Caitlin Clark Can Lift The WNBA To New Heights Despite Mean Girls’ Bullying

Clark’s success will keep the league growing to everyone’s benefit, as long as petty jealousy and poor sportsmanship don’t get in the way

Caitlin Clark is the Taylor Swift of basketball, and therefore more than a mere player. She’s an icon, a brand, and an industry—far bigger in the public’s consciousness than her team or league. After captivating the nation (including me) as the most prolific college scorer of all time, her legion of devoted fans faithfully followed her to the pros, where she’s drawing such huge crowds that games have been moved to bigger venues, while TV ratings soared to record highs. Halfway into her first season with the Indiana Fever, Clark drew the most fan votes for the All-Star Game.

I haven’t seen anything close to this kind of mania surrounding a basketball player since 2012’s “Linsanity,” when Asian wunderkind Jeremy Lin joined the New York Knicks and went on a scoring rampage that made him an instant celebrity. The only other U.S. sports figure comparable to Clark in current times is Shohei Ohtani of the Los Angeles Dodgers, the first baseball player since Babe Ruth to excel both on the mound and at the plate, attracting millions of fans and TV viewers across America and all the way from Japan.

When Clark turned pro just weeks after graduating from Iowa, she was hailed as a hoops messiah who would bring the Women’s National Basketball Association to the promised land. Even though the pro league and its stars were already on an impressive upward trajectory, Clark’s college tournament games were outdrawing the WNBA playoffs by huge margins. Clark was expected to change that, and to a large degree has already done so.  

Yet while Clark has boosted attendance and TV viewership substantially, her transition to pro ball on the court has not been easy. The Fever lost eight of their first 10 games and Clark’s play was ragged at best, as she posted more turnovers than assists most nights and scored far fewer points than she in college. What’s more troubling and problematic is that her peers haven’t exactly rolled out the red carpet for their supposed savior. Her welcome has been more of a rude awakening among mean girls envious of her fame and fortune.

Clark struggles to take her game to the next level

After a rough start, Clark has begun showing flashes of her collegiate brilliance while helping turn around the Fever’s fortunes, winning six of her last nine games. It is still way too early to determine whether she will live up to all the hype heralding her arrival (as did Ohtani) or crash and burn (as did Lin). But it’s also way too soon to dismiss Clark as a failure, let alone a fraud, for a variety of reasons.

Given the WNBA’s brief preseason, she hardly had any practice time to learn the tendencies and preferences of her new teammates—a must for a precision passer like Clark. And like any rookie new to pro ball, Clark needs time to adapt against far bigger, stronger, faster, better skilled, and more experienced players than the competition she faced at Iowa. Defenders are smothering (and often manhandling) her, and early in the season she responded by taking out her frustration on unsympathetic referees, drawing scorn rather than sympathy.

What’s surprising and inexcusable is all the trash talk in the press and among some of her peers about whether the fan adulation and sponsorship millions being thrown Clark’s way is only because she is white and straight in a predominantly Black league featuring many openly lesbian players. This is ludicrous, as several Black and gay WNBA players also boast sneaker deals and other lucrative commercial endorsements. Yet the nasty backbiting persists.

Beyond jealousy rearing its ugly head, animosity has degenerated into more dangerous expressions of hostility by way of cheap shots meant to intimidate and even injure Clark. The WNBA is trying to nip this in the bud by handing out flagrant foul violations that could result in suspensions if repeated. But in the meantime, it’s a very bad look for the league, which could devolve into a PR catastrophe if Clark is seriously hurt by a low blow.

The biggest shame is that most of those on Clark’s own team failed to step up to her defense early on, either by speaking out publicly or making opponents pay with retaliation if their star player is assaulted. Former WNBA icon Nancy Lieberman called out Indiana’s players when Chennedy Carter of the Chicago Sky blindsided Clark and hip-checked her to the floor after play had been stopped. “Damn, where’s Caitlin Clark’s teammates? I’d be pissed as shit if nobody came to my defense,” Lieberman said.

The controversy over Clark’s abilities hit a peak when she was left off the Olympic basketball team. Yet while it would’ve been fun to see Clark continue her fairytale year from all-time college scoring champion to NCAA finalist, to top WNBA draft pick, and finally to Olympian, the Olympic committee made the right decision to choose proven talent over the inexperienced Clark. The women who make up the Olympic team are the best professionals in the country, and Clark, despite her collegiate achievements, has yet to earn a place among them. I have no doubt she will be an Olympian next time around, with four years of pro play under her belt.

While her legion of “Clarkies” expressed indignation over social media, I think not making the Olympic team will turn out to be in her best interest. Clark has been under intense scrutiny and enormous pressure all year, joining the WNBA without any time off following the NCAA’s grueling championship tournament, while enduring vicious taunts and physical abuse in the pros. Getting a break from the spotlight’s harsh glare for a month will give Clark a chance to clear her head, recharge her batteries, and prepare to help her Indiana team make the playoffs once the Olympics are over. The pause should also lower the temperature around the league, perhaps giving Clark a “do-over” when play resumes to turn the tide of peer opinion.

How might Clark turn the haters around?

Critics point to Clark’s early struggles as proof she’s no Wonder Woman. Yet 20 games into her pro career it’s clear Clark is not only a gifted scorer and playmaker on the court, but a game-changer commercially off the court. She’ll continue to lift the Fever and WNBA to new heights if the haters cut her some slack. While I expect Clark to keep working hard to raise her game and improve her performance in the pros, I’m also hopeful she’ll take steps to quiet all the negative buzz coming her way from the media’s peanut gallery and her envious peers.

Here is some unsolicited advice from yours truly, a committed Clarkie as well as a lover of this groundbreaking league:

While Caitlin Clark can’t control what players or the press say about her, she can control how she conducts herself during games and what she says afterwards to the press. A little patience and genuine humility could go a long way in winning over skeptics and buying her some badly needed time to let her pro game develop to the point where even the most skeptical critics acknowledge her as a welcome addition to what had already been a league on the rise.   

Clark must accept that rookies are always tested—especially those, like her, arriving with huge reputations in college. One of Clark’s idols, Sabrina Ionescu of the New York Liberty, is sympathetic yet was quick to recall that when she joined the WNBA as the number one draft pick, like Clark she had a target on her back—a rite of passage that took Ionescu a few years to overcome as she established herself, gained confidence, and earned respect around the league. There’s no way to accelerate this assimilation except for Clark to put her head down, adapt, compete, keep improving, and let her play do the talking.

Clark must also avoid harassing the referees after nearly every foul call (and non-call) involving her. She hasn’t been around long enough to demand the benefit of the doubt from the refs. Antagonizing them will accomplish little if not make matters worse by drawing even closer attention to her “entitled attitude.”

Clark should also keep publicly acknowledging all the incredible talent surrounding her in the WNBA, as she did after finding out she and archrival Angel Reese of the Chicago Sky had been named to the All-Star team, which will face the U.S. Olympic team on July 20. “I know people are going to be really excited about [her playing alongside Reese], but I hope it doesn’t take away from everybody else,” said Clark. “This is a huge accomplishment for everybody on Team USA and everybody on Team WNBA. They all deserve the same praise. I don’t want to take away from any of that and just be the focal point of All-Star weekend because that’s not fair to them.”

Reese—whose LSU Tigers beat Clark’s Iowa Hawkeyes for the NCAA Championship in 2023, then lost to Iowa in this year’s Elite 8 rematch—has carried a chip on her shoulder about all the acclaim granted Clark from their college showdowns to the pros. While a healthy rivalry is a good thing for sports (the June 23 matchup between the two rookie sensations was the WNBA’s most watched TV game in 23 years), this one has been particularly nasty. I hope having them play on the same side as All-Stars might help develop more mutual respect. There’s certainly room for both to become pro superstars. If Caitlin Clark is indeed the Taylor Swift of women’s basketball, why can’t Angel Reese be the WNBA’s Beyonce?

I’d also like to see more of the WNBA’s veterans step up and lead by words and deeds in defense of Clark. Take Diana Taurasi, the 42-year-old point guard for the Phoenix Mercury, who has played pro ball almost as long as Clark has been alive. “It’s amazing what Caitlin’s been able to do in her short career so far,” said Taurasi, about to join her sixth Olympic team. “It’s been nothing short of remarkable. The one thing that I really love about her, she loves the game. You can tell she’s put the work in.”

Taurasi, who warned early on that Clark would face a reality check transitioning from college to pro ball, added that “even throughout her short WNBA career, it’s been a lot of pressure, a lot of things thrown at her, and she keeps showing up and keeps getting better every single game. So, her future is super bright, and being a veteran and being in this league for a long, long time, it is pretty cool to see that and go into the future.”

Role models must lead by example

I’m relatively new to the WNBA, having jumped on the bandwagon last season and immediately becoming a huge fan of the New York Liberty, my “Girls of Summer” (about whom I raved in one of my earlier blogs). I’m thrilled to see so many girls in their teens and younger rooting wildly for the Liberty at Barclays Center, proudly wearing the jerseys of their favorite players and some no doubt dreaming of joining their heroines on the court. When I saw Clark play the Liberty in their home opener, there were nearly as many in the stands wearing Caitlin Clark jerseys as Liberty uniforms.

Scenes like these remind me of when I saw my favorite ballerina, Misty Copeland, surrounded by little Black girls in tutus seeking autographs and selfies after her historic debut at The Met as the first woman of color to dance the principal role in “Swan Lake” for American Ballet Theater. Misty is inspiring a generation of those left out of that overwhelmingly white art form to literally follow in her footsteps (no doubt while on pointe)!

Caitlin Clark, Sabrina Ionescu, and Angel Reese are in a similarly privileged position, serving as role models for young women basketballers looking for a place in this traditionally male-dominated game. As role models, they should be demonstrating to young fans that while there’s nothing wrong with healthy competition, you still need to treat one another with respect and maintain fair play. That’s a lesson some pros apparently must learn as well.

The women of the WNBA are all in this together, fighting to establish themselves as worthy of equal attention (and pay) as accorded the men of the NBA. Caitlin Clark has certainly drawn a lot more attention to the league—all of it positive. The last thing the WNBA needs is negative publicity, if Clark continues to be demonized and brutalized by envious peers. Clark’s success will keep the WNBA growing to everyone’s benefit, as long as petty jealousy and poor sportsmanship don’t get in the way.

Postscript: January 4, 2024: It turns out that the WNBA’s owners and players owe Caitlin Clark big time. An analysis of the league’s massive growth in attendance and TV viewership last season showed that “Clark is responsible for 26.5% of the WNBA's leaguewide activity for the 2024 season, including attendance, merchandise sales, and television,” while “one of every six tickets sold at a WNBA arena can be attributed to Clark.”

This same analysis found that “total TV viewership due to Clark is up 300%,” while “45% of total broadcast value came from Fever games...Clark's regular-season games were watched by 1.2 million viewers on average, which was 199% more than non-Clark WNBA games.”

Meanwhile, the league's merchandise sales “catapulted 500%, with Clark ranking No. 1, followed by the Chicago Sky's Angel Reese, another rookie.”

Despite having this incredible bottom line impact, Clark, who was named the WNBA’s Rookie of the Year, only made $76,535 last season, the league minimum.