The 2019 Washington Mystics never got to celebrate their 2019 WNBA championship like most teams before and after them. Let’s go back to why.
Last week, we took a look at where the players on the 2019 Washington Mystics were, five years after their championship. Typically, when a professional sports team, including the WNBA champions, wins it all, they get a championship parade in the city and visit the White House the following season where the President of the United States congratulates them.
Let’s see what happened last time a professional basketball team in D.C. won a championship, what the 2019 Mystics received and why some of these things didn’t happen.
The 1977-78 Washington Bullets were the last professional basketball team to win a championship and had traditional treatment — maybe more than traditional in some respects.
After the then-Bullets (now the Washington Wizards) won their championship in 1978, they did so on the road in Seattle after beating the then-SuperSonics (now the Oklahoma City Thunder) in a seven game series. Washington flew back to Dulles Airport in Loudoun County where they were given a heroes’ welcome on June 8.
On June 9, the Bullets had an 11-mile parade starting in Landover, Md., where the team played at the time, through D.C. and eventually to the White House to visit then-U.S. President Jimmy Carter.
Photo by Bettmann Archive/Getty Images
About 100,000 fans came to Prince George’s County, Md. and D.C. to see the parade. And it’s quite notable that President Carter wasted no time to welcome the Bullets into the White House after winning the championship! And talk about a loooong parade route!
The 2019 Mystics only had a one-day celebration in D.C. the day after winning the WNBA championship. The team had a private ring ceremony in June 2020.
Unlike the 1977-78 Bullets, the 2019 Mystics only had a one-day celebration party the day after winning the WNBA Finals. They had a private ring ceremony in 2020 which most of the 2019 team attended, except for Kim Mestdagh, who received her ring a few months later. The championship banner was unveiled in the 2021 season opener.
Not exactly what the Bullets had. So why? In short, it wasn’t because of supposed unequal treatment. Rather, it was the circumstances of the times.
- The Mystics didn’t have a championship parade in 2019 because of many players’ international commitments — Emma Meesseman, the 2019 WNBA Finals MVP had to leave on Oct. 12 to report to UMMC Ekaterinburg in Russia. She wasn’t the only one, but still the most notable. After all, she wasn’t on ABC’s Good Morning America a few days later.
- The Mystics intended on having a parade in 2020, but the coronavirus pandemic stopped that from happening — And on top of that, it never got rescheduled. Then again, holding a parade two or three years after the fact is moot.
- A White House visit? It wouldn’t have happened anyway — The Mystics won the 2019 WNBA Finals when Donald Trump was the U.S. President. During his presidency, none of the WNBA championship teams in that time were invited to visit the White House. Natasha Cloud openly wondered whether Trump’s successor and current U.S. President Joe Biden would invite the Mystics for a “make up visit,” but he didn’t. That said, WNBA championship teams have resumed visiting since Biden has lived at 1600 Penn.
I certainly feel that the Mystics didn’t get normal treatment as a WNBA championship team. But it also happened right before a major pandemic and during a political climate that wasn’t friendly to the league. Do you still feel that the 2019 Mystics deserve another traditional celebration of some kind? Let us know in the comments below.