Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark, left, drives to the basket against New York Liberty forward Betnijah Laney-Hamilton in New York, on May 18.Noah K. Murray/The Associated Press
Until recently, the most famous professional women’s basketball player in the world largely gained her notoriety by being locked up in a Russian prison.
To be sure, Brittney Griner is a fine player. But like many athletes in the WNBA, few knew who she was until she was detained at Russian customs in February, 2022, after officials discovered a cartridge containing hashish oil in her belongings. She pled guilty and was sentenced to nine years in jail. She was released several months later in a prisoner swap.
The U.S. got a basketball player back; the Russians got a notorious arms dealer.
When Ms. Griner returned to the WNBA last year, not much had changed; the league’s talented athletes continued toiling in small stadiums, in front of mostly puny crowds, with little to no media attention – which they often complained about.
And then along came Caitlin Clark.
Ms. Clark, 22, made a name for herself in college playing for the Iowa Hawkeyes. She was a scoring sensation. On March 3, she became the NCAA’s men’s and women’s all-time scoring leader with 3,685 points. She was mobbed for autographs everywhere she went. She became a cultural icon and nightly talking point.
As the hype around her grew, you could almost feel the resentment rising among some players in the WNBA toward suggestions that Ms. Clark, who is white, would lift the league to new heights.
Ms. Clark was drafted No. 1 overall in April by the Indiana Fever, a pathetic team with few fans. That has changed. The Fever, while still lousy, now play to an average crowd of more than 12,000 fans a game, up from the fewer than 4,000 that had been attending home contests previously. The Fever recently drew more than 20,000 fans for a game in Washington against the equally lowly Mystics – a bigger crowd than the first game of this year’s NBA finals.
Still, Ms. Clark’s entry into the league has not gone smoothly. She has been roughed up a lot on the court. A particularly egregious foul by Chicago Sky guard Chennedy Carter popped the cork on what had been a simmering conversation around race. Did the mostly Black players in the WNBA begrudge the attention that Ms. Clark was getting? Was that at the heart of the pounding she was receiving on the court every night – not to mention the petty, mean-spirited comments?
Was it race-based jealousy?
“It doesn’t matter how hard I work,” said A’ja Wilson of the Las Vegas Aces, probably the best player in the league. “It doesn’t matter what we all do as Black women, we’re still going to be swept underneath the rug.”
It didn’t help that Ms. Clark signed a US$28-million sponsorship deal with Nike – unheard of, for a WNBA rookie.
One of America’s most respected sports commentators, Michael Wilbon, who is Black, said on the sports talk show Pardon the Interruption that there is a dishonest conversation surrounding Ms. Clark. “The discussion about Caitlin Clark has to deal with, and I mean initially and loudly, race. Race and culture in America. That’s part of this,” he said.
Pat McAfee, one of the most-watched sports blabbers in the U.S., said the idea that the entire current WNBA rookie class is driving interest and attendance records in the league, and not just Ms. Clark, is a joke.
“Nah, just call it for what it is – there’s one white bitch for the Indiana team who is a superstar,” he said, to the shock of many. He later apologized for using an expletive.
Race is unquestionably a component of some of the frustration toward Ms. Clark. But some of it is also just athletes playing hard against the other team’s best player, which is not unheard of. Still, you have to wonder.
Word leaked on the weekend that Ms. Clark was being left off the U.S. Women’s Olympic basketball team for Paris this summer – a baffling decision. The U.S. women’s team has won the last seven gold medals for the sport, and yet goes largely ignored. While Ms. Clark is certainly not the best player in the WNBA – yet – her numbers are superior to some of those who got on the Olympic team. She would have created enormous interest and provided incredible marketing opportunities.
People online and elsewhere are already pointing to race as an underlying issue – most of the players on the Olympic team are Black, as are the decision-makers around it. It would seem race relations in America remain as fraught and alive as ever.
Few could have imagined, however, that a white woman who’s good at dribbling a basketball would be the latest individual to reveal America’s simmering tensions.