Oh, You Thought This Was About Basketball?

If you were under the illusion that the Women’s National Basketball Association was actually about basketball, the league’s reception of Caitlin Clark might strike you as bewildering. Clark began her professional basketball career in May amid an unprecedented amount of positive attention and energy, with all the makings of the first true WNBA superstar. But from the outset, the world of women’s basketball — both the players themselves and the broader ecosystem of journalists, media outlets, and activists who cover them — made no secret of its hostility to the 22-year-old phenom.

Earlier this month, when Clark’s Indiana Fever faced off against the Chicago Sky, the Sky’s Chennedy Carter took the opportunity to physically assault Clark, incurring a flagrant foul. Carter appeared to call Clark a “bitch,” before shoving her to the ground. After the game, Carter refused to take any questions about the foul, before proceeding to take to social media to attack Clark’s prowess as a basketball player — and liking numerous posts encouraging her to foul Clark again. Carter’s teammate, Angel Reese, congratulated her with a hug, before proceeding to commit another flagrant foul against Clark a couple of weeks later. “No one, on either team, came to Clark’s defense,” OutKick noted.

WNBA players and their counterparts in the media have been remarkably candid about the source of their resentment towards Clark. “A lot of people may say it’s not about black and white, but to me, it is,” the Las Vegas Aces’ A’Ja Wilson said when asked if Clark’s whiteness played a role in her popularity. “It doesn’t matter what we all do as black women, we’re still going to be swept underneath the rug. That’s why it boils my blood when people say it’s not about race because it is.” Elle Duncan, co-host of ESPN’s main WNBA studio program, used a recent episode of her show to provide her own unsolicited advice to Clark: You’re just new in this space, and so while you’re new before you put your f***ing feet on my couch, look around. Get the lay of the land; get to know it a little bit before you just jump in and continue to fan flames of divisiveness that frankly target Black and brown women. It’s not okay.”

It would be an understatement to describe racial hostility as an “undertone” in the coverage of Clark; more often than not, it is both explicit and overt. The View’s Sunny Hostin, who is black, attributed the rookie’s stardom to “white privilege.” (As well as “pretty privilege” and “tall privilege”). Jemele Hill, a black sports journalist, called Clark’s success “problematic” due to her “race” (white) and “sexuality” (straight). “Women’s basketball needs faces of future to be Black,” declared a USA Today headline. The LA Times published its own report detailing how Clark’s “marketing boom is celebrated but also draws questions of race and equity.” After her own tirade against Clark, former WNBA player Sheryl Swoopes — wearing a “Female, Fearless and Black” t-shirt — declared: “Black people can’t be racist.”

Clark’s defenders, too, are now the subject of official suspicion. A long Vox piece earlier this month noted that Carter’s flagrant foul of Clark “sparked a debate that taps into racist and sexist tropes.” The “tropes” in question, Vox wrote, were coming from “male pundits who do not have a history of covering women’s basketball,” and who had made the mistake of noticing the obviously targeted harassment of Clark from her black female counterparts. “Because of her record-breaking successes in college, Clark — who is white — has been touted by some as the new face of the league, a framing that’s raised questions of equity given how many WNBA stars are women of color who haven’t gotten the same due,” the outlet reported. “A growing narrative about Clark needing protection from other players echoes concerning tropes of white women as victims and Black women as aggressors, too.”

Clark, for her part, has taken the stream of abuse and scrutiny on the chin. “Sometimes it stinks how much the conversation is outside of basketball and not the product on the floor and the amazing players that are on the floor and…how great this season has been for women’s basketball,” she told a courtside reporter earlier this month. It was an admirable response, by any measure. But it also betrayed a tragic naiveté — a naiveté that is less an indictment of Clark than it is of the WNBA, and the system that created it.

Of the precious few ardent WNBA fans that exist, a substantial number follow the sport as a political statement, rather than out of any authentic enthusiasm for women’s basketball. (If you genuinely loved watching basketball, why would you devote your time to following a league in which the players were weaker, slower, and less physically capable than those in the NBA?) Those fans, and the journalists and WNBA pundits who latched onto the league as a vehicle for left-wing activism, have always seen the organization as yet another tool to shame and scold America for its sexism, racism, and homophobia. In 2020, the New York Times dubbed the WNBA the “most socially progressive pro league,” praising the association as a “hotbed of activism” that wielded its influence to pressure the “higher-profile” (i.e., male) leagues to embrace “social action”:

Today, challenging the status quo is a hallmark of the league’s players. They pushed the envelope long before it came into vogue among modern-day professional athletes, and led the way in protesting social injustice and racism.

The breadth of action among W.N.B.A. players is unparalleled among professional sports leagues.… players see it as the natural outgrowth of who they are, a drive borne of necessity in a league dominated by Black women, many of them lesbians.

Clark’s error was believing the WNBA was ever really about basketball. As a white, well-spoken, nice-looking Catholic girl with a boyfriend and a loving, healthy family, she was under the impression that being really good at basketball was all that was required for success in the league and a positive reception in its orbiting media appendages. But the WNBA is not fundamentally about basketball. It is about being black, lesbian, left-wing, and hostile to the broader society that sustains it — a platform for hard-left activism and social resentment, subsidized by NBA ticket sales. A nice Catholic white girl with no obvious social pathologies has no place in such an institution, as the institution itself wasted little time in making clear to her.

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