[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 124 (Monday, July 21, 2025)]
[House]
[Pages H3481-H3482]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             TAKING ON WNBA

  (Ms. Craig of Minnesota was recognized to address the House for 5 
minutes.)
  Ms. CRAIG. Mr. Speaker, soon, the Minnesota Lynx will play the New 
York Liberty at home in Minneapolis.
  As some Minnesotans may remember, I made a friendly wager with a New 
York Member of Congress last year at the beginning of the Minnesota 
Lynx-New York Liberty WNBA final series. That bet included that I would 
don a Liberty jersey and give a speech congratulating them from here on 
the House floor if they won the series. I would have, but I won't. Why 
won't I? Because the truth is that Minnesota didn't lose game five.
  I was there in New York. The Liberty didn't win. The WNBA gave it to 
them.
  Let's stop pretending that what happened in game five of the WNBA 
finals was just a bad call. It wasn't.
  The Minnesota Lynx clawed their way through the playoffs. They defied 
the odds. They outworked every team and every narrative. In the final 
seconds of a championship game, on the biggest stage, they didn't get 
outplayed. They got erased.
  Even from the House floor, right here in the Chamber, I can hear the 
New York fans protesting, but I know them well enough from Madison 
Square Garden that night to know that if this had happened to them, 
their outrage would be the same with much more colorful language.
  A phantom foul, five seconds left, Alanna Smith playing legal defense 
on Breanna Stewart, who, let's be honest, is the league's marketing 
golden girl. The contact? It was embellished, marginal at worst, but 
the whistle blew. The game and the title were handed to New York on a 
silver platter.
  When the Lynx challenged the call, the officials reviewed themselves. 
The same people who made the call decided to stand by it.
  That is not accountability. That is the system protecting itself. 
That is the fix being called in.
  Meanwhile, Napheesa Collier, the heart of the Lynx, an All-Star, a 
force in the paint, didn't shoot a single free throw the entire game. 
Now, tell me,

[[Page H3482]]

how does a player so dominant in the lane never draw contact? Because 
she was erased from the whistle.
  Let me just say it out loud right here from the House Chamber: The 
WNBA wanted the Liberty to win--a big market team, superstar faces, a 
tidy storyline for the league office and the league commissioner, who 
literally wore the New York skyline on her dress that night.
  Minnesota? We were the wrong script--too gritty, too real, too 
inconvenient.
  The league talks about fairness. The league talks about lifting women 
up. Pay them what they deserve if you want to lift women up in the 
WNBA.
  They talk about growing the game with integrity, but when the stakes 
were high, the WNBA didn't protect the game. They manipulated it. They 
chose a winner.
  Here is the truth: Minnesota didn't lose game five. The WNBA took it 
from them, and I will be damned if I ever put on a New York Liberty 
jersey.

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