Sue Wicks on Her WNBA Legacy — And Reading Lesbian Fanfic in the Liberty Locker Room

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Kellie Landis
In 2002, Sue Wicks became the first WNBA player to publicly come out. At the time, she was making a championship run with the New York Liberty, the only team she had ever played for throughout her five-year career in the then-relatively new professional women’s basketball league.

While being interviewed by Time Out New York, the reporter bluntly asked Wicks if she was gay. “No one would ask that question. So that somebody asked [it] and was like, I want to write about this. That was a big deal,” Wicks recalls in an interview with Them. Her answer? Yes. “I felt like it was a matter-of-fact type of thing.”

Today, Wicks will be inducted into the LGBTQ Sports Hall of Fame. But as we discuss her historic coming out moment, I ask her if she knows she’s a queer icon. She demurs. Instead, she’s just as obsessed with the new gay players as the rest of us are. “[They] are so exciting. There’s drama. It's like reality television in a way.” (I agree.) But as we continue to speak, I can’t help but insist that her 2002 interview was a trailblazing moment. “At that moment, people I knew had come out, [and] it was not positive for them. Ellen [DeGeneres] lost her job. Rosie [O’Donnell], we'd been on her show three times that season and she was still saying she had a crush on Tom Cruise and she was hiding her sexuality,” she tells me. “So that's just to give you an idea, the fear of losing your job, of people's opinions.”

But what I didn’t know was that before coming out, Wicks was already going to parties in the West Village, walking down the street to Henrietta Hudson, a lesbian-owned queer bar in NYC, with her girlfriend and an “entourage” of lipstick lesbians. “Joan Jett was like, ‘Sue, I can't hang out with you. Your entourage is too big.’ And I'm like, entourage?!” It’s safe to say that nowadays, a professional athlete, specifically a WNBA player, would not be able to walk into a queer bar without the whole world knowing. But things were different in the ’90s. Wicks was out in the real world with friends, but had yet to come out to the media. “I think in life, you come out to yourself. Maybe your mom already knows. She's just waiting for you to come out. And then you come out to yourself, a friend, your family, the close people around you. Then maybe work. So it was just a series of coming out [ for me].”

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Sue Wicks #23​

13 Aug 2000: Sue Wicks #23 of the New York Liberty runs with the ball during the Eastern WNBA Playoffs Round 1 Game 1 against the Washington Mystics at the MCI Center in Washington, D.C. The Mystics defeated the Rockers 60-48. NOTE TO USER: It is expressly understood that the only rights Allsport are offering to license in this Photograph are one-time, non-exclusive editorial rights. No advertising or commercial uses of any kind may be made of Allsport photos. User acknowledges that it is aware that Allsport is an editorial sports agency and that NO RELEASES OF ANY TYPE ARE OBTAINED from the subjects contained in the photographs.Mandatory Credit: Doug Pensinger /Allsport
Doug Pensinger

As Wicks describes her experience in the WNBA, she makes it clear that she’s humbled by the legacy she left behind. “I'm proud and feel lucky that I was [playing] in ‘97 on that first [New York Liberty] team,” she tells me. “This team and my teammates, the way we played and showed up for one another, I’m so very proud of that. And I'm so proud to be part of this organization and how it's grown… When we played, girls on other teams would be like, ‘I wish I played for New York.’” In those early years, the Liberty’s roster consisted of WNBA legends including Wicks, Teresa Weatherspoon, Rebecca Lobo, Becky Hammon (who now coaches the Las Vegas Aces), Kym Hampton, and more. As we discuss her teammates, she tells me the most unbelievable thing I have ever heard: They read WNBA fanfiction in the locker room.

“Someone was writing a whole fantasy series about the New York Liberty [players] all being gay. And I was with Rebecca Lobo and we were dying. I remember Becky Hammon brought it to me and she was like, ‘Oh my God, look at this.’ I'm with [Lobo] and I'm like the matriarch and I'm teaching all the younger lesbians how to be gay,” Wicks recalls. My jaw is on the floor. “They were asking me for dating advice, position advice, and the young ones wanted to learn from me. And I'm like, How did I get to be that in this person's mind? But I loved it. We'd be almost peeing our pants laughing at how good this was.” (Someone please find this for me, ASAP.)

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Eastern Conference Finals X​

21 Aug 2001: Sue Wicks #23 of the New York Liberty defends the basket against Elana Baranova #28 of the Miami Sol in game three of the Eastern Conference Finals at Madison Square Garden in New York. The Liberty won 72-61 to take the series 2-1. DIGITAL IMAGE Mandatory Credit: Al Bello/Allsport
Al Bello

It’s funny to look back at how much has changed in the league’s 30-year history, and yet how much has stayed the same. Sapphics have always, and will always, love fanfiction. And the league’s locker rooms fostered relationships that have lasted for decades. When I ask Wicks which player she’d want to play with now if she could, she immediately responds with a joke. “I know who I don't want to play against... I'll call Becky Hammon and I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh. If I had to guard A’ja Wilson, I wouldn't sleep. I would totally be looking on Indeed for a new job like, I can't do that. That's terrifying.’”

As we wrap up our conversation, sitting on the sidelines of the Liberty’s empty practice gym, before the team’s Pride Night game against the Phoenix Mercury — which yes, included a special halftime Elliedonna performance — Wicks reflects on how much the league has grown and changed over the last three decades. From the new CBA and watching players sign historic multi-million dollar deals — “Here's what I'm worth. Pay me. That was the dream. We didn't talk like that.” — to new opportunities like Unrivaled and the growing representation in the league, including the StudBudz.

“I think it's a seminal moment as well, because what they represent, they're studs and they're funny, hilarious, cute. And that is a glimpse into a different person, different representation,” Wicks says of Courtney Williams and Natisha Hiedeman, renowned WNBA besties and viral content creators. “It's something that we all have witnessed and experienced inside of teams but now the world [gets to see it] and they are just so confidently and authentically out and themselves.”

While Wicks left the league in 2002, the hometown hero (who now owns an oyster farm on Long Island… gay), has remained in the realm of the WNBA. She was inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in 2013 and can often be seen sitting courtside in Barclays cheering for the Liberty. But she’ll “always miss it,” she admits. “I'll dream about playing. I mean, it's something I can't do anymore. And to play at a high level like that with a team was the best time of my life.”

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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