On Caitlin Clark, the WNBA and the ghost of Christopher Columbus
SINCE SO MANY NEW PEOPLE have recent, yet unshakeable opinions about the WNBA, here’s an old fact that most of you may find unbelievable: From 1998–2003, the expansion Washington Mystics, led by three-time NCAA champion, #1 overall draft pick and Rookie of the Year Chamique Holdsclaw, averaged 15,355 fans per game (1st in the league), comparable to the 16,300 per game that the Indiana Fever currently average (currently third best in the league). The league had just begun in 1996 but Holdsclaw was the first time a famous and dominant player had a seamless transfer from collegiate to WNBA fandom.
I’m glad that Indiana Fever phenom Caitlin Clark has caused many who were wherever they were for the first 25+ years of the WNBA’s existence to finally pay attention to the treasure that is professional women’s basketball. But for those of us who’ve seen phenomenal players with large followings before, this insistence that any critiques of her game or a stated preference for other players is part of some coordinated collusion is insulting and ridiculous.
I’ve watched Candace Parker, Maya Moore and Breanna Stewart’s careers, from multiple college titles to being the undisputed best player on WNBA teams that won championships. Some of you clearly didn’t, and that’s fine, but the gaslighting has to stop. Are players a little more physical with Caitlin than is necessary? Sometimes. Are there players jealous of the fanfare that has surrounded her name? Yes. But guess what? It happened to Wilt Chamberlain and Pete Maravich (whom Caitlin’s rise most reminds me of) and Michael Jordan and it absolutely happened to Candace Parker. And, switching sports, don’t get me started on how those old White men treated Tiger Woods. Being the hotshot, young “savior of the League” who can do no wrong means that veterans will test you. That is basketball. Some of you were never skinny teenagers playing pick up ball against old heads twice your age who worked at the auto plant and had a chip on their shoulder — and it shows. Every first ballot Hall of Famer that I just mentioned hit the weight room, limited their weaknesses and rose to the occasion. It would be awesome if Caitlin did the same but, so far, she, like her supporters, seems to prefer to throw rocks and hide her hands.
“Being the hotshot, young ‘savior of the League’ who can do no wrong means that veterans will test you. That is basketball. Some of you were never skinny teenagers playing pick up ball against old heads twice your age who worked at the auto plant and had a chip on their shoulder — and it shows.”
When we start talking just about basketball, the Clark obsessives pivot to her undeniable popularity. “No one was watching before she showed up!” they say, usually followed by “She’s the reason they’re making big money now!” From a TV ratings standpoint, those points are indisputable, but not just for reasons solely tied to Caitlin Clark. But even if they were 100% true, with no qualifiers, I have an observation: In high school, the student voted “Most Popular” was rarely the valedictorian.
In other words, Caitlin Clark is Eminem, she’s Elvis Presley, she’s the white avatar that makes this predominantly Black art form more palatable to those who have a hard time relating to it outside of someone who looks like them as the main character. That is not an insult, Eminem and Elvis were/are extremely hard working, talented and charismatic masters of their craft. But both — Em publicly and Elvis discreetly — honored the Black roots and inspiration of what they made “mainstream” and Caitlin’s refusal to do so (hi Paige!) is an example of her playing both sides of the fence that keeps the tension surrounding her name going.
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Please let us never forget that Caitlin’s already astounding fame was amplified by her collegiate rivalry with Angel Reese, a player for whom many of Caitlin’s fans regard with a loathing that parallels what Caitlin’s fans believe Caitlin’s “haters” have for Caitlin. Magic Johnson and Larry Bird would’ve still been great, but their rivalry — and the NBA’s subsequent boom in popularity — doesn’t happen with the the racial, regional and personality disparity between the two, spurred, similarly, by the “flamboyant” Black star beating the “brainy” White star decisively in the national championship game.
The biggest issue here is that, with the increased fanhood has come an unprecedented flood of Christopher Columbus Syndrome. There are too many newfound fans, now having “discovered” something that was doing just fine without them, who want to recast it in their own image, previous (and current) greatness be damned. And anyone who doesn’t agree can get that smoke, even within Caitlin’s own locker room. Caitlin’s head coach, Stephanie White, was recently booed by Fever fans for not always leaping to her defense, even when she is flopping or berating refs for imaginary missed fouls or is the recipient of hard fouls that every WNBA player gets. Her teammate, Aliyah Boston, was recently criticized by Fever fans for including fellow teammate Kelsey Mitchell, alongside A’ja Wilson and Paige Bueckers (hi Paige!) as her personal MVP finalists. (And not including Caitlin.) Any perceived slight is taken as evidence by all these newfound “fans” that the WNBA as an organization is against Caitlin because, as a straight, White woman, they don’t want her to be great.
This is where I feel that those who feel they have to protect Caitlin from her peers are doing her a great disservice. I’ll deal with the LGBTQ+ element of this in a second, but first, let me say that in the NBA, as far as being White, if you are the best, you are the best. Jerry West is still the model for the NBA’s logo, last time that I checked, and Larry Bird, John Stockton, Luka Doncic and Nikola Jokic are universally respected as being once in a lifetime players by not only the talented Black players who guarded them but the millions of Black fans that rooted for or against them.
If Caitlin Clark is truly as great as her social media bodyguards say that she is, her validation should come as it came for all the others — on the court — not from Congressional interventions or whiners who want her to take her ball and go home. This is where sexism leaps into professional sports, with the implication that none of you had to come save Dirk Nowitzki when he ran into Miami’s Big Three in the 2011 NBA Finals but that, somehow, this superb 24-year-old athlete needs you, who can barely get up from your living room couch, to shield her from a professional rival.
The LGBTQ+ side of this is trickier but still stupid. I have no desire to rattle off a list of women players who were not queer and still managed to have tremendous WNBA careers, but I could, and you could too, if you watched more players than the one you watch. (I’ll give you one: her name has already been mentioned in this essay and she’s probably going to deservedly win MVP a’nd Defensive Player of the Year a’gain.) But the idea that a league still fighting to be fully mainstream, in a country with leadership that is taking away LGBTQ rights by the hour, would want anybody besides a wildly popular, straight, White girl with dimples from Iowa — beloved by Morgan Wallen and Taylor Swift — to be the face of the league is unhinged. Having said that, has the WNBA’s marketing team dropped the ball with Caitlin from time to time? Absolutely. The league’s commissioner, Cathy Engelbert, has made a ton of mistakes, across the board. In fact, it seems her only saving grace has been negotiating the current pay raise and its subsequent offshoots like generous pension plans for retired players. That is what Engelbert is here for. She’s not going out of her way to “protect” Caitlin. And when Chelsea Grey or Angel Reese receive racial slurs in their DMs, Engelbert does not condemn that either. Sometimes, what seems like a coordinated plot is actually just good old fashioned neglect.
“The idea that a league still fighting to be fully mainstream, in a country with leadership that is taking away LGBTQ rights by the hour, would want anybody besides a wildly popular, straight, White girl with dimples from Iowa — beloved by Morgan Wallen and Taylor Swift — to be the face of the league is unhinged.”
However, these conspiracies have also opened the door for countless people online to say with their chest how they really feel about Black lesbians, about women who are taller and more athletic than them and about women who are just as competitive and aggressive on their job as any man. Granted, many have always had a problem with those things, but this current presidential administration and the increased popularity of women’s sports across the board over the past few years has given some confidence to take us all through the darkest of side quests.
Apparently, now transgender women invading the WNBA has suddenly become a COVID-level epidemic even though the WNBA has never had a transgender woman player and has no plans to have one. This weird firestorm, too, lies at Engelbert’s feet, for refusing to take a fairly easy stand that is even protected by law. I’m not going to dignify the ex-NBA guy I used to have respect for and the other ex-NBA guy who received a 50-year restraining order from his ex-wife who have now leapt back into news cycle relevance by claiming they will join the WNBA, even though they are not transgender. But this conversation reeks of sexism, transphobia and underneath it all, fear of the power of the rise of women’s sports. After all, it has been the WNBA, more than the NBA — and on a different universe than the waveless NFL or MLB — that has been most outspoken, as a collective, about everything from the state sanctioned murder of Breonna Taylor to the pay disparity in women’s sports (Caitlin herself even spoke up on the latter). Now, with the league becoming too big to ignore, when the WNBA All-Star game is outdrawing the NBA All-Star Game, what better time to distract a women’s league whose income and influence are rising with false controversies about things that have never happened and never will, all under the guise of “we love Caitlin, that’s why we’re genuinely concerned?” Even when, in the same breath, an admission will be made that “I never watched a WNBA game before Caitlin arrived.” Tuh.
I could write a lot more. But I have put all of this in the same boat with people who still support Donald Trump in 2026 or people who think Drake won the battle with Kendrick Lamar: they didn’t come to their position by logic and they will not be persuaded out of it by logic. And, of course, to close, a caveat that I should’ve led with: if you are a Caitlin Clark fan, who loves her fast paced, exciting, dynamic style of play but can also admit that she is — statistically, as of the time of this writing — the 45th best three point shooter in the WNBA, a turnstile on defense and leads the league in turnovers by… a lot, then none of this was meant for you.
You are a reasonable human being and I am glad that you are here.
