S A T U R D A Y, O C T O B E R 5 , 2 0 1 9 . T H E W A S H I N G T O N P O S T EZ SU D3
BY AVA WALLACEWashington Mystics Coach
Mike Thibault gave a speech to his
players this week about cutting
out distractions because he
knows what happens when the
WNBA Finals get rolling: Social
media chatter picks up, friends
start texting suggestions, and
family members trickle into town.
“Everybody has ideas,” Thiba-
ult said.
Center LaToya Sanders under-
stood the message. But to her,
family isn’t a distraction to be
shut out, especially in pressure
situations such as the one the
Mystics are staring down. On Sat-
urday, Washington will travel to
Connecticut for Sunday’s Game 3
of the WNBA Finals, with the
best-of-five series tied at a game
apiece.
Sanders leads the Mystics’ de-
fense along with guard Natasha
Cloud, who holds things down on
the perimeter while the 6-foot-2
center patrols the post. Washing-
ton has been drilling down on
defense all week since its Game 2
loss — it will be the crucial factor
against the Sun with Elena Delle
Donne’s status unknown because
of a herniated disk in her back.
Thibault said the team will give
an injury update on Delle Donne
on Saturday.
What’s certain is that Sanders
will have to be at her best. Which
means she will be thinking of her
family before the game.
“I really play mostly for them,”
Sanders said.
A winding path brought Sand-
ers, 33, to the Mystics. Drafted by
Phoenix in 2008, she also played
for Minnesota and Los Angeles
before taking leave from the
WNBA in 2011 so she could spend
time with her terminally ill father,
Reece Pringle, who died of cancer
in 2012. She didn’t return to the
WNBA until 2015, opting to stay
home for at least part of the year
so she could keep an eye on her
mother and sister, though she did
play abroad in Turkey during that
time, competing both on a profes-
sional club and with the national
team. (Sanders became a natural-
ized Turkish citizen in 2012.)
The decision to come back to
the WNBA wasn’t one Sanders
took lightly. It helped that, by the
time she was considering a come-
back, Washington owned her
rights, so at least if she chose to
play she would be relatively close
to home — about a four-hour
drive from where her mother,
Sharon, lives in North Carolina.
Feelings of guilt about missing
time with her family mingled
with the desire to end a career on
her own terms. Ultimately, she
didn’t have to choose one over the
other.
“I kind of felt guilty missing so
much of my dad’s life later on and
then not being around my mom
and sister,” Sanders said. “But I
know they love to see me play in
the WNBA. My mom and sister
and grandmother, at the time,
could all see me play [in Washing-
ton], so I’d actually say I came
back for them. Coach T was gra-
cious enough to ask me to come
back.”
The reputation of Thibault as a
players’ coach and the presence of
Ivory Latta, Sanders’s college
teammate from North Carolina,
on the Mystics made Sanders
comfortable with restarting her
domestic basketball career withWashington.
Thibault liked her defense
enough to make her the first sub
off the bench in her first game
with Washington even though she
didn’t know any plays. That laid a
foundation of trust that has con-
tinued into this season — Thiba-
ult often lets Sanders stand aside
during drills in practice because
she picks up plays and strategy so
quickly.
Since then, Sanders has be-
come a key part of the Mystics’
defense. She was second on the
team behind Delle Donne in re-
bounding during the regular sea-
son, averaging 5.5 per game. In
the playoffs, her rebounds have
dipped slightly, to 4.3, in part
because she takes the hardest
defensive assignment. In these
playoffs that has meant taking on
two bruising interior stars, 6-
foot-8 Liz Cambage of Las Vegas
and 6-6 Jonquel Jones of Con-
necticut.
Beyond her stats, Sanders is
what Cloud and Thibault call
Washington’s glue player.
“Toya does stuff that doesn’t
come up on the stat sheet, all the
little things,” guard Shatori Walk-
er-Kimbrough said. “She’s bat-
tling some injuries; she could
have sat down a long time ago ifshe wanted to. But you see her
giving it her all. I mean she’s
battling Liz Cambage all series,
diving all over the floor. And
when we see her, at that age — not
saying she’s old — but when we
see that, that brings us together
and brings us energy. She’s one of
those people who doesn’t say
much, but when she does, we all
lock in because she’s a vet.”
Sanders has played the entire
season with a torn labrum in her
hip that eventually will require
surgery, though probably not un-
til she retires. The pain isn’t as
bad when she’s playing as it is
when she’s going about daily life,
so she has refused to miss games.
That’s quite a change for some-
one who was ready to be done
with the WNBA just a few years
ago.
“It took me a while to find my
role and my importance and what
I can bring to a team. It took me
being comfortable in Coach T’s
system to realize, you know, I’m
pretty good,” Sanders said with a
laugh. “Sometimes you have to go
until you find a place that fits you,
and maybe I didn’t necessarily fit
in in Phoenix and L.A. But five
years later, and I’m still here, with
more years to come.”
[email protected]Sanders finally finds her fit as Mystics’ glue player
TONI L. SANDYS/THE WASHINGTON POST
Mystics center LaToya Sanders, 33, said, “It took me a while to find my role and my importance.”throw hardcore gamblers into
the event, you’re talking about
new customers with way more
personal and financial interests
than the average fan. Put too
many of these people in the
building, and it changes the
entire vibe.
There is also the likelihood of
a significant alteration in the
interaction between spectators
and athletes. Most of us desire
to watch professional sports live
because we appreciate the
competition, the athleticism and
the drama. In short, we are
there to enjoy a performance, to
be entertained, to bear witness
to the unknown. And now the
doors will be open, in theory, to
a large concentration of people
heavily invested in an attempt to
forecast the unknown.
It’s the gamification of games.
It can be fun when you’re
guessing whether Alex Ovechkin
will score in the second period
just to guess. But when a
gambler bets his rent on it and
Ovechkin doesn’t deliver?
Uncomfortable.
Here’s the thing about going
to a casino, as opposed to some
sports version of one: You know
the deal. The house always wins.
You’re trying to defy the odds,
get lucky, hope for the right
cards or the ideal roll of the
dice. When it doesn’t happen,
there is really no one to blame
but your own foolishness. In an
arena, when Bradley Beal fails to
help you win a bet, you might
get delusional and blame it on
him. The possibility of anger is
obvious. Fostering an
environment for ticked-off
wagerers could be dangerous,
and the divide between fans and
players is already wide and
burdensome.
If he gets his way, Leonsis
must be careful not to allow the
game to become background
noise while chasing the
gambling dollar. As is, there are
too many distractions at
sporting events. The event itself
can’t become merely the music
at the party.
Leonsis understands the
challenges. He understands he
has a responsibility to keep
sporting events family-friendly
and enjoyable for children. But
he’s also the owner of multiple
sports franchises. He wants to
make as much money as
possible.
“Everyone will be watching,”
Leonsis said. “We understand
our social responsibility and
that everyone will be watching
how this works and how this
rolls out.”
And there’s one key factor in
how Leonsis views sports
gambling: Many of us consider
it to be a financially risky game
of chance. Leonsis considers it
to be much more of a game of
skill. He often talks about using
data to unlock the secrets of
sports.
As a creative mind, he likes
the idea that gambling could
inspire a new viewing
experience in which sports
leagues partner with tech
companies and bookmakers to
make special use of all of the
statistical information tied to
athletics. In an ideal world, such
collaboration would benefit
more than bettors. It would
stimulate minds and change the
way we watch sports. It would
attract more interest and create
more revenue possibilities as
viewers transition from
traditional television to online
streaming.
When Leonsis dreams, he can
be captivating. He can also
inspire skepticism, because until
recently gambling had always
been considered detrimental to
sports. But he sees something,
even if you don’t, and he is
proceeding to follow that vision.
Let’s just hope he does so with
ample caution.
[email protected]For more by Jerry Brewer, visit
washingtonpost.com/brewer.In Ted Leonsis’s
entrepreneurial
dreams, Capital
One Arena will
transform into a
year-round
sanctuary
because of
legalized sports
gambling. On any given day —
regardless of whether the
Capitals and Wizards are good,
bad or just off for the night —
the place will be buzzing and
creating fresh revenue streams.
Within this place, he will be able
to marry two of his great
passions — sports and
technology — in an innovative,
bettor-friendly way and design
an unstoppable business model.
That’s his vision. In
navigating this wild and
unstable new terrain, most
influential sports figures have
tiptoed since the gate-opening
Supreme Court decision 17
months ago. Leonsis is walking
briskly, if not jogging. He’s not
waiting to see what will happen.
From the beginning, he has been
fascinated with inventing the
future.
You can admire his foresight.
You can worry about the
potential for recklessness. You
can hate his moneymaking
ambitions. It doesn’t matter.
Leonsis, who owns the Capitals,
Mystics and Wizards, wants to
be at the forefront of shaping all
of these loose possibilities into a
cutting-edge reality.
He was talking openly about
ideas until Thursday. Now he
has made his first significant
public move by announcing a
partnership with British
bookmaker William Hill.
Assuming that the deal clears a
few hurdles with the city, the
NBA and the NHL, Capital One
Arena soon could be attached to
a sportsbook and even function
like a vast casino during live
events.
The plan puts Leonsis in the
role of industry leader — or
guinea pig. While he enters the
venture with great exuberance,
there’s also a need for caution as
he sets an example (or becomes
a cautionary tale) for blurring
the line between sports and
betting.
Leonsis is sensitive to
perception, which is why he
mostly describes the
partnership with William Hill as
a landlord-tenant arrangement.
But he also talks of William Hill
putting kiosks in the arena,
mobile wagering from seats and
the potential for proposition
bets involving the live events.
In making the announcement,
Leonsis characterized William
Hill as “no different than
McDonald’s or Dunkin’ Donuts.”
But this relationship is fully
dissimilar to other arena
tenants because William Hill’s
business will be tied to what’s
happening on the court or ice in
a manner that far exceeds a
Chick-fil-A free throw
promotion. It makes the
partnership much more
complicated to manage on many
levels, including game integrity
and the in-game experience for
fans.
If you’re a big fan of the local
team who also enjoys gambling
(and can do so in moderation),
in-arena betting will have an
additive effect. That’s mostly
positive, I suppose. But as any
smart businessman would,
Leonsis wants to use gambling
as an incentive for new fans to
come to games. That would set
up an interesting level of
conflict, probably passive-
aggressive in nature, between
loyalists and gamblers just
interested in making a few
bucks.
People come to games for all
kinds of reasons: love of team,
sense of community, civic pride,
family fun, dates, to see and be
seen, the bizarre enjoyment of
heckling. So I won’t wax on
about the purity of watching an
athletic event. But when youLeonsis’s biggest bet so far
calls for novel caution, too
Jerry
BrewerKATHERINE FREY/THE WASHINGTON POST
Ted Leonsis, in his deal with bookmaker William Hill, envisions
Capital One Arena as a year-round sanctuary of sports gambling.WNBA Finals
Best-of-five series tied, 1-1
Game 3: Mystics at Sun
Tomorrow, 3:30 p.m., ABC