DOWN WITH PANTS!

On Monday night, 17 year-old Candace Parker won the McDonald's High School All-American Slam Dunk Contest beating out five males who are all heading for big name colleges. Former winners include Lebron James, Vince Carter and Jerry Stackhouse. Read all about Candace Parker at ESPN.com.

Down With Pants! is a big fan of women's basketball having had the pleasure of watching Sue Bird and Lauren Jackson and the Seattle Storm the past two years. When I tell people that I love the Storm games even more than Sonics games I usually get puzzled looks and snickers. Just recently during a Sonics game DWP! witnessed first hand the open contempt and disgust for the women's game. The question posed by a survey on the Green and Gold machines was simply "would you like to receive more information on the Storm?" It was not asking you to hand over $100 right then and there and yet people acted as if they had been mugged.

Ignorance my friends, it is just plain ignorance. It is an unwillingness to look at something a different way. It is an unwillingness to try something new and to learn. It is also a representation that some NBA fans are scenesters and not really basketball fans. WNBA games are still thought of as events only for little girls and lesbians and couldn't possibly be interesting to men. This ignorance has kept the women's game marginalized and shunned in popular culture.

Somebody or something is going to happen to help the WNBA and women's basketball survive and eventually gain a foothold in our culture. One of the best things that you can do is go to a game. Every college has women's basketball and the WNBA is extremely cheap in the grand scheme of professional sports. Why not check it out at least once? I think you will be pleasantly surprised. And keep an eye on Candace Parker. She very well be the next big thing in basketball, and not just in women's basketball.