The NBA Finals and the Stanley Cup Final are in full flight. News came down recently that college football players will soon receive regular salaries for their play; the best golfer in the world got arrested and booked while trying to get to his tee time; and the United States defeated Pakistan in cricket.
The sports world is awash in novelty and intrigue at the moment, but the big sports story that won’t go away is about the WNBA.
Yes, that WNBA. The WNBA that lost money every year since its inception in 1997 and exists only due to subsidies from its male counterpart, the NBA. The WNBA whose top players don’t even pull down six-figure salaries. The WNBA whose players fly commercial. The WNBA that has been a staple of stand-up comics for as long as it has existed. (READ MORE from Tom Raabe: A Max-less Mad Max)
If you look closely, you’ll see many of the players in the WNBA, despite the inarguable benefits of such unprecedented attention, are not liking it one bit.
It all has to do with one player — Caitlin Clark.
She was a college phenom at Iowa, a talent never before seen on the college stage, ever. She averaged 31.6 points per game her senior season, on her way to more career points than any woman in college history — 3,685 — and any male as well, surpassing even “Pistol” Pete Maravich. Her Iowa Hawkeyes’ championship game against South Carolina in March Madness captured more TV viewers than the men’s championship game. She went No. 1 to the Indiana Fever in the WNBA draft, and 2.5 million watched it on TV, five times more than last year. She’s all over the tube plumping for Gatorade and State Farm and has signed a deal with Nike for $28 million and a signature shoe before playing a single professional game. She is regularly mobbed by fans — lots of young girls — whom she accommodates with autographs. She has inserted the WNBA into nightly sportscasts and made the league relevant.
And, other players are ragging on her, fouling her hard, throwing elbows at her, and generally singling her out for rough treatment. In the latest incident, a player from the Chicago Sky, Chennedy Carter, hip-checked Clark to the floor while the ball was not even in play. One of Carter’s teammates, Angel Reese, a nemesis of Clark’s from college days, cheered from the bench, while Clark’s nearest teammate seemed slow to help her up.
Why the animosity?
Answers are plentiful, and it depends on whom you ask. Some chalk it up to being a rookie, that’s all. Opined sports-talk host Joy Taylor, “You often see rookies get played very tough, get a little message shown to them, especially if they’re coming into a league with a lot of hype.” It’s more arduous for Clark because she is on the small side — 6 feet and 152 pounds — and flies farther when hit by opponents’ hips and goes down faster when opponents’ elbows connect. (RELATED: Blame Envy, Not Racial Division, for Player Hostility to WNBA Superstar Caitlin Clark)
Plus, she’s a star so bright she eclipses the league. Radio host Colin Cowherd said, “This is actually kind of like the NBA. Draymond Green, Dennis Rodman, Bill Laimbeer, the enforcers — who do they pick on, the bench guy? No, they go pick on the star.”
That’s answer No. 2: Clark’s stardom. Put yourself in the sneakers of an average WNBA player. Laboring in anonymity for your entire career, making little compared to other pro jocks, playing in cavernous echo chambers before thousands of empty seats every game, and receiving virtually no media attention and certainly no endorsements. And here comes Caitlin Clark, fresh out of college, never having played a game, the definition of unproven, but commanding huge endorsement money and regaling in a media glare that is blinding and constant.
Would that piss you off? Enough even to take a cheap shot or two? Envy plays a role in the reaction to Clark, without question.
Then there’s race and sex. Clark is white and heterosexual. The WNBA is 70 percent black and 38 percent lesbian. Many pundits, while discovering white racism at every turn, are blind to black-on-white racism, and aren’t about to jeopardize their standing in the media by flipping the script concerning Clark. The “racism” they see is not racism at all but merely the predilections of fans’ allegiance and the outworkings of the free enterprise system; fans love some players more than others, and corporations respond by awarding those players endorsement deals.
A’ja Wilson, WNBA star, commented about Clark’s ascendancy: “I think a lot of people may say it’s not about Black and white, but to me, it is,” she told the AP. “It really is because you can be top notch at what you are as a Black woman, but yet maybe that’s something that people don’t want to see.” Ignoring the obvious superstar status and endorsement power of such black women athletes as Simone Biles, Gabby Douglas, and the Williams sisters, she continued: “They don’t see it as marketable, so it doesn’t matter how hard I work. It doesn’t matter what we all do as Black women, we’re still going to be swept underneath the rug. That’s why it boils my blood when people say it’s not about race because it is.”
Commentator Jemele Hill agrees: “We would all be very naive if we didn’t say race and her sexuality played a role in her popularity,” she told the Los Angeles Times. “While so many people are happy for Caitlin’s success … there is a part of it that is a little problematic because of what it says about the worth and the marketability of the players who are already there.”
We would also be naïve to say her race and sexuality don’t play a role in WNBA players’ treatment of Clark. What they don’t see, or can’t see, is the transformational nature of her game. Like Steph Curry on the men’s side, Clark has taken the women’s game to a new place — specifically, way out beyond the three-point line, out to the logo. There’s nothing more exciting than a long-distance sharpshooter who gets it going, and the way Clark pulls up off the dribble and launches from “downtown” is as exciting as anything in sports. Couple that with her ball-handling ability and her passing, and she exudes charisma on the court. The accessibility and generous giving of her time to her fans only adds to the appeal.
Whatever the reason for the rough stuff against Clark — rookie treatment, jealousy, race and sex, parts of all three — the star herself has handled the issue with maturity beyond her years. She deflects questions about the rough stuff with praise for other players and turns discussions toward her interest in furthering the WNBA. (READ MORE from Tom Raabe: Trouble in the Picklesphere)
This is precisely what she is doing. She, in her few short months in the league, has already pumped new life into the heretofore moribund circuit. The hubbub she creates walking through airports prompted the league to charter flights for all teams. Thirty-six of the Fever’s 40 games this year have been scheduled for national TV. Her debut game, broadcast on ESPN, was the most-watched WNBA game since 2001. As of June 2, the Fever had sold out three home games this year (17,274), and six road games as well, and league attendance is up 40 percent over last year.
All of that means extra comfort and extra exposure for all WNBA players — the ones who bad-mouth her are flying in those private jets and playing more on TV now, too. Big attendance numbers and increased TV viewership mean more money for the league and more for the players. It will translate into endorsement dollars.
But if they take Clark down, it all goes away.
