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A new chapter has been written in the debate over whether or not Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark gets an unfavorable whistle from WNBA officials.
This time, a sequence during Sunday’s game against the Dallas Wings drew the attention of ESPN’s lead WNBA analyst, Rebecca Lobo, alongside her play-by-play partner, Ryan Ruocco.
Broadcast team breaks down every foul defenders are allowed to get away with on Caitlin Clark pic.twitter.com/985PVBvwH8
— Clark Report (@CClarkReport) July 13, 2025
“There’s a grab. There’s a hold. There’s another grab. I mean,” Lobo says before Ruocco cuts in.
“All of those are fouls,” the play-by-play announcer says frankly.
“All of those are fouls!” Lobo concurred. “Every single one of them. And here, that’s a foul. That’s a foul. And finally they call [the shooting foul].”
Of course, any incident involving Caitlin Clark and physical play receives outsized attention. Her most fervent supporters often suggest that the WNBA should do more to protect its prized assets from unnecessary physical play, while others point to the extra attention generational players like Michael Jordan and LeBron James received from defenders to argue that this type of treatment is par for the course when you’re a superstar.
Both are likely true. The WNBA certainly doesn’t want anything to get out of hand when it comes to how Clark is defended, so the league would like fouls against Clark to be called as such. But, as any basketball fan knows, when defenders are intentionally being physical, it becomes difficult for officials to call every foul. Look no further than the most recent NBA postseason as an example of this. The sheer physicality of the defending made it all but impossible for everything to be called, lest fans wanted to watch a free-throw shooting contest.
WNBA officials need to find a happy medium. Clearly, Rebecca Lobo and Ryan Ruocco found some of today’s no-calls to cross a line.
