MINNEAPOLIS — During WNBA All-Star weekend, the StudBudz became a cultural sensation. Lynx guards and best friends Courtney Williams and Natisha Hiedeman streamed the weekend live, capturing players both on the court and in the club. Their stream pulled in more than 300,000 views, sparked buzz on X, and led to merch collaborations with TOGETHXR and Playa Society.
“We wanted people to have access to know our real, true, genuine selves,” Hiedeman said Tuesday at the team shootaround.
Even their coach gave them props.
“The league needs to send them some serious thank you,” Cheryl Reeve said.
That a livestream called StudBudz — starring two of the league’s best personalities, both Black and queer — could become such a powerful marketing tool for the WNBA says a lot about how far the league, and the world around it, has come.
“When I first got in the league, there was a way that we were supposed to dress and carry ourselves,” Sky veteran Elizabeth Williams said Tuesday. “We were trying to be perceived a certain way.”
As former players have pointed out, early WNBA marketing pushed a palatable, feminine image. The league debated shortening shorts, tightening jerseys — anything that might make players more “societally pretty,” as Reeve put it.
Business leaders feared the league would fail unless it appealed to corporate America. Being out wasn’t accepted. Authenticity came with risk.
A lot has changed since then: LGBTQ+ communities have fought for acceptance and shifted the culture. Now, WNBA players can be themselves without being managed or silenced.
The commissioner herself joined the StudBudz stream, dancing with Hiedeman and Williams in the club.
“My goodness,” Reeve joked, reflecting on how far things have come, “you have the commissioner becoming a stud herself.”
That clip, and the weekend it captured, traveled far. Even Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy — not exactly known for uplifting the league — tuned in.
“Studbudz has done more marketing for the @WNBA with their 72-hour stream than the bozos running the league have done since its inception,” Portnoy tweeted. “They are hilarious and humanize everybody …”
Portnoy is right, though let’s not get carried away with his wisdom. Of course a player-led, behind-the-scenes stream is more relatable than anything cooked up by marketing interns.
But why is the players’ humanity a revelation?
In part because of people like Portnoy. As the league has exploded in popularity, dehumanizing narratives have followed — like the idea that players are petty and resent Caitlin Clark. Portnoy helped drive that, labeling them “jealous loser punks” and “jackasses.”
Then the StudBudz stream revealed that the league isn’t actually a jealous mess. It’s a joyful one. Players pranked each other, posed with Clark’s aunts, passed around bottles of Crown Royal, and called it the best weekend of their lives.
For Reeve, it was cathartic — a chance to “push aside a false narrative and say, ‘that’s not what’s real, this is what’s real.’”
For others, it offered something else: perspective. On his podcast, Portnoy said: “Everyone seemed to like [the players] and get along. Caitlin [Clark] would be on the stream and then Angel [Reese] is on the stream. And then people I thought I hated, and it’s like, ‘oh, they’re kind of normal, being funny.’”
And honestly, Portnoy’s change of heart is something to get carried away with — because it means other people might, too.
Tuesday morning after shootaround, Hiedeman discussed the influx of sponsor interest in StudBudz and why she thinks it’s just getting started.
“The way we view people is changing,” she said.
Authenticity still comes with risk. But now, it comes with a much bigger return. It may even be the thing that drives the league forward.
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