The Real Love Story At The WNBA All-Star Weekend

When I wake up on Thursday for the first day of All-Star Weekend, I am desperate to get my chin waxed.

This weekend could be big for me. I am a 36-year-old long-time Chicagoan who didn’t figure out how to start queer dating until my early 30s, and as I tearfully admitted to my therapist recently, women’s basketball is my primary love language.

My early 30s also coincided with a career shift from working in audio documentaries to becoming a full-time WNBA writer, a league I’ve loved since I started palming a basketball in fourth grade, and coming into my own queerness has been entirely intertwined with becoming a women’s basketball writer. The more I observe WNBA players claiming their queerness, the more I’m driven to do so myself, and to write about it. Last weekend, though, I avoided the press room entirely, craving new connections out in the wild. I had a three-day itinerary including parties, fan activations, and a standup comedy show, with finding romance at the 2026 WNBA All-Star Weekend top of mind.

At my local salon, an ethereal song plays on loop, and under the aesthetician’s gentle touch, I let myself imagine it: an unexpected meeting, a new spark, the sudden warmth of flirting all night. Then she rips the hard wax, burning across my chin.

Lesbians and women’s basketball have been synonymous since the sport’s 19th century inception, but it’s currently seen as very cool. Gabby Williams and Marine Johannes embody a kind of sapphic heated rivalry, and arenas are thought of as a form of “Lesbian Disneyland.” During All-Star Weekend in Chicago, events span from parties by a group called The Lesbian Social Club to a cafe where players take fans’ coffee orders.

With my chin now hairless, I head to a low-key “fireside chat” with analyst Andraya Carter (beloved lesbian of ESPN) and basketball writer/podcast host Jordan Robinson in the beautiful back patio of Babe’s, my favorite women’s sports bar in Chicago. It feels more like a picnic: Everyone is wearing sunglasses and sipping cocktails in the sun while Andraya and Jordan chat about storytelling and the WNBA. As I listen, I daydream about questions I could whisper to a girlfriend as we fall asleep, such as: Which narratives of queerness in early WNBA history do you think still need to be told?

I don’t catch flirty vibes from anyone at the event, but I do run into an acquaintance I met almost 10 years ago. They joke that this weekend, they should chronicle their experience as a single lesbian.

“Maybe I should wingwoman you,” I offer, wondering if a partner seeking romantic shenanigans might be exactly what I need. “I’m doing that too.”

They look at me flatly. “Are you gay?” they ask, skeptical.

I feel myself prickling. “Yes.”

“Are you sure?” they say.

I feel like I’ve been dropped into a bathtub of cold water and have no snarky response, just the feeling that I mistook my insides for something else entirely.

Elsewhere throughout the weekend, I spend a lot of time standing in long lines under the overbearing Chicago heat, draped around city blocks. After I make it into a fan clubhouse from the Togxther brand I run into someone named Ro, who recognizes me from another event. Ro has that swaggy masc style of short hair parted down the middle, brushed backwards with the confidence of a hairstylist, which apparently she is (swoon). We complain about the lines and the free products she’s grabbed (Aveeno face mist, a popsicle) before she starts telling me about a party she threw recently at a women’s sports bar… for her engagement. How lovely. For them.

On another afternoon, I find myself on the dance floor at Babe’s, where I’m helping to host an event called “Party Like It’s 1996,” with former players from the WBL and ABL (pro leagues in the U.S. that preceded the WNBA), now in their 50s and 60s. Watching them do the Electric Slide with the vigor of a starting lineup, I realize that I couldn’t care less about spending my time finding a fling this weekend. In fact, I’m happier dancing, soaking in the former players’ aura, not caring about what other people think, whooping it up at a 3 p.m. dance party to “Funkytown.”

One night, I’m biking through golden hour in Chicago, a little buzzed off a single gin and soda, to meet my friend (technically, my ex) at WNBA player-turned-comedians Sydney Colson and Theresa Plaisance, widely known as Syd and TP, do standup. From a corner of the balcony, we howl together at their jokes, slapping the pews beneath us. Later that night, thanks to someone I know from college who works with celesbians (lesbian celebrities), we’re waved through nondescript doors of a hotel basement in the West Loop for Syd and TP’s afterparty.

With walls of bookshelves, the room looks like an ornate library, although I’m pretty sure the books have never been touched. Legendary player Tina Charles is boogying to the DJ in sunglasses and a slick pantsuit. I’m pretty sure Sue Bird’s full smile materializes in my peripheral vision. Is this heaven?

Thanks to someone I know from college who works with celesbians (lesbian celebrities), we’re waved through nondescript doors of a hotel basement in the West Loop for Syd and TP’s afterparty. With walls of bookshelves, the room looks like an ornate library — though I’m pretty sure the books have never been touched. Legendary player Tina Charles is boogying to the DJ in sunglasses and a slick pantsuit. I’m pretty sure Sue Bird’s full smile materializes in my peripheral vision. Is this heaven?

I am by the bar with an Aperol Spritz when I sense Syd and TP nearby, somehow in-between things. Even though on the way, my friend and I reassured each other that we didn’t need to make players chat with us, I start telling myself: this is your moment. She’s right there! So I turn to TP and say, “You did amazing. I don’t even care about the WNBA anymore. I’m just here to support your comedy.”

I am by the bar with an Aperol spritz when I sense Syd and TP nearby, somehow in between things. Even though on the way, my friend and I reassured each other that we didn’t need to make players chat with us, I start telling myself: This is your moment. She’s right there! So I turn to TP and say, “You did amazing. I don’t even care about the WNBA anymore. I’m just here to support your comedy.”

TP faces me with a big, relaxed smile and a bulky, dark denim jacket. Then she says: “What’s your name?” The low bass of her voice reverberates through me like an organ.

“I’m Maya,” I say.

“I’m Theresa,” she says. “But everyone calls me TP.”

I nod, as though I didn’t already know. Cool, I want to say, I am putty actually.

“I love that you’re honoring women’s basketball history,” I stammer, pointing to the video clips of games dating back to the 1970s playing behind her. This, of course, is my niche.

“Oh yeah, I need to learn more about that stuff,” she says.

“Well, there’s this really sexist logo from a pro women’s team in the ‘70s,” I say. “Want to see?”

She does. I fumble with my phone to show her: an illustration of a flirty femme deer, mascot of the Milwaukee Does, complete with curled eyelashes and a shapely figure.

“Oh, that’s cute,” she says earnestly. “I’d wear it on a T-shirt.”

The image of TP wearing this out-of-touch logo is hilarious, and also somehow a reclamation.

I laugh. “Oh, I’ll definitely get you a T-shirt.”

I’m not sure if she meant it literally or hypothetically, but my mind races: How quickly can I mock something up, get it printed? How would I deliver it? I want to ask for her number but don’t want to be too forward. Before I manage to say anything, someone else taps her on the shoulder. She turns, embracing them like a long-lost family member.

Alas. On the dance floor, Syd appears to be grinding against a tall speaker, fully in her own world. A few people are twerking barefoot. And that’s when I realize All-Star Weekend is best experienced with no expectations: less questing for a fling, more letting loose. Women’s basketball offers a community where queer people can be the main characters and where platonic love can run just as deep as romance.

I spend the rest of the evening dancing and twirling my fanny pack in the air. I’m sweating profusely and don’t care how I look.

That said, on the chance TP is reading this, I have a message: If you’d like your Milwaukee Does shirt delivered in person, I’ll be happy to do so. And while I’m there, I’m happy to share my Google Slides presentation on historical gay couples in pre-WNBA pro women’s basketball, too.