Brooklyn Nets forward Michael Porter Jr. has come under fire from Angel McCoughtry for his recent comments about the WNBA. McCoughtry appeared on Higher Learning with Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay, where she called out Porter for talking about beating WNBA players when he was in the eighth grade.
“First of all, congratulations,” McCoughtry said. “You was dominating against women in the eighth grade. What does he want? Does he want a cookie? You want a medal for that? I think the only thing that should be coming out of a man’s mouth about women is uplifting her.”
McCoughtry, who made five All-Star, six All-WNBA, and seven All-Defensive teams, appreciated the fact that Porter was playing against women in Missouri growing up. The 39-year-old stated that they do need males to do that, but is puzzled by the forward’s need to make such comments on the Ball in the Family podcast. McCoughtry, frustrated by these comments, then proceeded to take quite a wild shot at NBA players.
“I think the main thing we should be talking about a woman, guess what?” McCoughtry stated. “When I got to come and drop 40 and I’m on my f***ing period and I’m bleeding and my stomach hurts and my back hurts, when y’all load manage off a headache. Guess what? Let’s talk about how awesome that is.
“Let’s talk about how awesome it is that women, we have these babies and we come back and still dominate sports,” McCoughtry added. “… Yeah, you can dunk. A lot of us can’t do that. But the awesome things we can do, let’s highlight that. Guess what? We are wives. So, it’s not easy to take care of a husband and kids and come and dominate a sport.”
The WNBA players and female athletes in general do deserve a lot of credit for competing at the highest level, even with all that’s going on in their personal lives. McCoughtry believes the very best male athletes do give it to them, and it’s only the likes of Porter who don’t.
“Kobe [Bryant] don’t say that kind of stuff about us,” McCoughtry said. “He never did. He only uplifted us and supported us. [LeBron James] don’t talk that kind of stuff. Why the elites don’t talk like that?”
McCoughtry, who won two scoring titles and made the WNBA’s 25th Anniversary Team, also added that she has beaten a lot of grown men on the court. She did acknowledge, though, that there would be some eighth-grade boys who could beat WNBA players, but not all of them.
McCoughtry believes Porter might change his outlook if he gets a closer look at how the players operate.
“Come practice with us,” McCoughtry stated. “I think he needs to see the ins and outs of how hard we do work and how much we do put our bodies through because sometimes they just look through this lens from the outside and they don’t they don’t really see the inside. And I think if he came and spent the day with us, he would have a new appreciation.”
Time will tell if Porter accepts that offer. Now, to be fair to the 27-year-old, he did make it clear that these conversations need to stop. Porter also revealed the Nets have told him to stop dissing the WNBA, among other things. He has ruffled plenty of feathers with all that he has said in the past, like when he once claimed his high school boys’ team could beat the WNBA All-Stars.
As for McCoughtry, she last played in the WNBA in 2022, but made it clear on The Women’s Hoops Show that she hasn’t retired just yet. The two-time Olympic gold medalist is hoping she gets a call from a team.
