is entertainment that they are selling ads off of. So then to expect those broadcasters to tell well rounded stories about problematic people isn't always happening. I think the other part of it that often comes up in sports, and I've been a part of a lot of conversations where there's a problematic athlete, there's something that came up.

Sometimes it's even about doping.

Right like that is something that literally impacts the competition field, and oftentimes though it's handled in the pregame show and then all the people tune in half an hour later to watch the actual sport and it never gets mentioned again. So I struggle with how to integrate that a little bit more sometimes so that we are getting a more well rounded idea of who the person is during the supporting event itself. And I don't know how to reconcile that, but I think that the difference in media space and what those media outlets are providing in terms of information versus journalism versus entertainment plays a really big role here.

Yeah, I think it plays a huge role in educating people. And I had those conversations internally, especially at places like ESPN, where you do know that the millions of people watching the game are going to hear you praise that person over and over and if you don't use the correct language the one time you mention that they have accusations have been said, you say made a mistake about someone who punched a woman or had an incident, instead of using specific language. You're making very clear that you prioritize the mythologizing of them as an athlete over the realities of their situation. But all that being said, when we do find out these things, when it does get to us via established media or via social media, and enough folks talking about it or the athlete's own actions, like in the case of Hanna Hidalgo posting that stuff, we then as fans have a decision to make.

And there are a lot of fans who just want to watch the game. They consider it an escape for them.

I think most of those fans, but not all, have a bit of a privilege of being able to separate the issues that play many parts of society from.

The sports role.

But if you are, for instance, a woman, and you are being asked repeatedly to ignore that a man has been credibly accused multiple times of domestic violence or sexual abuse but you should still root for them.

That's a little more difficult.

If you are a queer person and you're being asked to ignore that someone is homophobic, If you are a person of color and you're being asked to ignore someone's racist remarks, all of these things are much more personal to certain fans than maybe other fans who are like I just want to escape, right.

So I can give you a specific example.

This really solidified it for me because in the moment I felt sort of hypocritical. I had already had to face Patrick Kane on the Chicago Blackhawks, my hockey team, being accused of sexual assault. I had already had to face Eraaldus Chapman being signed by my favorite baseball team, the Chicago Cubs and being a part of their World Series run after getting suspended for domestic violence and shooting a gun around his partner. I had already had these people that were in my sports sphere that I was a fan of or at least a fan of the team, and had to make a decision of I don't want to root for that person anymore, while I still want to root for that team.

But then this weird instance happened with Sewn.

White, the snowboarder, where I was watching the Olympics like live and saw him have this great finish and tweeted like that's so exciting his last Olympics, like so cool to see him get it done, And people started sliding into my mentions with hey, did you see about this, like the former drummer of his band had filed a suit alleging sexual harassment, sexual assault, sexually explicit messages like using his power and position within the band to make her life awful, and so in that moment, I could either get defensive and start to push back on oh, I don't know about that, or.

Well is it proven?

Or I could say this, this is a line I've made for myself personally, and when someone crosses it, I can decide that I don't want to root for them any more. That's not to say guilty before being proven so, but it is to say, I'm gonna step back from this fandom and go read these accusations and be thoughtful about how I feel about them. And I think for me that was a turning point, mainly because I had to reconcile, like, if I'm going to be open about writing these stories and covering athletes like you know, ray Rice and other athletes that I've covered in the past, I can't then make different rules for my teams and athletes that I'm a fan of.

And that's the tough part me.

She's like, I'm sure you've been there where, Like I already decided I like this person and their grand Sarah.

The biggest example of exactly that conundrum Cynthia Cooper, one of the best women's basketball players of all time, arguably to some people the goat, won four straight chips with the Houston Comments in the WNBA four Time Finals MVP like you name it, Coops there, but also a few years back had a bunch of her former players when she was a college coach accused her of just saying really ugly, really demeaning, demoralizing stuff, abusive behavior, sexually leude comments like called a player allegedly a sorry ass virgin, like all of this horrible stuff. I will never forget the day that I read that article.

It was I literally cried.

I literally cried because I was like, it was that again, that same thing I talked about when I had the Mystics job, Like I had to really face the reality of, oh, this is a whole person that's not just made of what she did on a basketball court. At the end of the day, allegations are true or not. You can't ignore stuff like that. To this day, I still struggle with that. Like in the WNBA, she's recognized in the WNBA is getting better at recognizing some of the pioneers and some of the folks who were stars before you know, this era of basketball. But whenever she's mentioned or she was an honorary coach for something very recently, and I was like, man, that's it's hard for me to not just be okay with that but just balance all of who she is. And I can't say that I've figured out, you know, where my line is. I think it really depends. I think what you just talked about, you know, in terms of I'm black, I'm queer, Like there's a lot of stuff that is already just going to be a hard line in the sand for me. And I'm the kind of person who I always kind of want to draw a hard line in the sand. But realizing that that's just it's a short road to not having a fandom of literally anybody, because we can't have shit anymore without people.

You know what I mean.

Well, And it's more difficult in the women's sports space too, because in the past there was a lot of parachuting in to report on salacious stories of wrongdoing without any other coverage, So it felt like you wanted to protect women athletes from only being covered when they did wrong. But then that protection of someone because they're a woman doesn't feel right now, and it feels like an overcorrection.

It feels like we're treating women athletes with kid gloves right now.

Well.

I think Ashton Watkins is an example of that, where we love Don Staley so much, but if this was a men's team, would we have had a lot more to say about a coach welcoming someone back mid season right after those accusations. I think Britney Grinder is a great example of that. There is so much to love about Britney Grinder and she's become another sort of like heroic figure, but she has allegations of abuse in her past, and when it's women, we tend to have different opinions about particularly same sex relationship abuse than we do when it's men and women.

Another thing I try to keep in mind with all of this is making sure that I'm not creating false equivalencies between people and between allegations. I think sometimes what will happen is their allegations made against someone and it's like, oh, we're putting them in the bad column now, and it's like, well that's not fair either. There are certain people that belong in the bad column, and there are other people that belong in the complicated column and the to be investigated further column. I think the other thing that happens a lot in women's sports. To use an example, Britta Curl, the hockey player for PWHL Minnesota. Back when she was drafted last year, there was backlash because she had posted and reposted tweets that were transphobic and racist. And one of the things that I struggled with with that is I think that fans have a right to respond with how they feel about Curl being drafted, But I don't think anyone in that press conference asked Brita about those tweets. And I think sometimes that happens in women's sports. And I don't want to blame the reporters that were there, because I'm sure a lot of them probably weren't even being paid, because that is the reality in women's sports. But what ends up happening sometimes, and this even gets to the point about tiktoks, is you have people that have this narrative that has been built, and then when you say, oh, has anyone.

Actually asked the athlete?

And sometimes the pr people that are in charge are making it impossible to ask the athlete. I think that happened a few years ago Jaylen Daniels, who previous refused to play with the US women's national team when they were wearing Pride jerseys. She got signed by the North Carolina Courage, and I don't think they made her available all season long.

But there are other times.

Where the athlete is made available and no one asks the question. And I think it is unfair to the athlete in those cases to be writing about the narrative without giving them a chance to respond, clarify, provide more details. It's just one of those things that I think comes along with journalism that you have to do.

And I think one of the things that I've learned over the years of having these like really definitive, like to your point, bad column thoughts about people even ten or fifteen years ago in this business, I as I'm mature as an adult, I want them to evolve and change. I want to be able to say that you're not ruined because of either bad you know, messaging and thoughts or actions.

Right.

You know, there is a part of me that has a real sort of I hesitate to even say it, but like empathy for Ray Rice as somebody who actually did all the stuff after the incident with his fiance to try to get better, but will always be held up as the one example, while there are people who have not tried to get better, have not done the work, have not been proactive, have not been open with their alleged rehabilitation, and why they won't be recidivous and they don't get the same publicity because that's how it works sort of in the media space, is like the big first story or the one that has the video, or the one with the person with the biggest name. And so I want to also say that what is the point of calling people out for this behavior if we aren't allowing them the potential to change and grow and get better. But also we should not be required to forgive if there is no proof of change. And that is where the biggest issue for me always is, is like people will say that was five years ago, or why are you still talking about that? And I'm like, because this person has never spoken about, addressed, acknowledged, been held accountable and responsible for, and so why would I believe that they've changed? And so I think I'm trying to be the kind of person that can hold both and say I do hold you accountable. I will not root for you, and I hope for you and everyone around you that you actually get what you need to change and get better. Because we punish for punitive's sake and not for rehabilitative sake, we publish for performative publicity, and then there's no follow up from teams about why we should believe that there won't be recidivism. We need that second half of accountability for us as fans to say, Okay, I think this person has learned and changed and gotten better.

That's exactly what we talked about with Corbyn Albert. That whole situation too right, when we've had multiple people want to talk about her. But you know, from all accounts, it seems like that's being handled in house, which like fair, you know, totally fair. But as a fan personally of the US of his national team, it's like I would.

Love to see the receipts just so I can personally feel a little bit. You know, I don't know better about the situation.

Well, and I think what Sam Muis said is right. If the acts are public, then the rehabilitation can't be entirely private. Yes, handle an interior, but you need to have some statements or progress reports or something. It can't just be like, oh, we're handling it, trust us. I'll briefly talk about Kobe Bryant because I got a lot of death threats actually, and like had to call the police after I wrote that story. When he passed away, I was deeply confused. I was crying about him, about the little girls, about the families, about who he had become as a person after his basketball career. And also I was sitting in my hotel I just landed in Miami for the Super Bowl. I was covering the week of content stuff and turned on the Grand's and Alicia Keys started that ceremony, saying that we felt like maybe we shouldn't even have this tonight because we all lost a hero. And I imagined the woman that alleges that he raped her hearing on this giant stage, not even a sports stage, this person being described as a hero. And I imagine every sexual assault victim trying to move forward, understanding that the world will whitewash what happened to them in pursuit of this heroic mythological narrative that we assigned to great athletes and for those who don't remember. In two thousand and three, Kobe Bryant allegedly asked nineteen year old concierge at a hotel to give him a tour. According to reports, the inviterer back to his room. According to the woman, he groped her, grabbed her neck to keep her from leaving, turned her around, pushed he against a chair, and raped her. According to the police transcript of an interview taking with her the next day, she said no several times. She said that he repeatedly said, you're not going to tell anyone, right. She told a bellman front at the hotel immediately after the incident and reported it to the police the next day, and a hospital exam revealed tears in her vaginal wall and a bruise on her neck. There was blood on her underwear. There was blood on briant shirt. She told the police. He told authorities that it was consensual, despite him not explicitly asking for consent, and he was eventually charged with melony sexual assault and they went to trial. But during that fourteen months, friends of hers and family members even sold stories, some of them a twist on the truth. Some of them outright lies, and she ended up getting death threats. Her photos were released, her name was publicly used multiple times even though it was supposed to be protected, and she became physically ill. As the trial approach, she decided to drop the charges. There was a civil case settled non disclosure agreement. She's not been able to speak about the incident since, and Kobe used that NDA also to avoid speaking about it for the rest of his life as well. When I wrote that story, I tried to understand how we can remember a person as a person and not just a resume, and how we, when we think about our own mortality, would love to be remembered as only.

The best parts of ourselves.

But how both for his victim and other victims alleged victim, when we do that, it is I can't even imagine the pain that someone feels. And so I tried to write to all the ways that he seemed like he was a wonderful person and cared about change, and was open about demons, and was doing amazing things in the women's sports space. And also these are the accusations, and this is the reality of what allegedly happened. And I think that's the answer for me is trying to hold both but also to not allow myself to make excuses for the people I want to like in a way that ignores that there are some really charming people, some really talented people, some really successful people who also do bad things.

Yeah, And I also think the important thing to remember is, like we're talking about allegations of some horrible stuff, but all of us, in our day to day lives, in the lives we've led to this point, we've been the villain.

You know what I mean, we have all been the villain. We've all done shitty things, We've all you know.

It just to me has been a realization at twenty seven, at this ripe old age. You know, it's been a reminder that, Okay, everybody is human and we do need to learn how to hold space for people who are in community with generally speaking.

As well, because it just feels like the best course of action.

And I agree with that, and I think especially as they get older, especially with a lot of the research I did for my book, understanding how the traumas that happened.

To people create the people that they become.

Right, Like, most of people doing these things probably had things that happened to them that a lot of the people that we talk about, maybe even especially in like queer relationships where there's abuse or otherwise, like what are they bringing to that relationship from what society has told them about themselves?

And like all of that.

And also what I will say me is just when I've report on this stuff for years in the past, the number one thing people would come to me with like you're perfect, And that to me is not an answer to holding people accountable for bad things. The fact that we're all human, we've all done shitty things or been the villain, is not the same as we shouldn't talk about or hold people accountable because we're all human. No, because not all of us are committing domestic violence, sexual assault, etc. And So I think there's a specificity around that that, yes, hold grace for people and hope that they can evolve and change and understand that they got that way for a reason. And also it serves no good to them or anyone around them who's a potential danger for future acts if we don't choose to force them to change and help them get the help they need to change.

Yeah, for sure, you're describing the situation with Kobe Sarah brings us back to kind of the role of the media, and after his death, the media was unhinged. It was like people weren't allowed to say a bad word about him. There was actually a Washington Post porter who just tweeted a story about those charges and those allegations and she was suspended. And the ability to wrap up all of an individual's complexities, especially when they die, you need to be able to look.

At both sides.

Yeah, it's really important and really difficult. So I don't know if this conversation will help folks try to understand. I, back to Amanda's point, feel the same way about so many female athletes who idolize Kobe.

It's really hard for me. It's really hard for me.

Whenever I look at the WNBACBA, which you know fairly often the tribute for the WNBACBA is a tribute to Kobe.

Yeah, it's not easy to try to understand all this stuff. And for some people it will be maybe a little bit easier to just say, well, I just like watching basketball and they're good at basketball. But for those of you who struggle like we do, we get it. We're here to chat about it. We're doing our best to work our way through it as well. And yeah, if you have other questions or comments, feel free to let us know.

We'd love to hear what you think about this. We got to take another break.

When we come back, a toast to a roast, Welcome back, slices.

We always love to hear from you.

So, like I said, hit us up on email, good game at Wondermedia neetwork dot com, or leave us a voicemail at eight seven two two four fifty seventy. How do you handle the human condition specifically to sports? But I mean if you have tips in general, we'd love to hear them. It's a struggle right now. Also, don't forget to subscribe, rate and review. It's easy watch. Dina Tarassi given classic DT on the View last week, rating ten out of ten for timing and delivery.

Review.

Dina Tarassi appeared on the View shortly after announcing her retirement for basketball, and apparently six Olympics worth of gold medals, twenty years of pro dominance, and four years of college excellent didn't provide enough opportunities for Whoopy Goldberg to learn her damn name. Take a listen on the Phoenix Mercury Diana Tarisi. Yikes, but DT handled it like a pro, a pro who will be forever remembered for throwing shade.

Good to see you, Whippy, I mean whoopye. That's the same.

Perfect execution, Deanna, I mean Diana. Now it's your turn. Slices, rate and review. Thanks for listening, See you tomorrow. Good game, Matti Segrest, Good game, Juju Watkins. You talk about launching new women's sports network when you don't know how to say Diana Tarassi's name, And no, we still don't know anything about that new network.

And also we're playing whoope, but for real, you gotta know that name.

Good Game with Sarah Spain is an iHeart women's sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment. You can find us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you.

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Production by Wonder Media Network, our producers are Alex Azzie and Misha Jones. Our executive produce ucers are Christina Everett, Jesse Katz, Jenny Kaplan, and Emily Rutterer. Our editors are Emily Rutterer, Britney Martinez and Grace Lynch. Our associate producer is Lucy Jones, and I'm your host Sarah Spain.

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Good Game with Sarah Spain

Good Game is your one-stop shop for the biggest stories in women’s sports. Every day, host Sarah Spa… 
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