- WNBA star Aerial Powers loves schooling men who "don't respect women's basketball" in pickup games.
- Just before Christmas, the Minnesota Lynx forward and a friend wore holiday garb to a local gym.
Aerial Powers was handing out buckets for Christmas.
Right before the holiday, the WNBA star headed to a nearby gym to challenge some locals to a pickup game. Powers has made a habit of schooling men who "don't respect women's basketball" in her free time, and she apparently wasn't feeling particularly merciful for the most wonderful time of the year.
Wearing a velvety red Santa suit with white tufts of faux fur along the trim, the Minnesota Lynx forward and a friend — who was aptly dressed as an elf — torched two unsuspecting gym-goers in a ruthless game of two-on-two.
Even despite allowing the men to take the opening possession, Powers scored first by draining a wide-open three from the corner.
"Nah, bring your ass home," the 2019 WNBA champion said as she walked past her defender.
After encouraging that same opponent to put his full effort into guarding her, Powers bolted into the paint, pump-faked him out, then dropped an easy layup through the net.
"Where you at?!" she chirped, offering him the "too small" hand gesture for good measure. "Mrs. Claus is here! She's here!"
She promptly drained a step-back three and warned her defender, "Don't fucking play with me!" Then — after asking him, "What do you want me to do?" — she hit another trey from the opposite side of the court.
A few back-and-forths later, Powers announced that "Mrs. Claus is about to take her ass back to the North Pole." But it was the elf — Harlem Globetrotters guard Briana Green — who called game with a filthy crossover and step-back jumper.
"Back to the North Pole we go!" Powers said with a high-five. "Oh my goodness!"
"He spun all the way around," Green added with a laugh.
Powers bought her defender a water — "besides me giving him buckets, this is the only gift he's gonna get" — before they played another pickup game. Once again, Mrs. Claus and the elf swiftly took down the guys — but this time, Powers hit the "gametime" shot with a smile and a wave.
She capped off the affair by putting one of her opponents on a poster with a vicious two-handed slam:
—LIQUID | Aerial Powers (@aerial_powers23) December 25, 2022
While participating in USA Basketball camp in Minneapolis last spring, Powers told Insider that she doesn't go to the gym looking for trouble but really enjoys shocking men who "talk junk" about the WNBA or women's players in general.
"I fucking love it," Powers said with a grin. "There's so many men that look at us and don't look at us as athletes. They look at us as just women that try to play basketball.
"Most hoopers that play basketball, they know we got it and they don't talk shit," she added. "They don't come on social media and follow us just to talk junk."
But when it comes to "those guys" who do talk smack in their Instagram comments and Twitter mentions, Powers said she's "got something for 'em." And she has a social media following — including Snoop Dogg, who reshared the Mrs. Claus dunk on his Instagram — ready to eat it up.
Check out the full Christmas video posted to Powers' YouTube account below: