WASHINGTON — The Washington Mystics hosted their fourth and final Brunch & Basketball outside the Entertainment & Sports Arena ahead of Sunday’s home game against the Atlanta Dream. The event features a game ticket and a pregame meal, complete with unlimited mimosas.

Attendees casually feasted on chicken and waffles and sipped mimosas while a DJ spun the usual brunch hits. Somewhat Future. Somewhat Sexyy Red, in fact. One moment it was New Edition’s “Mr. Telephone Man,” the next it was Mark Morrison’s “Return of the Mack.” Fantasia’s “When I See U” had everyone testing their vocal chords.

But the setting seemed subdued. People remained seated, eating or chatting. Some were even glued to their cell phones. Besides the loud music, there was something off about this particular brunch.

And then “Wobble” got here along.

At this point, a few of the attendees stood up, some letting out an audible “ayyyyy” as they headed toward the center of the venue. As rapper VIC’s 2008 hit lyrics blared from the speakers, everyone line danced in unison to the line dancing, whether it was an older woman or just a little girl no older than 6.

The party got here alive, the atmosphere was buzzing. People looked like they were having a great time just being in this space designed for them. And in doing so, the WNBA team in the nation’s capital someway, someway, brought the city’s culture and love of brunch to basketball.

“We kind of invented the brunch scene,” Erin Blaine, Mystics fan experience manager, said of Washington.

Earlier this yr, the Mystics marketing team was special ticket promotions, which usually include a free item or food voucher, for the upcoming season. While they ultimately settled on promotions that included T-shirts, headbands, plush dolls and personalized T-shirts, the marketing team also decided that every gift may be an experience.

Dana Campbell, vice chairman of promoting for Mystics, asked employees what they do on the weekends for fun and entertainment.

Blaine, a Washington native who played college basketball at Saint Francis (2013-14), Howard (2015-17) and Morehead State (2017-18), said she typically went out for brunch on the weekends before ending the day with shopping or a sporting event. She also noted that previously there have been no fan events during Sunday afternoon games, which began around the time most brunches ended. This was a solution to give fans the brunch experience without having to sacrifice attending a Mystics game.

“You can go and enjoy the game,” Blaine said, as Lil Jon and The East Side Boyz’s “Who U Wit” played in the background. “And you’ll be home by 5 a.m..”

With that in mind, the team got here up with the idea of ​​why not mix two of Washingtonians’ favorite things: basketball and brunch.

Washington lives and breathes all types of basketball, with connections from former Washington Capitols coach Red Auerbach to Capitols forward Earl Lloyd (the first black man to play in the NBA), to legendary NBA forward and Washington native Elgin Baylor, to Phoenix Suns forward Kevin Durant, also a Washington native. Youth basketball is essential here, and John Thompson’s legacy is perpetuated at Georgetown University.

And based solely on subjective opinion and self-promotion, Washington is generally known as the brunch capital of the country. A meal of shrimp, grits, eggs, and lamb chops mixed with the feeling of sitting in the middle of a nightclub—few cities offer a greater experience than Washington. Not to say that brunch is greater than food and booze. It’s a probability to let out with friends and have a great time. For just a few hours on the weekend, there aren’t any worries about work, bills, or anything that doesn’t bring you happiness.

“We hang out, drink mimosas, eat good food and have a great time,” said Blaine, wearing a black and red Howard shirt and red skirt.

“Brunch is very much a D.C. institution,” Campbell said. “So let’s take something that’s already happening in our community, combine it with basketball, another experience that’s very big and popular in D.C., combine the two and see what happens.”

While the primary goal of any promotion is to expand the brand, this season the focus has been on the WNBA.

Attendance and viewership records have been broken across the league. Marketing plans are attempting to capitalize on the league’s renewed interest this season, which is partly because of the 2024 draft class highlighted by No. 1 pick Caitlin Clark of the Indiana Fever and No. 7 pick Angel Reese of the Chicago Sky. For Brunch & Basketball, marketing is concentrated on three major things: bringing Washington’s brunch culture to the Mystics brand, attracting latest and younger fans, and appealing to black women, who’re a part of their core demographic. (Blacks make up 32% of the WNBA’s viewership on ESPN and 45% on ION, in keeping with a July report.)

Campbell said black women make up a “large portion” of the Mystics’ fan base. Attracting a broader audience is an obvious goal for the company, but the team is careful to not lose touch with its core audience.

“We try to stay true to our DNA,” Campbell said.

After the marketing team settled on the Brunch & Basketball concept, they set to work securing each a venue and a caterer. The Entertainment & Sports Arena, where the G League’s Mystics and Capital City Go-Go play their home games, is across the street from Sycamore & Oak, an all-wood, 23,000-square-foot multipurpose space that serves the predominantly black community of Ward 8. It’s home to black-owned streetwear shops and restaurants, including a vegan hot dog joint aptly named Glizzy’s Vegan Food Company (glizzy is locally used to confer with hot dogs and half-rods).

The Mystics saw Sycamore & Oak as a chance to extend foot traffic. They didn’t want the retail stores to shut for Brunch & Basketball. Attendees visited the stores during the three-hour event.

“Our goal is also to attract our fans to the Sycamore & Oak space and encourage them to visit the businesses there,” Campbell said.

The Mystics originally planned to rotate between five Sycamore & Oak restaurants for every event. The first Brunch & Basketball, held May 19 before the Seattle Storm game, was catered by Dionne’s Good Food, which specializes in chicken wings and crab fries, a Washington-area specialty. Brunches on June 22 (Dallas Wings), July 14 (Las Vegas Aces) and Sept. 15 (Atlanta Dream) were catered by Afro Caribbean restaurant Tricey’s D.C.

When the team announced the promotion in May, the news spread like wildfire. A Front Office Sports post on X garnered nearly 2 million views. ESPN wrote a chunk on Brunch & Basketball, highlighting the “bottomless mimosas” in its heading.

“We were a little surprised,” Campbell said. “We’ve always believed in the concept, but yes, we were a little surprised.”

As a part of the historically black colleges and universities theme for the Sept. 15 event, the Howard dance team danced to a routine backed by Ciara’s “1, 2 Step.” Participants wore costumes from every Divine Nine black fraternity and sorority organization with Greek letters, not to say HBCU Howard, Florida A&M, Morgan State and North Carolina A&T.

The crowd was made up of many alternative groups: Girls out. Boys hanging out. Mixed groups of friends. Couples with babies in strollers.

The event captured Washingtonian fashion. Braids, twists, low-cut hair. Graphic tees paired with baggy jeans, short shorts accentuated with fanny packs. Lots of Air Jordans, and even just a few from Salehe Bembury x Crocs (or as I call them: Fancy Crocs). You don’t show as much as brunch in a flared bodice.

“It’s kind of an agreement. If you know, you know,” Blaine said. “If I’m going out all day, I’m going to brunch, I’m dressed all day.”

While the DJ spun hit after hit after hit. SWV’s “Right Here” (Michael Jackson’s version, in fact). Beyoncé’s “Get Me Bodied,” GoldLink’s “Crew,” Boosie Badazz’s verse on “Independent.” Of course, there was an Afrobeats interlude and just a few seconds of Elvis Crespo’s “Suavemente.”

Overall, Brunch & Basketball was successful. The team sold out all 4 of its events this season, sometimes having to sell extra tickets to maintain up with demand. After hosting the inaugural Brunch & Basketball in the upper mezzanine at Sycamore & Oak (approximate capability: 200), the Mystics rented out the entire space for the last three events (capability: 300 to 400).

Next season, the Mystics marketing team hopes so as to add more programming to the brunch events and work with more community stakeholders to further emphasize the team’s concentrate on making this a Washington event. They also wish to add more…space.

“Our next good problem is figuring out how to fit more,” Blaine said.

As the court case nears its conclusion, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp has decided to take matters into his own hands.. September seventeenth he signed an executive order that enables universities within the state to directly pay athletes based on name, likeness and image (NIL) transactions.

According to the , Kemp’s order violates NCAA rules and prohibits each the governing body and any conference that Georgia schools belong to from imposing penalties on schools that pay players under NIL agreements.

The settlement already includes an identical resolution, but those rules, once agreed to and finalized, wouldn’t go into effect until the beginning of the subsequent academic 12 months, whereas Kemp’s executive order is effective immediately. An analogous law was passed in July 2024 by the Virginia legislature, giving Virginia universities the flexibility to pay their athletes directly without fear of NCAA punishment.

According to sources, neither the University of Georgia nor Georgia Tech, the state’s two flagship universities, have immediate plans to pay players. Georgia athletic director Josh Brooks and Georgia Tech athletic director J Batt issued a joint statement thanking Gov. Kemp for essentially giving them a head start on recruiting, but they took no motion on paying players right now.

“We extend our sincere gratitude to Governor Brian Kemp for his leadership today,” the athletic directors told ESPN. “In the absence of statewide name, image and likeness regulations, this executive order helps our institutions have the necessary tools to fully support our student-athletes as they pursue NIL opportunities, remain competitive with our peers and ensure the long-term success of our athletic programs.”

The Georgia and Virginia laws mean that schools in each states could start paying players immediately and and not using a cap on the quantity, unlike the proposed antitrust settlement, which might limit NIL payments to just over $20 million in the primary 12 months and increase 12 months after 12 months. If schools in those states were to start paying their players, the NCAA’s only recourse can be one other court battle.

According to , the implementing regulation stated that the estate had introduced inconsistent regulations regarding intercollegiate sports“Legislative and regulatory actions across the country create a patchwork of inconsistent rules governing intercollegiate athletic competitions,” the chief order states.

The NCAA, the Power Five conferences (SEC, ACC, BIG 12, PAC 12, BIG 10) and attorneys for plaintiffs in three antitrust cases asked a federal judge in California to approve a settlement involving nearly $2.8 billion in damages, but on September 5, U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken said she wouldn’t approve the present settlement.

Wilken reportedly has an issue with the proposed NCAA rules, calling them “pretty harsh” and wondered whether the agreement would cause athletes to lose payments they’d already received from the NIL collectives. The parties, Judge Wilken and the attorneys, agreed that the attorneys would return with an amendment to the agreement by September 26.

The scene played out similarly to many others we’ve seen over time.

A black man detained by police for an apparently trivial crime was surrounded by several officers, forced to the bottom, a knee placed on his back, and handcuffed.

In some cases, the incident escalates to the purpose where the black man is choked, tasered or, God forbid, shot. And in even rarer cases, the black man is someone the general public has seen on their television screens countless times.

That was the case Sunday when Miami Dolphins guard Tyreek Hill was handcuffed, detained by Miami-Dade police, after which issued tickets for careless driving and never wearing a seat belt on his approach to the team’s game at Hard Rock Stadium. Body camera video The incident shows Hill was hostile toward the officer. He was asked to indicate identification and ordered to maintain his window down. He was later dragged from his automobile and thrown face-first into the roadway while 4 officers stood over him, one of whom put his knee into Hill’s back and handcuffed him.

Although Hill was released from custody with only two tickets, the incident once again highlights the issue of escalating police violence in America and the acute exposure to it that black drivers in particular are subject to.

When it involves race and policing, there’s a natural tendency in this country to stay your fingers in your ear and loudly scream “la la la la la.” “And it’s the same with white people. It’s the same with white people. What a terrible question,” said then-President Donald Trump said when asked by CBS in 2020 about police killings of black Americans.

When Hill spoke to reporters after Sunday’s game, he appeared to wish to avoid talking in regards to the role race played in his arrest.

“It’s tough. I don’t want to bring race into it, but sometimes it gets a little shaky when you do it,” he said. “What if I wasn’t Tyreek Hill? God knows what those guys would have done.”

Hill added that his uncle at all times told him that when coping with police, “put your hands on the wheel and just listen.” Never mind that it’s part of a “conversation” many black parents have with their children about learn how to cope with racism in this country, including in relation to police. If Hill were white, his uncle likely would never have had that conversation with him. A 2021 Stanford University study found that after the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis policeWhite parents were less prone to seek advice from their children about race (“Everyone is treated equally. The color of their skin doesn’t matter,” one parent responded).

There are countless examples across the country of police responding to uninhibited, trivial matters and escalating them into violence or death. Floyd was accused of passing a counterfeit $20 bill before officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes. Philando Castile was pulled over by police in St. Anthony, Minnesota, for a broken taillight before he was fatally shot. Sandra Bland was pulled over for failing to make a lane change by a Texas police officer who eventually arrested her after he ordered her out of her automobile when she didn’t put out a cigarette. Bland was found hanging in her jail cell three days later. Police ruled her death a suicide.

Florida is not any different. In June 2020, a Miami-Dade police officer was caught on video punching a black woman in the face at Miami International Airport after the lady argued with airport staff. As for Hill’s case, a 2014 study conducted by the American Civil Liberties Union found that black drivers in Florida were stopped and ticketed for not wearing seat belts at almost twice the speed of white drivers.

These types of pretextual stops, where officers pull over drivers for minor infractions in hopes of finding a more serious crime, typically involve black drivers. test found that black and Latino drivers were more likely than white drivers to be stopped and searched by police. As the cases of Castile and Bland show, there’s a risk that those stops can end in deadly encounters.

“It needs to be addressed,” Dolphins defensive end Jevon Holland said after Sunday’s game. “Excessive force against a black male is not uncommon. It’s a very common thing in America. It needs to be addressed on a national level.”

And part of the issue in the case of race and policing is the responsibility of those tasked with protecting the American people. There’s no denying that police have a difficult job, but like everyone else in this country, they shouldn’t be immune from criticism or consequences. Police could be protected by qualified immunity, which shields them from lawsuits, and a few departments have fought to maintain records of police misconduct from the general public.

Not to say that the police lie lots. The original statement released by the Minneapolis Police Department said Floyd was affected by “medical issues” before his death, omitting any mention of Chauvin kneeling on his neck. Despite video evidence that apparently showed Hill compliant and never resisting being handcuffed, the union representing Miami-Dade cops issued an announcement Monday saying that “at no point was (Hill) arrested,” that Hill “did not immediately cooperate,” and that Hill was “taken to the ground” after refusing to take a seat down. It made no mention of the knee being placed in his back.

Although the Miami-Dade Police Department has temporarily placed one of its officers on administrative duties, Steadman Stahl, president of the South Florida Police Benevolent Association, he said on a neighborhood radio program that “If Mr. Hill had just complied, it would have just sped up the whole process. He didn’t, he decided to escalate the situation and turn it into something bigger than just a Dolphins victory.”

The key word here is “escalate.” Hill ignored the officers, telling them to rush up, give him a ticket, and stop knocking on his window. He has a checkered record, including a July 2023 citation from Miami-Dade police for punching a marina worker in South Florida. But history has shown that police aren’t at all times the perfect at de-escalating situations, especially when Black individuals are involved. Hill’s teammate, Calais Campbell, the NFL’s 2019 Walter Payton Man of the Year Award winner, was handcuffed for pulling over to support Hill on the side of the road. (Campbell said Monday morning that he witnessed officers kicking Hill.)

Should Hill have been speeding? No. Should he have been wearing a seatbelt? Absolutely. But in a world where a Castile or Bland death could occur after being stopped by police, there isn’t any reason Hill’s situation must have escalated to being stopped and treated as a suspect in a violent crime. The proven fact that one of the officers was faraway from duty is an indication of how badly this all went down.

“That should tell you everything you need to know,” Hill said of the officer, who was placed on administrative duty. “I’m just happy that my teammates were there to support me in my situation, because I was feeling lonely. When they showed up, I realized we have a hell of a team this year, since they’re risking their lives. It was amazing.”