144

Three months after the 2020 WNBA season was postponed by the Covid-19 pandemic, the league set out to play a condensed season, entirely in a bubble on the campus of IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida. 144 players across 12 teams embarked on a season they’ll never forget, and they’ll never be the same for it. 144 is the inside story of what unfolded over the two-and-a-half-month season, culled from the extensive, exclusive coverage by ESPN cameras embedded in the bubble. For the players, the decision to participate in the season was predicated on the opportunity they’d have to participate in the reckoning with racial injustice that swept America in the summer of 2020; in particular their response to the death of Breonna Taylor in Louisville during a police raid. From the outset of the season, with tributes to Taylor on every jersey on the court, it was clear that while basketball was the reason they were together, the 144 players were committed to ensuring that the game was very much a path to making sure their collective voice – and collective outrage – was heard. Never was that resolve more intense than in the wake of another police shooting tragedy, the shooting of Jacob Blake, a month into the bubble in August. The league went on pause, and as the film reveals in gripping fashion, the players contemplated the very reason they were playing at all. Ultimately, the WNBA played the season to its conclusion, with the Seattle Storm defeating the Las Vegas Aces in the Finals. Who won and lost, however, was hardly the central story of a season like no other.