DALLAS, TEXAS – APRIL 02: Caitlin Clark, centre, of the Iowa Hawkeyes shoots the ball against Angel Reese, right, of the LSU Lady Tigers during the 2023 NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament championship game at American Airlines Center in Dallas, Tex. on April 2, 2023.
Maddie Meyer
Though she bears no resemblance to him in style or content, Caitlin Clark has become the Donald Trump of sports. Everything she does or says makes someone angry.
The people who are most reactive to her are her colleagues in the WNBA, all of whom stand to make more money because of her presence.
Clark’s professional arrival could not be better timed in that regard. The league and players are currently negotiating a new collective agreement. Whatever additional monies flow from that – and there will be a waterfall of cash – should be referred to as the Clark Bump. But no good deed and all that.
Clark’s latest misstep was trying to deflect some of the well-deserved credit that’s been sent her way.
This past week, Time magazine made her its athlete of the year. That forced Clark to do the thing she likes least – a long, searching sit-down interview.
In the feature that resulted, the issue of race was highlighted. For the most part, Clark has managed to avoid wandering into that minefield. In the piece, she is deferential to her Black predecessors, without being obsequious.
“I want to say I’ve earned every single thing, but as a white person, there is privilege,” Clark said. It goes on like that with a lot of progressive boilerplate about appreciating and celebrating and highlighting.
This sentiment is so middle-of-the-road that it is tracing the median. It’s hard to imagine a statement less likely to provoke.
But it’s Clark, so the alarms were sounded. Everyone to their podcasts! Launch the tweets! Fire the columns!
The comments getting the most play came from Washington Mystics owner Sheila Johnson. She is unhappy that Time singled Clark out.
“We have so much talent out there that has been unrecognized,” Johnson told CNN. “And I don’t think we can pin it on one player.”
Yes, we can. That’s why they call it Athlete of the Year, and not Everyone of the Year.
Nearly 50 years ago, Johnson launched Black Entertainment Television with her then husband. They turned a niche cable channel into a multibillion-dollar business. All to say, she is an experienced campaigner.
Yet here she is sounding like she just discovered there is a thing called media, and doesn’t understand why it can’t be nice to everyone.
Johnson’s comments prompted Clark’s defenders to pile in, amplifying a debate spun from nothing. The WNBA just did what their male counterparts wish they could do more often – turn a made-up story into a real one.
It’s at this point that I call shenanigans. I no longer believe that everyone in the WNBA is irritated by Clark, who is about the most anodyne great star in sports history. If she was strutting around picking fights, maybe. But this kid? She wouldn’t say boo to a goose.
This is the person who upsets you so much? Nuh-uh. I refuse to accept it.
Instead, I think that everybody in the WNBA – Clark, Johnson and everyone else – has reached an instinctive and unspoken consensus on what sells.
For 20 years, the WNBA tried to break through by highlighting the abilities of its players. That didn’t work. People laughed at them. Worse, they ignored them. Incremental gains were being made, but advancing by increments in sports is like moving backward in any other business. It’s either boom or bust.
Then Clark showed up. Coming out of college, she was the biggest thing ever. She’s gotten bigger since. To say she should be more deferential to her predecessors is a bit like saying Michael Jordan should never have done an interview without thanking Jerry West. It’s a nice thought, but let’s get real.
Unlike most other newbies, Clark came packaged with a ready-made rivalry against LSU standout Angel Reese. The two have history going back to college. Clark is white and Reese is Black.
Everyone in the WNBA must have noticed that Clark vs. Reese got mainstream outlets talking about the league like nothing before ever had.
So instead of doing what it had always done – accentuating good vibes – the league embraced conflict. That the conflict was mostly made up didn’t matter.
Soon, people had taken sides. Some think Clark’s the greatest. Some think she’s surfing on the accomplishments of others. Despite zero evidence to support the thesis, some think she’s a racist. Some think she’s a scapegoat.
The truth of it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’re interested. That’s brand new, and is plainly intoxicating to those who’ve been involved in the league for years. It’s why they can’t stop saying silly things.
The trick is stoking this conflict just enough that it neither becomes an uncontrollable blaze nor gutters out. So far, so good.
If they stick with the playbook here, we know how this should go. Eventually, Clark earns the grudging respect of her peers. They come to understand that despite superficial differences, they are all more alike than not.
Maybe after years of animosity, Clark and Reese end up as respectful acquaintances. Not friends, exactly. That comes later. But valued colleagues.
Maybe they become the Statler and Waldorf of sports. Bicker theatrically, go through content-friendly tribulations and eventually play together. Maybe once it’s all over, they can do a documentary together.
This show has been done before. They called it Larry Bird and Magic Johnson.
That worked out pretty well for the two of them. It worked out even better for the NBA. The league’s modern brand is built on a white guy and a Black guy who strongly disliked each other until they were forced to talk.
The players prospered and the league went stratospheric, but no one got more out of that racial conflict than the team owners. It took them from struggling multimillionaires to thriving billionaires.
Were you in their spot today, I’m guessing that you too would go on CNN and say just about anything to keep the conversation bubbling.
