WNBA coverage is growing, but so is the tension surrounding the league. Broadcaster Elle Duncan believes the intense debates around women’s basketball are pulling attention away from the talent, achievements, and stories that make the sport worth watching.
Elle Duncan said WNBA coverage has become toxic as hell, and at the Front Office Sports Tuned In Summit on Tuesday, October 13, 2026, she doubled down on it.
What makes the point land is the reason she gave. “The reason it’s toxic is because you love it so much, because there are so many incredible things about it,” she said. The volume is the problem, not the subject.
“And to have it deduced to a culture war is disgusting, and it sucks,” she said.
Duncan, a broadcaster, had used the phrase before. Asked about it on the stage, she did not take it back.
Then she closed the exit she could have taken. “You do not throw your hands up and go, ‘Well, never mind. It’s too toxic, and I can’t deal with it,'” she said.
“The only way through this is through this.”
The players did not start the fight the league is being run through, and they are the ones carrying it. The sentence Duncan ended on is the usable part, and it is not only about basketball.
