Growing up in Oakland, young basketball fans like Malika Andrews didn’t have a local WNBA team to cheer for. But after the Golden State Valkyries tipped off for the first time earlier this month as the league’s first expansion team in almost two decades, that all changed.
The WNBA’s recent expansion is just one example of the league’s rapid growth over the past several seasons, a shift in the basketball landscape that has Andrews, 30, “really, really excited” for the 2025 season and her new role as the host of ESPN’s WNBA Countdown.
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“There’s a palpable excitement right now around women’s basketball,” the ESPN basketball host tells PEOPLE. “Being a part of that, there’s an energy – whether it’s when I go on set or when I’m going to a game – there’s just this palpable excitement and growth right now around the women’s game.”
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Stephen A. Smith, Malika Andrews, Michael Malone, and Bob Myers at the NBA Western Conference Finals
Andrews spoke with PEOPLE about her new WNBA gig during an interview about her partnership with PayPal during the ongoing NBA Playoffs, which is running a program that allows fans the chance to get their money back on tickets purchased through Ticketmaster if their team sweeps another team in a playoff series. The Oakland native, who began working at ESPN in October 2018, had just landed in Oklahoma City as the Thunder’s Western Conference Finals series against the Minnesota Timberwolves entered the final stretch.
But in a matter of weeks, Andrews will be kicking off a summer of traveling to WNBA arenas to take in women’s games alongside the league’s expanding fanbase. Nowadays, most of the arenas are filled as the WNBA has seen its highest increase in attendance in more than two decades. It’s all well past due for the WNBA, according to Andrews.
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“Frankly, the level of play has been there for years,” Andrews says. “Of course, right now you have a transcendent superstar that people are really gravitating towards — and understandably so — in Caitlin [Clark]. But also to be around women like Chiney Ogwumike, who are sort of the people who helped build the backbone of this league, is really, really awesome to kind of soak in their knowledge right now.”
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Malika Andrews and LeBron James
Just two weeks into the WNBA season, the league has already broken viewership records, thanks to rising stars like Clark, 23, and Chicago Sky forward Angel Reese. A week one matchup between Clark’s Indiana Fever and Reese’s Sky drew 2.7 million viewers on ABC, according to ESPN, making it the most-watched WNBA regular season game in a quarter century.
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Next year, the WNBA will expand again with the addition of the Toronto Tempo and a new team in Portland, the league’s 14th and 15th franchises. In recent years, WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert has said she hopes the league will expand even further by 2028 with potential additions in cities like Philadelphia, Nashville, Denver, and in South Florida.
Andrews, who stopped by a Minnesota Lynx practice while in the city this week during its NBA team’s playoff game, said it’s been an amazing time to be around women’s basketball – not just as a member of the media, but as a lifelong fan.
“It’s super exciting,” Andrews says. “Particularly because, again, I think the skill has been there, and now the attention is meeting it.”
Read the original article on People
