“I’m not in the nerd club,” Dallas Wings guard Paige Bueckers said during a media availability.
She explained that she wasn’t in her reading phase, but in her show-watching phase at the moment.
“So they can keep their little book club.”
Her teammate Alysha Clark — who’s a member of the club in question — answered a comment on Instagram, explaining that one of the rules to be a member was that you had to read, and that was why Bueckers felt a type of way when asked about her membership.
Maybe Bueckers will have another shot to join when she re-enters her nerd phase
When adjusting to a team, building up a program or just learning the way your teammates operate, it can be a challenge to find common ground that could turn out to be the backbone of their success.
Well, what if that one common thing was something you could carry everywhere with you — off the court, of course — take to practices, on the road, share with your teammates and more?
For several WNBA teams, that common ground has been books.
Coach and the Liberty
Coach caught the wave of book popularity resurfacing globally and decided to add to it with its classic book charms, which can be added to any purse or accessory. The brand also has a limited-edition charm celebrating the league’s 30th anniversary that’s been catching fans’ attention enough to justify the base price and sport the glitzy chain.
Coach is also one of the official handbag partners of the WNBA and the New York Liberty, so it was only on-brand for the two to collaborate on a video and get the players’ opinions on their favorite titles to add to their book club recommendation list.
Alongside the handbag partnership, they’re in the works of producing a social, BookTok-inspired series called Courtside Book Club. The players, selected celebrities and, of course, Ellie the Elephant, the team’s beloved mascot, share a reading list for every quarter of the season.
They want to highlight titles that explore voices that teach diversity, confidence and other values that encourage growth.
This is also somewhat of a continuation of when former Liberty player Jocelyn Willoughby launched a Read What You Sow book club to highlight topics surrounding social justice, discrimination and education, to name a few.
Finding the Tempo with a Page-turner
Breaking news from Toronto Tempo beat reporter Chelsea Leite came in May when she announced that the first-year expansion team has a book club.
The Tempo has been building up from scratch, so it can be tricky to establish a bond while getting into the mix of the season. A book club that all your new teammates are interested in could be a starting solution to that problem.
That was what guard Kia Nurse explained the Tempo did once teammate Nyara Sabally — who formerly played for the Liberty — brought the idea to her attention as an avid reader herself. Once more members of the team were notified, interest grew, and then came their first book to bring to the discussion table: It Should Have Been You by Andrea Mara.
“With books and characters, one of the beautiful parts of it is that they can mean different things to different people,” Nurse told CBC Radio. “So sometimes I’m like, ‘Oh, we’re on the same page.’ And other times I’m like, ‘We are not on the same page with this one…’ I think those discussions are really fun.”
Nurse also talked about how it can be easy to lose yourself in your sport as an athlete playing at a high level. So, a balance is sometimes necessary to focus on something off the court.
“All of that stuff kind of really weighs heavy on you, and for me, books are like the perfect escape,” Nurse said. “It’s a way to just go into a different world and be able to see different characters, maybe resonate with some characters.”
Seek Permission to join HAAAM
In May, Dallas guard Azzi Fudd explained that, for their teammate Maddy Siegrist’s birthday, she and Clark went to a bookstore to get a book for the three of them to read. The book they started was None of This Is True by Lisa Jewell.
They added teammates Haley Jones and Alanna Smith shortly after, hence the club’s initials: HAAAM, as they started The List of Suspicious Things by Jennie Godfrey.
On National Book Lovers Day, Aug. 9, Clark posted a picture of herself and the four club members cheesing in between travels.
This is the club Bueckers was referring to in the beginning. And though it’s exclusive to her at the moment, once she proves herself worthy, we might just see an extra initial added to the club’s acronym
An Author Shoutout in the A
When the Atlanta Dream went through a tough West Coast road trip earlier this season, they found joy outside the court by exploring the cities during their free time and establishing a book club of their own to bond with.
“We started in July, and midway through July we’ll have a brief one [discussion], and then, once we finish the book. So, it’ll be like a halfway point,” Dream Forward Naz Hillmon explained. “Which we’re really excited about because half of our team are readers and half of our team are not readers.
“It’s a huge contrast on that, but we found our book. And we’re excited to talk about it, learn about each other through what we see from the book, and, you know, all the things that come with a book. So, we’re excited about that.”
The book they started was Little Rot by Akwaeke Emezi . It was later explained by Hillmon and her teammate Angel Reese that former Dream development player Amy Okonkwo mentioned the book, which sparked the idea for the club. This also gave Okonkwo the title of book club leader.
“We have a group chat, and everybody was supposed to get the book,” Reese said. “I think by July 18, we have to have 191 pages for it, so good luck to us.”
That book shoutout also caught the author’s attention once the video surfaced and was shared throughout social media. Emezi made a video of her own thanking the girls and promoting her upcoming novel.
In the world of social media and AI, it’s refreshing to see that literacy is still going strong and being reintroduced as a hobby that connects teammates while taking their minds away from the game, even if only briefly.
And it doesn’t stop there. Many teams in the league hold youth literacy programs and drives throughout the year to promote the importance of education and the power of reading. Access is important, and there is so much knowledge, discovery and adventure that a book can take you on.
Another fun discovery is watching fans interact on social media and deem themselves honorary members of the clubs, picking up the books from the teams and reading alongside them.
Who says reading is going out of style? With teams around the W picking up a good novel to bury their noses into, it’s safe to say that they, alongside BookTok, are holding it down and sparking an interest in people all over.
