Commentary by Sanford D. Horn
June 12, 2024
A dozen games into her inaugural season with the Indiana Fever Caitlin Clark continues to be the center of the WNBA orbit, and that status seems to have ruffled more than a few feathers both within the league and outside of the league. Between an aggressive intentional foul against Clark and not being selected to the USA Women’s Olympic basketball team, the attention has intensified to a fever pitch - pun intended.
And both sets of attention are at cross purposes. There are the people who think Clark was snubbed by USA Women’s Basketball, and the people suggesting Clark is receiving the mother lode of attention in the WNBA because she is straight, white, and Catholic, and thus an equal amount of criticism for different reasons.
Clark’s Olympic snub? No snub at all. The 12 woman team has an average age of 30.1 with an average of 8.2 years experience in The W, as it is popularly being referred. Seven members of this team have Olympic experience. For players like Diana Taurasi, of the Phoenix Mercury, this with be the sixth time she suits up for the United States. These players are familiar with one another, which will prove rather useful as the Paris Olympic games, which commence on July 26, fall right in the middle of the WNBA season. The team will have but seven practices together before taking the court in Paris.
From a statistical standpoint, Clark is averaging 16.3 points per game, which would rank her 11th amongst the Olympic team. Clark’s six assists per game place her fourth, and her 4.9 rebounds per game rank her eighth amongst the Olympians. The one area where Clark leads is in the dubious category of turnovers, averaging 5.38 per game. (wnba.com)
For Clark, while The W is on Olympic hiatus, she will have a much needed respite to recharge her batteries for the second half of the season. As a rookie, Clark, as all rookies do, faces a learning curve. From a more grueling schedule and starting at the bottom, Clark is also facing a culture of losing in Indiana, 13 wins and 27 loses last year, good for last place in the East, and 3-9 thus far in 2024. The Fever played 11 games in just 19 days. The defending champion Las Vegas Aces only played six games during that same stretch. Clark is getting acclimated to a new city, and road trips taking her from coast to coast, not just within the confines of the Big Ten. She is also playing with and against players with 10 or more years experience in The W.
Clark, who took the news about not being included on the Olympic team with class and grace, will undoubtedly have many more opportunities to represent the United States in the Olympics in the years to come. And while a couple of the choices for the Paris Olympics are questionable in this fan’s estimation, Clark did not suffer a snubbing from the powers that be. Expect her to don the red, white, and blue in Los Angeles in 2028.
The Olympics aside, Clark is facing on court animosity. The aforementioned ruffling has come to a head and turned into animus with demonstratively aggressive behavior. With 15.8 seconds remaining in the third quarter of the Fever’s home game June 1, Chennedy Carter of the Chicago Sky forcefully shouldered Clark knocking her to the court. Carter teammate Angel Reese applauded Carter.
Putting it mildly, Clark and Reese have a less than friendly rivalry dating back a couple years when they faced each other in the Women’s NCAA tournament. Reese’s Louisiana State defeated Clark’s Iowa in the 2023 championship. Clark and Iowa avenged that defeat by knocking off Reese and LSU in the Elite Eight this March.
Days after the June 1 game, the WNBA changed the call of a simple foul away from the ball to a Flagrant 1, which should have been the initial call, followed by an ejection, a fine, and a suspension of Carter. The WNBA season is roughly a quarter of the way through and this behavior must be stopped before it worsens - not because it happened to Clark - no player should be on the receiving end of such an intentional foul.
“There’s a difference between tough defense and unnecessary actions. This has to stop. The league needs to clean up this trash. This is not what this league is about,” said Fever General Manager Lin Dunn.
“Chennedy Carter should have been ejected. It was not even a basketball play,” said Hall of Famer Charles Barkley.
In the post-game press conference Carter said, “I ain’t answering no Caitlin Clark questions.”
But this is not just about Carter’s insolence and inappropriate behavior. She is merely a symptom of what is emerging as a greater problem. A culture of exclusion seems to be developing in The W. A level of animosity is centering around Clark because of something said by Jason Whitlock on his podcast, “Fearless with Jason Whitlock,” akin to white savior syndrome.
Whitlock contended that Clark, at just 22 years old, is under immense pressure due to her race, faith, and the poor performance of her team, the Indiana Fever. "The level of pressure on Clark to rescue the floundering league, combined with the amount of jealousy, racism, and anti-heterosexual bigotry directed at Clark, and also combined with the incompetence of the Indiana Fever organization are going to permanently destroy Caitlin Clark," he said.
So apparently it is now acceptable to discriminate against a person’s race, sexual orientation, and level of religiosity, as long as that person is white, heterosexual, an observant Catholic. What happened to not judging a person based upon those attributes? Would the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. approve of myriad black WNBA players judging Clark on the color of her skin instead of the content of her character? Of what are they jealous? That arenas are full of paying fans? That The W now travels by chartered planes, heretofore not done? Should The W be a segregated league for only black and lesbian players? Of course not, and I doubt that notion came from anyone inside the league. But the critics are ignorant.
“The View” co-host Sunny Hostin seemed to take both sides of these issues. The WNBA played its first games in 1997. “It’s 2024 and we are just now talking about it. If Caitlin Clark is the vehicle that will bring this sport that I have loved so much and so long to little five year old girls playing in Harlem, I say yes, bravo. I have no problem with that,” said Hostin.
“With that being said, I do think there is a thing called ‘pretty privilege.’ There is a thing called ‘white privilege.’ There is a thing called ‘tall privilege,’’ continued Hostin. Ignoring “pretty privilege,” as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and addressing “white privilege” below, let’s examine so-called “tall privilege.” Clark stands six foot even according to wnba.com. That same site shows that of the 12 members of the Olympic team, six women are taller than Clark, two the same height, and four shorter - three by a mere inch. On the Fever, the statistics play out almost identically with seven of Clark’s teammates taller than she, one the same height, and four shorter. At six foot even in women’s professional basketball, that’s hardly rarified air.
Clark earned her place in the league. She set the NCAA scoring record with 3,951 points, passing Kelsey Plum, current of the defending WNBA champion Las Vegas Aces for the women’s mark, and the late “Pistol” Pete Maravich for the all-time NCAA scoring total that he established at LSU. Plum scored 3,527 points during her time at the University of Washington, and Maravich scored 3,667 points. Clark’s “whiteness” is not the reason for all the records she broke and set - a little something called practice and perseverance, not pigment.
This should never be about black and white - that’s shameful. Clark should be supported because the cash is green and she’s a player in The W like any other. A rising tide lifts all boats, and Clark should be cheered, not jeered for all she brings to The W. Her presence in the WNBA puts fans in the stands, both at home at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indy, and on the road - some opposing teams are using larger arenas when Indiana comes to town. Because of the Clark Effect, more WNBA games are televised. When Clark is televised so too are nine other players for 40 minutes per game, having the same opportunity to demonstrate their skills and talents. The sooner the haters cut the crap, the better for the entirety of the WNBA.
If Clark is injured by someone's intentional maladaptive behavior and misses playing time, brief or considerable, attendance will drop overnight at arenas where the Fever are the visiting team, as well as at home games here in Indy. In five home games this season Fever attendance has already surpassed the attendance for the entirety of the 2023 home season; 82,857 attendees this year and 81,336 last season. (Front Office Sports)
Rising attendance should translate into rising salaries. Who in The W doesn’t want a pay raise? So again, why the jealousy and backbiting? In 2022 the average WNBA salary rang in at $102,751, and in 2023 it rose to $147,745 - a $45,000 pay raise in one year. Before the 2024 WNBA Draft, the top 10 league salaries ranged from $208,219 to $241,984 and 22 players in The W earned more than $200,000. Rookie salaries in 2024 are four year deals ranging from $338,056 to $276,830, or $84,514 to $69,207.50 per season depending upon where in the draft a player ranked. (SPOTRAC) It’s no wonder players in The W supplement their income with endorsements, when they can get them, and play overseas during the offseason in Europe, Israel, Turkey, Russia, and even Australia.
Don’t forget, since 1997 the NBA has ostensibly subsidized the WNBA financially, to the tune of roughly $15 million per year for league operating expenses. And, there’s also a “50-50 ownership of the league between all twelve WNBA teams and the NBA as of 2023.” (sportskeeda)
But Hostin had to turn overseas play into a racial issue, by singling out Brittney Griner of the Phoenix Mercury, when myriad players black and white, display their skills on foreign soil. “And so, part of it is about race. If you think about the Brittney Griner’s of the world, why did she have to play in Russia?” Contracts are not written based upon race. Nine of the 12 players on the Olympic roster have salaries exceeding $200,000 and two more just under that amount. As it turns out it is Griner who is the lowest paid 2024 Olympian at $150,000. But that is not based upon race, as seven of the top 11 salaries are paid to black players.
“Caitlin Clark is bringing this money, these sponsorships, we hope, into the league, and other players will benefit from it,” said Hostin. “But I do think that 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-plus community. Seventy percent of the WNBA is black, one-third are in the LGBTQ-plus community and we have to do something about that stigma in this country. I think people have a problem with basketball playing women that are lesbian,” said Hostin.
To that, this conservative basketball fan says, who cares? It matters not the sport. The best five should be on the court, the best nine on the baseball diamond, the best 11 on the gridiron, the best six on the ice, or the best 12 on the pitch - black, brown, or white; gay or straight - period. Meritocracy in its purest form is what competitive sports are about. Sports are not an affirmative action, social engineering, DEI experiment. Leave that for the squishies. Sunny Hostin is looking for problems where they are not. If lesbian players were overly concerned about acceptance, it is unlikely people would know how many are, in fact, lesbian. WNBA arenas are often highly attended by lesbian fans - couples obviously comfortable in their environs, and The W also holds various pride-related events. Regardless of the issue Hostin claims exists, it is not, nor should it be on Caitlin Clark to solve. That is a WNBA issue, and Clark is not to blame for all of the ills, real or perceived, of The W.
A high turnover rate notwithstanding, Clark is fighting adversity and hopefully silencing the critics with her play on the court. She became only the second player in WNBA history to score more than 150 points, grab more than 50 rebounds, and dish for more than 50 assists in her first 10 games in the league. Caitlin Clark earned Rookie of the Month honors. Imagine what she will do when she feels at home in the W. And with the legions of fans Clark has around the league, home will be from coast to coast, as long as Fever fans remember there is no I in team, nor will one player turn around a team overnight.
Sanford D. Horn is a writer and educator living in Westfield, IN.
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