If there’s one thing the current NBA playoffs have reminded us, it’s how good a product the WNBA is. While the Oklahoma City Thunder receives personal referee escorts to dynasty, W actually allows players to play. First, I’m grateful to have at least one professional basketball league where contact doesn’t reduce players to Jell-0 and isn’t rewarded with free throws. The W is arguably a better product than the NBA right now, and that’s one of the many reasons why women’s professional basketball is more popular than ever before and is rapidly growing in popularity in terms of viewership, attendance, revenue and cultural zeitgeist.
As the sport grows, players’ names become household names. One of them is Maddy Westbeld, a Notre Dame product who is currently the leading forward for the Chicago Sky. Westbeld was selected in the first round of the 2025 draft and is looking to make a substantial improvement in her second season following the departure of Angel Reese, for whom she spent most of her rookie effort as a reliever.
And it turns out that Westbeld loves coffee.
He joins a growing cadre of professional athletes who take coffee seriously. Jimmy Butler, Hunter Pence, César Salazar – a list of athletes looking for coffee and coffee experiences wherever their daily work takes them in the world. On a recent trip to Portland, Coffee Feed’s Gio Fillari caught up with Westbeld to explore the topic.
In a two-part interview published first @sprudge on InstagramWestbeld talks about her coffee orders, what she looks for in a coffee shop, how the worlds of sports and coffee intertwine, her routine and how coffee is a substantial part of her world.
In the first video, Westbeld explains her coffee habits, including the two drinks she had with her during the interview.
Fillari and Westbeld talk about café design and fitting a coffee tunnel, and I strongly disagree that iced coffee is a better addition because I think it’s time to bring ceramics into the fashion world.
So if you’re tired of NBA whistles chirping like birds heading south for the winter and want some basketball that’s actually fun to watch, let me suggest rooting for Maddy Westbeld and the Chicago Sky. You might outdo Caitlyn Clark, A’ja Wilson, or Paige Bueckers (although the Bueckers-Azzi Fudd reunion is one of the better stories right now), but how can you not appreciate Chicago’s coffee connections?
