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Indiana Fever star guard Caitlin Clark has been subject to a lot of physicality from opponents to this point in her WNBA career. This has prompted a lot of discussion about where this physical play stems from, or whether it’s rooted in something deeper than a team deciding that playing Clark tough is the best (or only) way to slow her down.
Women’s basketball legend Candace Parker shared her stance on this during a June 7 episode of Jemele Hill’s Spolitics show.
Hill asked Parker, “Given your experience as a rookie, I’m sure you’ve heard [with] Caitlin Clark, a lot of people saying, ‘Oh, she’s being targeted. Oh, they’re being too rough with her’… It still feels like people haven’t wrapped their minds around the fact that women in this league compete just as hard, if not harder, than men. There’s still a lot of people who have not been able to understand or can not lose the stereotypes about how women compete.”
“When you are a generational talent… you’re gonna experience the physicality,” Parker replied. “The scouting report is to stop you. And a lot of it is to be physical. Do you take a couple extra licks from people? Yeah.”
She later added, “That’s a part of the game. I think the problem is now, it’s a balancing act of society and the expectations of women, versus what is necessary in sports. And for so long, they were conflicting.”
Parker knows from experience what being a generational talent in the WNBA is like, so her stance on this speaks volumes.
