# Women's sports **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Tags:** basketball-nba\ **Created:** [March 1, 2026, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/womens-sports/1028113 "2026-03-01T18:38:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2026, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/womens-sports/1028113/88 "2026-03-03T20:44:23Z")
> [@hideousidiot](#): > > It’s incredibly disingenuous to pretend that this isn’t asking a clear and direct question. It’s even more disingenuous to pretend that was the entirety of the post. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2026, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/womens-sports/1028113/89 "2026-03-03T20:44:31Z")
> [@hideousidiot](#): > > It’s incredibly disingenuous to pretend that this isn’t asking a clear and direct question It’s also incredibly disingenuous to ignore the rest of his post. ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2026, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/womens-sports/1028113/90 "2026-03-03T20:45:11Z")
Here’s a lesson kids… If you don’t want people to read and respond to something, don’t write it. ---
**Author:** ![hideousidiot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/858c86/32.png) [@hideousidiot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hideousidiot)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2026, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/womens-sports/1028113/91 "2026-03-03T20:48:24Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > Only _after_ he spent three paragraphs detailing his opinion that women’s sports are uninteresting and inferior to him, and poisoning the well for the thread. He expressed an opinion that you don’t happen to hold. This isn’t poisoning the well in the slightest–it’s simply making clear his reasons for wanting to have his question answered. Does everyone whose opinion differs from yours stand accused of “poisoning the well”? Apparently so. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2026, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/womens-sports/1028113/92 "2026-03-03T20:51:38Z")
> [@hideousidiot](#): > > He expressed an opinion that you don’t happen to hold. This isn’t poisoning the well in the slightest–it’s simply making clear his reasons for wanting to have his question answered As I have said several times already in this thread: he is absolutely entitled to his opinion. If he wanted an objective answer to his question, he did a poor job of framing it, IMO. His OP came across, to me, as “women’s basketball is terrible, ain’t it? Just how terrible is it?” ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2026, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/womens-sports/1028113/93 "2026-03-03T20:53:45Z")
> [@hideousidiot](#): > > This isn’t poisoning the well in the slightest The OP apparently disagrees with you, because the OP didn’t want the discussion to be about those comments. If their own comments took the thread into a direction they didn’t want it to go, they have poisoned the well against themselves. The problem is that you have everything backwards. It’s not the other posters in this thread with an issue about a difference of opinion, it’s the OP. The OP put forward a manifesto and expected everyone to go along with it before presenting a scenario. When the rest of the posters didn’t agree with the manifesto, they couldn’t deal with it. You are seeing intolerance incorrectly, and I’m not sure there’s anything that we can do about that. ---
**Author:** ![hideousidiot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/858c86/32.png) [@hideousidiot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hideousidiot)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2026, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/womens-sports/1028113/94 "2026-03-03T20:58:41Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > women’s basketball is terrible, ain’t it? And plenty of sports-loving people think precisely that. The theme of the responses in this thread (I can’t dignify them by calling them “answers”) seems to be “If you hold that opinion, you’re a horrible human being.” Me, personally, when my reaction to an OP is “I don’t accept your premise” I exercise restraint and scroll away. In this case, even if I did reject the premise, my response–no, my answer–would have been to opine that “X level of men’s basketball would defeat the WNBA champs” and then to tell the OP how profoundly I disagreed with his views on women’s basketball. ---
**Author:** ![steronz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steronz/32/11765_2.png) [@steronz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/steronz)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2026, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/womens-sports/1028113/95 "2026-03-03T20:59:35Z")
Please just acknowledge that there was another question in the OP. I need to know that we live in the same objective reality. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2026, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/womens-sports/1028113/96 "2026-03-03T21:04:20Z")
> [@hideousidiot](#): > > And plenty of sports-loving people think precisely that. The theme of the responses in this thread (I can’t dignify them by calling them “answers”) seems to be “If you hold that opinion, you’re a horrible human being.” He felt the need to express his opinion in a dismissive and demeaning fashion, before ever even asking his question. The reaction to that is entirely unsurprising, and the OP’s annoyance that that’s what what dominated his thread, when he did it to himself, is his problem. ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2026, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/womens-sports/1028113/97 "2026-03-03T21:50:02Z")
> [@steronz](#): > > Please just acknowledge that there was another question in the OP. I need to know that we live in the same objective reality. @hideousidiot, can you please respond to this? This was the only instance of a question mark in the OP: > [@mglambo](#): > > It’s the entertainment business so why not watch the best? Later, the OP asks us to choose which level a WNBA team would beat. Some people answered the first, some answered the second. Can you see that question in the OP? Is OK to answer only that one and let other posters answer the other? ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2026, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/womens-sports/1028113/98 "2026-03-03T22:05:19Z")
The OP has likely given up on his thread, but if one wanted to ask the question objectively, a post could look like this, with no mention of extraneous stuff like “I choose to not watch women’s sports because they’re not as good as the men”: %%% It appears to be a given that female athletes in most sports, even at the top tier, would likely not be able to be competitive in a head-to-head match-up against male athletes at a similar level of play (professional, college, etc.) in a given sport (though actual examples of direct competition are limited). For basketball, in particular, I’m interested in opinions as to at which level of play would a strong women’s team – say, the WNBA’s championship team – be likely to be competitive, with a reasonable chance of winning a game: - A weak NBA team (say, the Kings or the Pacers, this year) - A top-25 men’s NCAA Division 1 team - A low-ranked men’s NCAA Division 1 team - A men’s NCAA Division 2 team - A men’s NCAA Division 3 or NAIA team - A nationally-ranked boys’ high school team - A middle-of-the-road boys’ high school team ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2026, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/womens-sports/1028113/99 "2026-03-03T22:27:36Z")
[Moderating] OK, I wanted to give this thread a chance. But since the OP has apparently given up on it, and @hideousidiot seems determined to turn it into a trainwreck, and everyone else is saying the same things, I don’t think there’s any point any more. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2026, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/womens-sports/1028113/100 "2026-03-03T22:27:39Z")
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