Caitlin Clark has transformed the WNBA. Somehow, that's turned into an issue.
Caitlin Clark is the best thing that’s ever happened to the WNBA, but some days you’d never know it.
She’s the main reason the league’s attendance has soared. She’s a big reason the league’s teams now take charter flights from city to city. She’s the reason people who otherwise have no interest in women’s basketball are looking up Indiana Fever box scores.
But seven games into her professional career with the Fever, the loudest headlines have had more to do with animosity than admiration, resentment rather than regard. TNT analyst Charles Barkley blamed jealous WNBA players for it Wednesday.
“Y'all petty, girls,’’ he said. “I expected men to be petty cause we're the most insecure group in the world. Y'all should be thanking that girl for getting y'all ass private charters. All the money and visibility she's bringing to the WNBA. What she's accomplished – give her her flowers. Stop being petty, all you women out there. ... Caitlin Clark, thank you for bringing all that money and shine to the WNBA."
That led Sky rookie Angel Reese to take a not-so-cryptic shot at Barkley after the Sky’s 90-81 road victory over the New York Liberty the next day.
"And that's one getting a WIN in a packed area, not just cause of one player on our charter flight,’’ Reese wrote on X. She subsequently deleted the post.
The attendance for the Sky-Liberty game at the Barclays Center was 12,049. When Clark and the Fever played the Liberty in the same arena five days earlier, attendance was a franchise-record 17,735. Attendance for the Liberty’s next home game, against Seattle, was 9,381.
Lest there be any doubt about who was responsible for the Indiana-New York sellout, the Fever are one of the worst teams in the league.
“There are many different players in this league who have done so much for this league, including myself,” Reese told the Sun-Times on Saturday, explaining her X post.
There certainly are. Just not as much as Clark has done in a brief amount of time.
A decent percentage of the people who are fascinated by Clark are drawn to her because she was a great college player at Iowa but also because she’s white. That can’t be disputed. The question that logically follows that truth is: And? What is she supposed to do about it? What is anyone supposed to do about it? It’s a question without a solution.
The world is messed up. Most of us know that. Many of society’s problems are a result of prejudice. The Clark sensation might be a faint reflection of the racial divide in this country, but, in and of itself, it doesn’t feel like injustice at work.
At least to me.
“I do think that there is a thing called pretty privilege,’’ “The View” host Sunny Hostin said. “There is a thing called white privilege. There is a thing called tall privilege. And we have to acknowledge that. Part of it is about race because if you think about the Brittney Griners of the world, why did she have to go to play in Russia? This is part of my point. Caitlin Clark is bringing this money and these sponsorships – we hope – into the league, and other players will benefit from it.
“But I do think she is more relatable to more people because she’s white, because she’s attractive. And, unfortunately, there still is that stigma against the LGBTQ+ community. Seventy percent of the WNBA is Black. A third of the players are in the LGBTQ+ community. And we have to do something about that stigma in this country. I think that people have a problem with basketball-playing women who are lesbians. Who cares? They’re great athletes.”
If people come to the WNBA to watch Clark, doesn’t it follow that they’ll end up seeing how skilled other players are, many of them Black? Sounds like everyone wins. She has brought the league to a better place. Yet we’re criticizing the engine.
If Clark were taking money away from other WNBA players, there might be an issue here. But corporations that had no interest in women’s basketball came to her with sponsorships and cash when she was setting the NCAA record for points. She didn’t deprive another player of those deals. She created those deals with her performances.
She’s not the best player in the WNBA, not even one of the best (at least yet), but she receives the most attention. That might strike some people as unfair, but how do you police popularity? You don’t, and you can’t. The market does the talking. You might not like what it’s saying, but you can’t deny that its lips are moving. It’s saying that people want Caitlin Clark.
People want Reese, too. She’s a good player, and she’s outspoken. She knows how to use social media and how to market herself. For all those reasons, she’ll likely end up making more money through endorsement deals than many of her fellow WNBA comrades will.
Everybody is selling something. The people decide what they want to buy, for better or worse.