Double Crossover: Gender, Media, and Politics in Global Basketball

As they compete in leagues around the world, elite women’s basketball players continually adjust to new cultures, rules, and contracts.

Courtney M. Cox follows athletes, coaches, journalists, and advocates of women’s basketball as they pursue careers within the sport. Despite all attempts to contain them or prevent forward momentum, they circumvent expectations and open new possibilities within and outside of the game. Throughout the book, Cox explores the intersection of race and gender against the backdrop of the WNBA, NCAA, and other leagues within the United States and around the world. Blending interviews and participant observation with content analysis, she charts how athletes and advocates of women’s hoops illuminate new forms of navigating the global sports-media complex.

Timely and original, Double Crossover takes readers into the lived world of women’s basketball to shed light on the struggles, triumphs, and contributions of today’s players and those around them.

Courtney M. Cox is an assistant professor in the Department of Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies at the University of Oregon and the co-director of The Sound of Victory, a multi-platform digital humanities project.