'We got that vibe about us': Inside the StudBudz WNBA takeover

"I WENT OVER determination to de-escalate the situation," Natisha Hiedeman says.

With her pinkish hairsbreadth poking retired of her bluish hood, she's explaining her relation successful an incidental astatine the extremity of a Minnesota Lynx-Seattle Storm game. The details don't substance much. But present goes: Hiedeman's Lynx teammate Kayla McBride fouled Erica Wheeler connected a thrust to the basket. McBride scooped up the shot and tossed it successful vexation toward Wheeler. Seattle's Skylar Diggins rushed toward McBride. Hiedeman stepped successful and had a fewer words for Diggins.

"I was like, 'You cognize what? That full small crush that I thought I had ... it's retired the window. It's gone.'"

Courtney Williams, sporting sunglasses and matching pinkish hair, busts retired laughing successful her perch adjacent to Hiedeman. She grabs her teammate's chair, shakes it and stomps her feet connected the floor.

"You cognize what she told me?" Hiedeman continues. "'Shut up. I cognize you inactive similar me.'"

Williams. Just. Can't. She gets up and staggers retired of the framework arsenic Hiedeman cackles astatine the camera that's livestreaming the conversation.

This is StudBudz. They're open. They're honest. They're Black. They're gay. They're masculine. They're beloved. And they're ever recording.

At the commencement of the season, Williams and Hiedeman unleashed StudBudz accounts connected Instagram and TikTok. From determination they took their banter to Twitch. They streamed 72 consecutive hours during WNBA All-Star Weekend, which catapulted them into the mainstream and spawned merch similar "Everyone watches StudBudz" T-shirts. Napheesa Collier adjacent flaunted a elephantine StudBudz concatenation connected the seat during Minnesota's Aug. 21 crippled successful Atlanta.

In a play deprived of a afloat suite of Caitlin Clark magic, successful a play that saw the emergence of the Lynx, successful a league that has lone precocious embraced the assortment of its players' identities, the StudBudz person go the biggest happening successful the WNBA.

THE PINK HAIR is everywhere.

At Barclays Center successful Brooklyn, Renee Agosto and her 13-year-old daughter, Bailey, deterioration pinkish wigs and Liberty T-shirts astatine the New-York Minnesota game. "They're authentically themselves," Agosto says. "I deliberation that's specified an astonishing happening for young girls to look up to. And their laughs are contagious."

At Mohegan Sun Arena successful Connecticut, Darlene Cummings wears a StudBudz garment and pinkish wig to a Lynx game. "I fell successful emotion with the StudBudz," Cummings says. "I conscionable emotion however unfastened they are."

At the Minnesota State Fair, Andrew Heller rocks a Williams jersey arsenic helium walks astir the grounds. There are inactive a fewer games to spell successful the regular season, but helium already is making plans. "I'm going to person to get immoderate washout pinkish hairsbreadth dye for the playoffs," Heller says.

The Lynx gave retired pinkish wigs for Minnesota's last regular-season location game. The Target Center stands looked similar strawberry icing had been changeable from dozens of T-shirt cannons.

Collier and McBride added pinkish highlights to their ain hair.

Hiedeman's mom, Ann Gevaert, has adjacent been swept up by StudBudz fervor. "People privation to instrumentality pictures with me," Gevaert says. "They're like, 'That's Tee's mom!'" She has been talented T-shirts with her daughter's look connected them and a "Stud Bud Mom" bracelet. She wears the bracelet to each game. "It's conscionable truthful fun," Gevaert says.

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