Girls-gone-wild moment doesn't mean WNBA has gone to hell

Oh, who's kidding who here? This isn't Sociology For Dummies. It was the first big-time brawl in league history, it had the game's best players and Rick Mahorn, and it sure as hell beat B-roll from training camp, Brett Favre or Carson Palmer, just to name three things that aren't stories. It was, and we are ashamed to say it, an uncontrived, honest moment that couldn't be spun or plea-bargained or sloganized -- "The WNBA: Sometimes We Just Get Pissed."

And there's something to be said for that, especially in the slower summer months. The Arena League title game is Sunday, and making its usual lack of headway. The NASCAR season has hit its yearly flat spot. Baseball is just easing toward the trade deadline and then the pennant race push, and USA Basketball is showing us shots of LeBron James' misshaped toes. Even you soccer fans are mostly watching the transfer market overheat as good players are overpaid, great players are over-overpaid, and everyone else is lying on the beach next to a supermodel to kill time.

It's why we spend so much time on NFL training camp, while knowing its essential meaninglessness.

This was the WNBA's pure, un-staged we're-here-too moment, a reminder that (a) the league has pretty well kept its dignity through years of anonymous toil, and (b) is still capable of snapping off its hinges given the right provocation.

In other words, all this mortification is misplaced and kind of dismaying. Better for the sport if, instead of invoking the effect of bad role modeling on her kids, Leslie had said, "Well, we just got mad at each other all at once. It was unplanned, we probably won't ever do it again, but damn it, this matters to us and sometimes we're just going to lose it, all right?"

And Mahorn should have said, "Fine, but don't plan on succeeding if you're standing near me. I didn't get to become Rick Mahorn for nothing, get it?"

And Orender should have said, "When can we get them to play again?"

Ray Ratto is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle.