An all-access look into a WNBA season like no other, “144” takes viewers inside the bubble of the 2020 season, which saw the league creating a single site at the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida, where 144 players across 12 teams played 147 games from July to October. Lauren Stowell and Jenna Contreras’ documentary isn’t just a portrait of professional sports in the age of COVID-19: “144” also explores how social justice activism, and the Black Lives Matter movement specifically, transformed the league.
The doc kicks off with the players gathering on August 28, 2020 — a day that saw thousands gathering in Washington, D.C. to commemorate the 1963 civil rights March on Washington. Unable to join the protest of police violence from inside their bubble, the players use the moment as “a reminder of a nonnegotiable” that they established going into the season — their goal of raising awareness about Black female victims of police brutality and anti-Black violence in the United States. “There is this thing that’s bigger than basketball — this thing that is uniting us,” we’re told.
About 80 percent of the players in the WNBA are Black women, a fact that is restated a number of times throughout the doc. As Natalie Achonwa, a player in the league, explains, “At the end of the day when I take off this jersey I’m still a Black woman, so that’s where the fight comes from, that’s where the passion comes from. It could have been me. It could have been my sister. It could have been my teammate,” she says of Breonna Taylor’s murder.
Not all 144 players’ agendas are perfectly aligned. Not everyone believes that using the season as an opportunity to educate fans will be worth the personal cost. The doc takes us behind the scenes of heated discussions about whether or not to sit out games in the wake of the police shooting Jacob Blake. Some players worry about the financial toll of missing games and potentially jeopardizing the future of the league. Refreshingly, the doc doesn’t portray the players as presenting a perfectly harmonious, united front in Bradenton. They eventually are on the same page, but getting there requires communication, cooperation, and compromise.
Conspicuously absent from the doc is any sustained discussion about mothering in the bubble. We’re told that players with children had the option to bring them into the bubble but were responsible for their own childcare. How these professional athletes could provide their own childcare while working long hours on an accelerated schedule is left largely to the imagination. One player reveals that she brought her mom into the bubble to help, but besides this one example, “144” doesn’t dig into how mothers functioned in the bubble — or why the league didn’t provide childcare for its employees.
Besides providing a fascinating look inside players’ efforts to politicize the league in the midst of major social upheaval, the doc also offers an illuminating portrait of what playing basketball in a pandemic really looks like — the stress of close and direct physical contact when guidelines are urging distance, the monotony of constant testing, the isolation of the bubble, the increased risk of injuries that comes along with a condensed season that offers less rest between games, and the mental and physical exhaustion of it all.
“144” premieres today at 9 p.m. ET on ESPN. The film will be made available on ESPN+ immediately after its premiere, along with the ESPN Films and “30 for 30” library.
