The Caitlin Clark discussion got really loud and a little nutty. Let’s get real about it. And about her.
The controversy around Clark has touched on race, gender, and the nature of journalism, and it has generated some scalding-hot takes. It's time to cool down the conversation.
The most descriptive and destructive word in modern discourse — sports discourse, political discourse, any kind of discourse — is reductive.
Nuance is for the birds. The notion that two independent or even contradictory ideas might both be true is written off as wishy-washy. The incentives to be certain when nothing is certain, to generate heat instead of shedding light — the eyeballs, the attention, the clicks, the audience capture and retention — are so powerful that they’re difficult to resist.
Point a finger. Treat a common occurrence like an earth-quaking development. Scream louder than the other screamer. Your career might depend on it. Your relevance definitely will.
Much of the dialogue and many of the monologues about Caitlin Clark over the last several days have fit snugly into that culture of exaggeration and outrageousness. Her baptism into the WNBA has become a national referendum on race, gender, journalism, and more. The hottest of buttons keep getting pushed. Consider this collection of thoughts an attempt to cool the discussion down.
There are plenty of reasons that Clark has achieved such a lofty level of popularity. One is that she’s a gifted white athlete in a sport made up predominantly of Black athletes. It’s not the only reason she’s popular. I’d suggest that it’s nowhere near the primary reason that she’s popular. If it were, we would have been having similar arguments about the great white players who came before her: Diana Taurasi, Elena Delle Donne, Brianna Stewart, others. But it is a reason.
The racial dynamic at play here might not be as acute as it was when Larry Bird entered the NBA in 1979, but the principle is the same. Just as a casual sports fan who happened to be Black might have rooted a little harder for Tiger Woods, a casual sports fan who happens to be white might identify more with Clark. It’s human nature, for better or worse.
Yes, thanks to her record-setting career at Iowa, Clark entered the WNBA with a mainstream familiarity that surpassed any of her predecessors. No, that reality doesn’t mean that she is a better player than all of those predecessors, and it doesn’t mean that she’s the best women’s basketball player in the world right now. She might turn out to be, but anyone who thought she would immediately dominate the league had unrealistic expectations for her.
Beyond Clark’s obvious and remarkable skills, a few other factors have contributed to her rocket ride to fame, and all of them are a function of her good timing.
One, Clark had a better opportunity to assume the mantle of Best Women’s College Basketball Player after Connecticut’s Paige Bueckers missed most of the 2021-22 season and all of the 2022-23 season because of various injuries, including a torn ACL. Bueckers’ absence created a void in the sport, and Clark, to her credit, helped fill it.
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Two, Clark has played in an era in which standout women’s players are doing something that standout male players rarely do anymore: They are staying at their colleges and universities for three or four years and becoming national names. America had time to get to know Clark, Angel Reese, and Cameron Brink before they entered the WNBA this season. In women’s college hoops, the players are stars. In men’s college hoops, the players have left before they can become stars. Combine those trends with the rise of women’s sports and the following that any public figure can build through social media, and an athlete like Clark can become a phenomenon. She has.
Finally — and this is the most important factor — Clark’s long-distance shooting, her no-look passing, and her ballhandling wizardry narrow the gap between how a casual fan perceives men’s basketball and how that fan perceives women’s basketball.
Clark’s game is an approximation of Stephen Curry’s, and Curry is maybe the most beloved and most revolutionary male player of the last decade. The two of them are a blast to watch, and stylistically, they look the same on the court, or at least similar enough.
Put it this way: A’ja Wilson might be the best all-around player in the WNBA, but she isn’t lifting off from near the foul line and throwing down hellacious dunks like Anthony Edwards can and has. When Clark pulls up for a 30-foot three-pointer, though, she and Curry seem to be clones.
Clark’s relative mistreatment on the court, even the now-infamous cheap shot that the Chicago Sky’s Chennedy Carter delivered to her, is nothing new in elite sports, whether the competitors are male or female. The first time Michael Jordan tried to dunk during a regular-season game, Washington Bullets center (and future 76er) Jeff Ruland knocked him to the floor with such force that it appeared Jordan had leaped directly into a trampoline wall. This rite of passage was inevitable for Clark: A rookie sensation always has his or her mettle gauged and tested. Carter’s foul was dirty, but Clark’s opponents were never going to treat her with kid gloves.
The WNBA itself is a different story. Eleven games in a 21-day span for Clark and the Indiana Fever? Is the league trying to break its meal ticket in two?
There is an element of hipster possessiveness running through much of the analysis of and commentary about the WNBA. Back in the day, I saw Sue Bird open for Pearl Jam in a tiny Seattle café. Where were you? That feeling is understandable, but if the league, its players and coaches, and its hard-core fans and advocates want more attention, they’re going to have to live with the drawbacks and discomfort that accompany broader interest.
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A lot of ridiculous or misinformed things are said all the time about the NBA, the NFL, Major League Baseball, and the NHL. A lot of smart and relevant questions — and a lot of dumb ones, too — get asked of male athletes in press conferences. Those kinds of incidents are baked into our expectations for and understanding of the coverage of those sports. We’re not there yet with respect to the WNBA.
It’s one thing for a male sports columnist to come off as a creepy weirdo in what should have been an innocuous exchange with Clark. That sort of behavior can’t and shouldn’t be excused. It’s another for Carter to decline to answer a reasonable question about her blindside body check of the country’s biggest sports celebrity, then retreat to the safety of one of her social media accounts to trash-talk Clark. In that situation, criticizing Carter for dishing it out while being unwilling to take it, just as one would criticize a male athlete for the same transgression, is fair game.
Women’s basketball has been growing into more than just a movement for a while. The scrutiny is going to be more intense. There’s no avoiding it. There’s only the messy process. The good thing for Clark, Carter, and everyone else involved in the sport is that, if recent history is any indication, that process will lead to a huge payoff.