Tribeca At Home: Unfinished Business

I got the opportunity to screen the documentary "Unfinished Business" which discusses the WNBA and one of its flagship franchises: The New York Liberty. Directed by Alison Klayman, the documentary correlate the early days of the WNBA with the struggles of the NY Liberty goes through as they play their first season in the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. Players from the past and present alongside various personnel who played or analyze the WNBA.

The film starts off with the beginning of the league and how the interest was peaked after the 1996 Olympics where the US women's basketball team won gold and the NBA took notice. From there the documentary showcase the present struggles of the NY Liberty who in the early days of the league was one of the dominant teams to now where we struggling to make the postseason. Talking to former players you get a sense of why they played in a league that was very experimental to now where most of the players wasn't even born when the league opened up in 1997. The struggles to become mainstream was hard for the league and now with social media and current topics the documentary looks at how the Liberty players along with the league surviving the times.

The first Liberty roster with Rebecca Lobo, Teresa Witherspoon, Kym Hampton led the Liberty to the league finals three times where it matched up with the Houston Comets which a couple of superstars of their own. The chronological line between what the Liberty went through in the beginning compared to today's squad is impressive because the documentary showcase that through out the years the league and its teams have tried its best to maintain a piece of the sports landscape. A portion of the documentary is dedicated to the struggles of players who out as lesbians where the league and its owner(The NBA) did not know how to market to mainstream America.

I love the details of the documentary and highly recommend it for those who are historians of the game, fans of the league or want to learn more about women's basketball.