Our Favorite WNBA Wubble Couples

One of the best things about the Wubble has been the content players are sharing from inside it. Teammates — along with players from other teams — are forced to spend much more time together as a result of being siphoned off from the rest of the world. Luckily for us, the result is a seemingly endless stream of TikToks and Instagram Stories that give us a peek into the lives of the players inside the Wubble.

Some players brought family members with them to their Bradenton bubble which, in some cases, means couples content. Any gay fan of the WNBA is going to have their favorite queer couples. There are many, many lesbian couples to stan, far too many to include in a single column.

We love Layshia Clarendon and their wife, Jessica, but Jessica is pregnant and stayed home. Diana Taurasi and her wife, retired WNBA player Penny Taylor, are basketball royalty (and known for getting drunk on Instagram live and talking shit for four hours with Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe), but Penny stayed home with the couples’ son, Leo. So for this column, I’m choosing to narrow down this list to couples who are in the Wubble together and providing us cute content from their isolated little world.

1. Aerial Powers and AzuréRae Turner

Aerial, a forward for the Washington Mystics, and her girlfriend, YouTuber AzuréRae, have a joint YouTube channel they started four months ago, during quarantine. You can watch them eat spicy noodles together and see AzuréRae meet Aerial’s family for the first time. The couple is in the Wubble together, creating videos. They’ve been receiving a bunch of homophobic comments after Powers had the gall to demand respect from an NBA player tweeting about her and failing to mention her name. If you have it in you, head over to their page and leave them supportive comments and show them how much the queers love them.

2. Brittney Griner and Cherelle Griner

Phoenix Mercury center Brittney Griner and her wife, Cherelle, are sickeningly in love with each other and it drips from every single one of their posts. Cherelle posts Instagram Stories from the Wubble hanging out with Griner and watching her play. The two met years ago when they were both students at Baylor.

3. Courtney Vandersloot and Allie Quigley

The married backcourt for the Chicago Sky (aka #Vanderquigz) are posting cute selfies from the workout room and being #goals for their teammates. You can also tune into Sky games to see the two balling out together. The couple kept their relationship private for more than five years, until two days after their wedding in 2018, when they announced their marriage on social media. “My career really took off once we started dating and we started really committing to each other and the court,” Vandersloot said in 2019. “Both of our careers took off. We owe each other a lot. We just want to continue to grow together both on and off the court.”

4. Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe

Lesbian icon and soccer superstar Megan Rapinoe is in the Wubble with her partner, Seattle’s Sue Bird. They haven’t posted a ton of content together but tbh I’m just living for the shots of whatever Megan is wearing that day. She looks like she walked out of Grey Gardens and is playing the part of Little Edie in the Wubble.

5. Breanna Stewart and Marta Xargay

2018 MVP Stewie is in the Wubble with her girlfriend, Marta, a professional basketball player who has played for the W and currently plays in Spain. In addition to adorable photos on Instagram, Breanna Stewart’s girlfriend Marta is posting killer content on TikTok. In one video we learn that Marta kissed Stewie first, but Breanna Stewart said “I love you” first. In another, we watch Marta poke Stewie in the face repeatedly, which is truly relatable content (I am always the annoying partner in that scenario).

@mxc10

♬ sonido original – clau😛

@mxc10

♬ original sound – patpatsweetie – PatPatAsia

6. Chelsea Gray and Tipesa Mercedes

L.A. Sparks guard Chelsea Gray married her wife, Tipesa, last year. I’ve deduced from Instagram Stories that Tipesa is in the Wubble, though the two haven’t posted much content together from within it. However, they make this list because the two are gorgeous and have an Instagram Live show that talks about queer history.

This week’s treat for your eyes: the Chicago Sky

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Frankie de la Cretaz

Britni is a freelance writer whose work sits at the intersection of sports, gender, & queerness. Their writing has been featured in the New York Times, The Washington Post, Vogue, The Atlantic, Vox, and many more.

Frankie has written 12 articles for us.

15 Comments

  2. thank you for the coverage, i otherwise miss it.

    kind of sighing about all the instagram content; now that facebook owns it, they make you sign up for an account to look at posts. those who don’t want to be part of their exploitation structure are out of luck.

    also, anyone having trouble viewing page, it may be the tiktok links are drowning your processor/data connection.

  4. I know that Vanderquigs weren’t out in the media before the wedding announcement, but Allie wasn’t exactly hiding the relationship on her social media. Maybe some of it could be hand-waved as “straight women do that with friends sometimes,” but by 2016ish she wasn’t exactly being subtle. Basically they were gals being pals and vacationing together, putting lots of hearts and kisses in captions, etc. Some examples from Allie’s instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/BBhO8nnk5Xb/, https://www.instagram.com/p/BOVGq9QAFk2/, https://www.instagram.com/p/BRskzlaAiOu/, https://www.instagram.com/p/BZPZVaPgX70/, https://www.instagram.com/p/BZm6FVfAQEg/, https://www.instagram.com/p/Be8agYlAYtG/ (this last one is from 2018, but 10 months before the wedding). Also sorry that I don’t know how to put link into this in a nicer way.

    Anyway I guess their relationship was private, but in the way that mine is. I post pictures of my partner sometimes without a lot of “this is my partner whom I love!” If I got married I might share pictures on social media that would make it very explicit, but it isn’t like it isn’t already public information. The public just doesn’t ask.

    Finally, here is one of the first “I’m a gal who sure does like my pal” posts I saw from Allie, posted back in 2014: https://www.instagram.com/p/kKa_yRE5VU/

    • Totally!! There are a few other players in those types of relationships (Candace Parker is one I can think of) but I tend not to speculate unless they’ve confirmed them. I probably could have worded it differently, though.

      I’m always curious about how others deal with “outing” someone versus the way queer people are expected to confirm relationships that we wouldn’t expect a straight person to. I wrote about how I think about this kind of stuff for LitHub a while back when I was reporting on the queer women who played in the AAGPBL and looking through obituaries and deciding which players to name and which not to: https://lithub.com/on-the-hidden-history-of-queer-women-in-baseball/

      • That makes sense! I guess with some of the posts it seemed to me like it Allie was pretty out about it (thus the links, which are also there because they’re a cute couple). But yeah it’s a strange line.

      • It’s an interesting issue and I feel there’s a lot of gray area between “out” and “closeted.” Like to me, I would say that AQ and CV were more or less “out” or at least hiding in plain sight before they published their wedding photos; as the above user pointed out, Quigley shared plenty of very couple-y posts on Instagram. Whereas I feel like Parker is more toward the closeted side of the spectrum: she (IMO) mostly presents herself as straight publicly while dropping enough hints, mostly in IG stories, that you can figure out who she’s with if you pay attention. But if you just scroll through her feeds on social media you could easily have no idea.

  6. This is an incredible roundup of beautiful queer love 🤩

    Brittney and Cherelle Griner are the classic smol/tol couple! I love it!!!

    The way Sue Bird is looking at Megan Rapinoe in that photo!! Making me swoon!

    Xargay is the BEST. NAME. EVER.

  8. ahhh yesss thank you for this wnba gossip primer, perfect for someone who has been out of the loop

  9. … what is the “Wubble”? Wikipedia and googling didn’t bring me further.. I’m sure it’s common knowledge in the US (and elsewhere), but I don’t have a clue. some kind of quarantine thing?

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