For a significant portion of WNBA fans online, Minnesota Lynx players Courtney Williams and Natisha Hiedeman were the breakout stars of the league’s All-Star weekend in Indianapolis. Better known as the “StudBudz,” the duo went live on Twitch for most of the weekend, bringing fans behind the scenes for practices, parties and more. Now, as the StudBudz aim to keep their content growing down the stretch run of the WNBA season, they are hitting a wall as fans push back on their idea of bringing on Barstool Sports owner Dave Portnoy for an interview.
After going viral for clips with Caitlin Clark and WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert over the weekend, the StudBudz went live again this week as the WNBA season resumed. On-stream, Williams purportedly shouted Portnoy out for his support of the StudBudz throughout the weekend and suggested she would like to bring him on for an interview.
Williams then confirmed she had already connected with Portnoy and was planning out the interview.
the studbudz are down to collab with dave portnoy regardless of what the chat has to say pic.twitter.com/EOuHr6XwlG
— sonny angel 👼 (@imsosonnyy) July 23, 2025
When the Twitch chat began pushing back, Williams added that their intention would be to call him out for some of his more contentious takes on stars like Angel Reese.
Stud Budz reveals they’re going to confront Dave Portnoy about talking about Angel Reese when he comes on their stream:
“We’re gonna ask him, ‘Why are you talking about Angel like that?’ Because we love her bad.” pic.twitter.com/8NKUI0Xr4H
— StudBudz HQ (@StudBudzHQ) July 23, 2025
Quickly, their audience and the wider WNBA community online pushed back.
“Fans are upset that they would have such a horrible person on studbudz. As I think it’s been a safe internet place for a lot of fans,” wrote one Reddit user on r/WNBA, in a thread on the situation that already has 341 comments in less than a day.
“unfortunately we live in the timeline where the studbudz would absolutely do a stream with d*ve p*rtnoy so now I just have to sit here terrified of the day it actually happens,” wrote @bucketsnbooks on X, in a post with 39,000 views and counting.
That led both Williams and Portnoy to defend themselves.
“People are big mad at Studbudz just cause we talked. W fans are freaking nuts,” Portnoy wrote on X. “I got one of biggest megaphones in the country. I love them. I love the league. Yeah I don’t like Angel and I love Caitlin. It’s called sports.”
Of course, Portnoy’s comments about Reese run deeper than sports. The Barstool owner, who has fully jumped aboard the Clark bandwagon, has called Reese a “classless piece of sh*t” and while he has fervently denied his issues with her have anything to do with race, Portnoy believes his comments likely drove others to make Reese’s rivalry with Clark about race.
In the case of his interaction with the StudBudz, Portnoy likely came to the players’ attention because of a viral clip in which he thoroughly praised Williams and Hiedeman and their content. Portnoy said the two should get a reality show and put his stamp of approval on the stream as a marketing opportunity for the WNBA.
Nevertheless, Williams insisted she was open to bringing him onto the Studbudz’ Twitch stream to talk about the WNBA.
“I’ll have a conversation with ANYBODY tbh,” she wrote. “Don’t mean I rock with their views or the things that they’ve done.”
This is yet another fascinating clash between the league’s diehard fans and a more mainstream audience. In a vacuum, Dave Portnoy co-signing and bringing his fans to an organic marketing phenomenon like the StudBudz streams is a huge win.
But given Barstool’s checkered history with women in sports and Portnoy’s past comments toward women athletes and media figures, the passionate fans who believe in the WNBA as a feminist and LGTBQ-friendly space are more likely to view Portnoy as an enemy.
That is not to say that WNBA fans are the only sports fans who dislike Dave Portnoy. He certainly is not everyone’s cup of tea (intentionally so), and he will turn off some audiences no matter where he pops up.
However, the immediate rush to reject Portnoy’s embrace is yet another instance of the league pushing back against the realities of mainstream popularity.
About Brendon Kleen
Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.