I'm bored, so I finally decided to find out what the Caitlin Clark kerfuffle is all about. I clicked on a Fox News story because, hey, if I'm going to dive in I might as well do it in the deep end, right? But first, here's what she said, complete and unabridged:
Going into the WNBA season, [A'ja] Wilson, a two-time league champion and now three-time WNBA MVP, told the Associated Press she thought Clark’s race was a “huge” contributor to her popularity. “It doesn’t matter what we all do as Black women, we’re still going to be swept underneath the rug,” Wilson said. “That’s why it boils my blood when people say it’s not about race because it is.”
Clark is cognizant of the racial underpinnings of her stardom. “I want to say I’ve earned every single thing, but as a white person, there is privilege,” says Clark. “A lot of those players in the league that have been really good have been Black players. This league has kind of been built on them. The more we can appreciate that, highlight that, talk about that, and then continue to have brands and companies invest in those players that have made this league incredible, I think it’s very important. I have to continue to try to change that. The more we can elevate Black women, that’s going to be a beautiful thing.”
So Clark, asked about the racial undertones surrounding her rookie season—which were pretty relentless—first acknowledged her "Great White Hope" reputation and then politely said Black players are really good and we should support them all we can. Basically her usual low-key effort to get along. Six sentences total from a multi-hour interview. Now for the commentary:
Well, it happened. Caitlin Clark finally bent the knee to the insufferable, gaslighting, disgusting, race-baiting woke mob.... Anyway, Clark got her roses, and then proceeded to bend the knee to the mob.... Caitlin Clark bends the knee to an invisible mob.... Why did the best player in the WNBA — by a laughably wide margin — crumble like a cheap tent?
Wow. I mean, sure, Clark mentioned white privilege in passing, and no self-respecting conservative can pass that up. But even for a MAGA die-hard doesn't this seem a little overwrought? Is it that infuriating just to briefly acknowledge that Black people are pretty good basketball players? The MAGA mind virus is a powerful thing.
White privilege is real thing in pro sports. I'm old enough to have been a real time Larry Bird fan. He was a legitimately giant hoops talent (Basketball Jesus, as he's sometimes called) but even back then I thought his race elevated him in terms of stardom. And it wasn't necessarily (or mostly, I think) stone racism by fans in his case: top NBA stars who also happened to be white had quite simply become comparatively rare by the 1980s. So he he definitely stood out. But still, it was a form of privilege.
I've also noticed an uglier manifestation of this directed (negatively) toward Black athletes. Serena Williams was one of the greatest tennis players of all time. But I always sensed a maximum readiness on the part of the media to drag her down for on court anger outbursts—out of proportion to what we've seen directed at White stars. Maybe it's my imagination—I haven't tried to quantify it—but I think the media tends to cut white sports stars more slack.
Anyway, Caitlin Clark seems like a sensible, level-headed person. I'm glad she's hasn't allowed herself to be cowed by MAGA ugliness.
You’re probably right regarding Larry Bird. But it works both ways. Tiger Woods was obviously a phenomenal golfer but I doubt he would have been a cultural icon with such popularity if he were white.
Yes, you're right. It's not like Arnold Palmer is so famous that your favorite rapist, Donald Trump, talks about his dick years after he died. You make some great points for the White Race!
(Because you are a racist piece of shit, in case that wasn't clear)
So they let you use the computer during recess?
(Because you’re an immature child, in case that wasn’t clear.)
Oh, you're under the mistaken impression that I'm here to make you feel normal. I'm not and you're not. You're a shit stain on humanity, and this account is just here to let me tell you that to your face. You and I aren't peers or friends. You're a Nazi, and WW2 showed us what we should do to all Nazis. No exceptions. So fuck you.
Have a great day!
Eat shit, Nazi scum!
Your point is a little off the mark. The argument over who is the greatest golf of all time usually comes down to Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods, not Arnold Palmer. There's all kinds of things that go into sports figures becoming cultural icons. Palmer was only briefly the greatest golfer in the sport until Nicklaus came along so your comparison is not entirely apt. But Palmer played a daring exciting, athletic style of golf and he was trimmer and handsomer than Nicklaus. And I think you can argue he was more charismatic than either Nicklaus or Woods. And part of what made Palmer an icon was his working class roots in a sport that wasn't exactly blue collar before him. And part of Woods icon status is that he is black in a sport that was and is not very black.
+1
It wasn't about who was the "greatest of all time," it was about being famous because of "his race." Shitstains like "Atticus" think that white is the default and anyone "not white" is only there because their race. It's textbook racism, and it's why I tell that to your faces.
You missed my point. I guess I wasn't clear. Jack Nicklaus was the greatest golfer before Tiger Woods. Among those who closely followed golf he was a legend but he was not a cultural icon. Tiger Woods was and race was certainly a part of that. Some of that was probably due to a sport and the sports media overcompensating for a history of racism. But unlike Arnold Palmer, who as a young man really did have charisma that translated beyond the sport, Woods was a very conventional persona who said the right things. Maybe he felt he had to be that way. It's too bad if that's true. But maybe beyond his technical prowess he was and is kind of a boring guy.
I didn't miss your point. I ignored what you wrote because I don't like you or what you stand for, and I want you to know that you're unwelcome in polite society. We killed a fuckton of Nazis in the 1940s. That wasn't a very good thing.
Chumpchaser is an immature troll. Just ignore it.
His sex life wouldn't have been all over the sports pages if he was white.
Man.
My Dad watched Fox from day 1. He was glued to it. So I had to watch it too. Back then, it was just vaguely against everything but especially the Clintons, and pretty ignorant.
Now I see things like this, and I think one of us is living on Pluto. I just don't recognize any part of that world. Sure, I'm pretty happy about that, but how do these worlds talk to each other?
But as a business model, I'm terrified that it works. To keep your crowd angry and in your tent, you have to continuously get louder and wilder and get them outraged at less and less credible things.
And here we are. I've had sudden sense of a vast expanse of emptiness between two mutually incomprehensible worlds.
Don’t worry. The next civil war will probably cause disruptions to Fox News broadcasts. Hard to watch if the tech is afraid to go out and fix the lines connecting your home’s cable and internet to the grid because 1,000 people died yesterday from sniper fire or bombs between the local provider’s office and your neighborhood. Problem solved!
Fox will just pivot to OTA/shortwave…
That's a lot of "bend the knee" talk. Sure suggests someone has a deep belief in the racial hierarchy.
Indeed, she has a good head on her shoulders and the last thing the WNBA needs is MAGGOT fans infecting it with their racial division. If they don't buy tickets because Caitlin is her own person and not their poster girl, so much the better
"Why did the best player in the WNBA — by a laughably wide margin"
Stupidly proving Clark's point.—
Yeah, that's what I was thinking.
Even if she's the best player currently - most of the players at her level in the WNBA prior have been black.
Seriously. A'ja Wilson was the unanimous player of the year. Perhaps Wilson is actually the best WNBA player?
That's what jumped out at me. Not only does the commenter have noxious views on race, but he (assuming it's "he") also doesn't know anything about basketball.
Ha, yes, hilarious that conservatives choose basketball of all things to assert that there’s no superiority of black athletes. Shark jumping continues…
This is indicative of a wider community of gleeful hate and bigotry that Trump and the virtual communities of the Internet have brought to pass. Also its validation, though some of that must also be laid at the foot of a falling away from morality and a publicly observed/respected religious forms. I had thought that sunshine would be the best cure for the things that came out from under rocks and out of the swamp, but the last election has shown it is not enough.
Atheists have made the point that, if you need a God to make you a decent human being, you've failed yourself and surrendered your agency. Of course, the rejoinder to that is that surrender to a Higher Power is the essence: Not my will, but Thy Will. But either way, if you walk on the dark side, you have betrayed yourself and your life.
Mourning in America.....
All sunshine did was show the stupid people more shiny things they could become obsessed with, and show the rest of us exactly how ugly those stupid people are inside.
The Clark media storm last year was an effective marketing campaign, but it was hijacked by social media. I can’t imagine all the MAGA people commenting about it even watch basketball. To me the question becomes how to avoid letting them ruin it. I’m not sure it’s possible. Everything is infected by social media hate now.
The important thing with MAGA is rage against banalities, and acceptance of atrocities (like a president that rapes, or leads an insurrection).
To the extent that I care about the WNBA, I feel a little sorry for Ms. Clark, who seems like sensible young woman who just wants to play basketball.
That said, it is hard to care about the WNBA that much (at least for me). The quality of play is well below that of the NBA and so much of the commentary surrounding it is unappealing nonsense like this.
That's not what Draymond Green says. He once said in an interview that when he *watches* basketball he actually prefers the W, because the quality of play is better. In every NBA game there is at least one guy who is only there because he can jump. That doesn't happen in the W - every player has skills. They all know how to switch off on defense, run the pick and roll, and hit the open player when double-teamed. They never miss the basics like boxing out for rebounds.
If you want to comment on the W again, maybe first watch more than a few seconds of it.
Yes and no. The "quality of play" can mean two different things. It can mean the skills on display, or it can mean how good a team is at winning.
It's often asserted that women players at the professional level have more skills. Basketball isn't my sport (I have season tickets and make all of the road trips for the University of Minnesota's women's hockey team) so I don't have a useful opinion on that. Green is saying that he prefers to watch them because they are more skilled.
However, I absolutely guarantee you that the worst NBA team would blow the best WNBA team off the court if they played each other competitively. While they might be somewhat less skilled, the NBA would have such a huge advantage in raw talent that it wouldn't matter.
In hockey, the best teams on the women's side, which would be the US and Canadian Olympic teams, would have a losing record against a good boys' high school team. This isn't a guess. The US team usually spends a lot of the time training for the Olympics by scrimmaging against very good boys' high school teams, because there just aren't enough good women's teams to really challenge them. They generally get beaten.
There are a lot of good reasons to watch women's sports. I enjoy it more. But the idea that they are as good as equivalent men's teams is not one of them. Fortunately, I don't really care about that.
Are you normalizing for, say, height? Personally, professionalized sports -- and that includes college-level just to be clear -- leave me cold. About the only one I follow these days is soccer in countries where they call it football and that's only because it's what's on at our local gastropub (If you're ever in the neighborhood, I highly recommend you visit R Public House.) OTOH, there are high school football games I've greatly enjoyed. They lack professional polish, to be sure, but the up and downs, the highs and lows, the sudden reversals and last-minute saves are vastly more engaging.
Why would I normalize for height? That's an important aspect of why men's teams would beat women's teams.
So you valorize height? What makes much of NBA play boring to me is how many tall guys can dunk the ball. The women have to actually maneuver for a shot and then shoot the ball accurately to score. Much more satisfying to watch IMO. The NBA should raise the basket at least a foot.
Actually, dunking has been replaced by long distance shooting as the chief characteristic of NBA games. Just shows what a simple rule change (the 3 point line) can do to alter the character of a sport. When literally all the players can dunk, the league embraced something not everybody can do.
I love women's hockey; since the late teens, I have become an obsessive fan of the Colgate (my alma mater) women's hockey team. They are objectively Colgate's best team--the only one that is a serious contender for a national title, having made the Frozen Four several times and reaching the championship game once, losing in OT to Clarkson. They are currently ranked fifth in the nation, though IMO that ranking is based on past reputation after graduating a boatload of talent that was almost all drafted by the PWHL The loss of talent and the coach who built the program (who is now coaching the NY team in the PWHL), as well as a short roster decimated by injuries on defense, are likely to catch up with them when the season resumes in January. (Admittedly women's college hockey is s a very small pond--there are only five Division 1 women's hockey conferences of which one (NEWHA) is a total joke that plays at Division III level, two are mediocre at best, and only two matter--the ECAC, where Colgate plays, and the WCHA, where Minnesota plays. The ECAC is probably the most competitive conference top to bottom, but the big three of the WCHA, Minnesota, Ohio State, and Wisconsin, have pretty much dominated in recent years.)
I don't know about boy's high school hockey, but the women's college teams are obviously not at at the level of their male counterparts. (Colgate's eternally mediocre men's team would beat the women's team pretty easily.) But it's more fun to watch than the men's game--it's a bit slower so it's easier to see the plays develop and since body checking is (supposedly) banned, playmaking is emphasized. And the top teams play at a very high skill level. However, the refs appear to be letting the players play an increasingly physical game and while I have yet to see a brawl in women's hockey, I've seen sticks raised plenty of times. Not sure if that's a good thing or not.
1) NEWHA's not a joke. They aren't as good as any other conference in DI, but I'm happy to have them. It fits in somewhere between the other Div I conferences and DIII.
2) In the WCHA, don't sleep on Minnesota-Duluth. They're currently fourth in the Pairwise, they have five national titles, and they've been to the NCAA championship game more recently than any team in the ECAC.
3) The very first women's game I watched was Minnesota vs. North Dakota at the start of the 2010-11 season. There were punches thrown at the final horn. So, it was the sort of MN/ND game I was used to.
4) I, too, wish that they would call bodychecking penalties more tightly than they have in recent years. That said, the reason that they aren't is because the players overwhelmingly want to play with checking.
We'll have to disagree on NEWHA, which may not even be as good as the top Division III schools; I believe their out of conference record last year was something like a combined 1-44. I hate that they get an automatic tournament bid over far superior teams; those tournament games have not even been within a light year of competitive.
But I agree on Minnesota-Duluth this year. They played two games at Colgate back on the first weekend of October. They split two 3-2 decisions, but Duluth was the better team even in their loss. (Colgate has been a bit lucky like that so far this season. They somehow beat top ten ranked Quinnipiac on the road despite being completely outplayed. Unless a couple of defenders that were injured all November return next month, they will likely be exposed by a brutal January schedule. They've only had fifteen healthy skaters and the four defenders were playing on fumes. They were reduced to using their second leading scorer from the top line as a part time defender. Not a sustainable situation IMO.)
Oh, I should have added something that you might prefer not to be reminded of as a Minnesota fan: one of the most compelling games I've seen in sports at any level was Clarkson's four OT win over Minnesota in last year's NCAA tournament. Watching those women play their hearts out--and well!--long after they were beyond exhaustion was simply inspiring.
Professional sports teams are better than college teams, who are better than high school teams, who are better than youth teams. None of this means watching sports at any level can’t be more or less enjoyable than watching it at any other level.
In a society of 330+m people, everything doesn’t have to be for everybody, and it’s very Main Character Syndrome to suggest that anything that doesn’t appeal to oneself is totally worthless and of no value to anybody else.
I have no idea who is supposed to eat at places like Taco John’s, but I’m told the people who do eat there love it. And I’m OK with them continuing to exist, even though I found all their “Mexican” food to be personally unsatisfying the few times others insisted I go there.
Perhaps you aren’t the main audience for WNBA games, and that’s OK as long as the WNBA can meet payroll and find enough people who aren’t you willing to watch it.
Perhaps you missed the "at least for me" part of my comment, @Austin. You seem to have put words in my mouth to criticize them and kind of diss me.
As I’ve been reading him since he was Calpundit I assume all Kevin’s commenters are from California. (Yes, silly, I know.) But now in one thread there’s talk of Minnesota women’s hockey and Taco John’s. That’s clearly a midwestern indicator! This former Gopher doesn’t care for either hockey or Taco John’s, but is happy to be among fellow Minnesotans. How about a good game of Duck Duck Gray Duck when we’re done here?
If you watch any college football or college basketball, you forfeit the right to comment on quality of play. The worst NBA or NFL team would absolutely destroy the best college teams.
Have you seen my New York Giants play recently? Oh, the humanity.
I agree. But so what. Any MLB team could beat my son’s little league team. So should I not watch him? I have a vested interest in watching my college team just like a have vested interest in watching my son. You can enjoy completion and sport even when it’s not the at the apex of performance.
I blame HBO's "Game of Thrones" for making "bend the knee" such a ubiquitous and increasingly cliched phrase. At least it's more "printable" in "family news" than "kiss the" you know where.
At this point, anything that explicitly references "black" ("Black"?) or "white" ("White"??) is little more than a pretext to start a fight. It will yield no enlightenment or meeting of minds.
Yes, of course that's where the phrase came from. The question is whether the usage is appropriate. As for the phrase itself, I much prefer that to 'ramming down our throats'. The right seems to have a fixation about things being rammed down their throats.
It makes me wonder what kind of life they live. That's never come up in my life. Not even once.
I really, really hate social aggression and backbiting. It's meanspirited, cowardly, and gross.
The phrase "bending the knee" shows a giant misconception. Honestly, it's at the core of authoritarianism.
Truth or facts are not a matter of process and learning. They are a matter that signals who is in charge - which authority do you accept? Those awful people who say Up is Up, and Black is Black, or me?
How far down do you need to probe before you end up in a manure pile like Outkick?
Went to the site and now f'ing Google is going to include them in my results.
Thanks, Kevin.
Had she said what Kevin said, that blacks are good at basketball, conservatives should have been thrilled. They can't resist a stereotype. No doubt, in their eyes, blacks are good at picking cotton, too.
But to her credit, she didn't. She was frank, fair, and neither kneeling nor demeaning. She said only that many of the best basketball players have been black, and, for all her own fine playing, she gets still more attention because she's white. That kind of praise, respect, and acknowledgment of racism really gets to them. She sounds darn near human, which you can't say about conservatives.
They long for eras bygone where "Boy them darkies sure can hep and step" was supposed to be taken as a genuine compliment. Where you could say "The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well." and everyone knew exactly what you meant and furthermore agreed with you in spades. In short, that time where it was taken as a given (in certain areas of the country) that the lowest white man was better than the best
colouredblack man.I had to go back edit the pull-quote because the reference was too offensive to let stand. Times change, and for the better, IMHO.
Apparently some WNBA owner commented on Clark's athlete of the year from Time magazine. These folks aren't very good at this. Hilarious.
Would the MAGA have liked her to talk about how the Black players are bred to be good at basketball, their thighs etc.?
(for you young ones, look up Jimmy the Greek)
Dude! Everybody KNOWS that Jordan was just a diversity hire, someone who was promoted by the WOKE NBA. Wake up and smell the (light, with lotsa cream) coffee!
For my money, what got under the MAGA hide most was the remark about "elevating" the Black players. For MAGA, they're the supporting cast at best and fit to be the backdrop for Clark's white brilliance. Sure, one or two of them can be stars, but never in their own right.
I can't separate this from what MAGA is making of this Penny guy in NYC-- featuring him in the box at the Army-Navy game, for God's sake. At least as bad as Rittenhouse, who has the possible excuse that he was really just a kid (a kid who ruined several lives). Penny doesn't have that excuse, and making him a hero too is a real statement.
So what MAGA evidently yearns for is some kind of white-idealized life that is so far back in time that even a mid-seventies guy like me can't remember seeing anything like it back in the dim past: "Nobody here in the real world but us white folks; those other ones perform for us, need to be happy to take whatever we give them and spend the rest of their time in a box somewhere until we're ready to see them again, who knows what they do but they're only allowed in our world on our terms." Isn't that what these reactions say? Just the purest racist trash.
So a jury acquitted Penny but you think he’s guilty?
"but as a white person, there is privilege"
Surely, because she is white, she draws additional white fans than if she was black. But she didn't lay this out as a political statement, like when people say all whites are privileged and thus they drive white supremacy as they hold down blacks, and so on.
Also, she is fun to watch because of all the three pointers she makes. Caitlin Clark led the WNBA in three-point attempts and makes during her rookie season. Since women players don't dunk, which is something exiting about men's basketball, in the WNBA those long three-point shots are an especially exciting part of the game.
I believe Caitlin Clark is deliberately using her voice to prevent White Supremacists/Nativists/Racists from using her as a platform or a device for their own propaganda. That's all there is to it.
Also, why are you responding to a trolling writer?
Another one of those MAGA moments when they reveal who they are and what they really care about.
But we are repeatedly told that MAGA isn't about white supremacy.
A number of those very talented black players are gay too so...
In the end it will come down to butts in arena seats and viewers elsewhere: https://www.sportspro.com/news/wnba-losses-2024-media-rights-deal-cathy-engelbert-adam-silver-caitlin-clark-nba/
The WNBA lost money in 2024, but it's not due to high labor costs. Caitlin Clark made just $77k in 2024.
Still, 21 WNBA players make over $200k a year. I don't get why Caitlin Clark makes so little. It's estimated she brought in over $50 million in new revenue to the WNBA in 2024. It's ridiculous. (But lucky for Clark, she now has some major sponsorship deals. Her Nike deal is worth $28 million over 8 years.)
Standard rookie contract I assume. And as you noted, she isn't hurting for money thanks to endorsements.
$76,535 this year and increase through 2027, maxing out at $97,582 in her fourth year.
"Bend the knee" would be a better description of what Ron DeSantis will be doing towards Trump if he appoints Lara to the Senate. Not anything Caitlin Clark has been doing.
What do we expect? I don't follow the WNBA, so I don't know how these players compare, but Clark's response was certainly reasonable. She acknowledges that she gets a load of attention which may or may not be due to her race, but also says -- appropriately -- that she earned all her notoriety, which is undoubtedly true. At the same time, she agreed that some Black players may have been overlooked because they weren't the shiny new thing.
I do remember in the earlier days of the WNBA when Candace Parker was a big, big deal, mostly because of her immense talent and being one of the first female high school players capable of dunking the ball. I don't remember anyone saying she got too much attention because she is Black. But that was in the "before times," when Trump had not yet created the permission structure for all that latent perpetually unfulfilled adolescent rage to burst forth, polluting our culture with its stink.
Lisa Leslie.
She was able to dunk in high school back in 1987, and was the first woman in the WNBA to slam dunk. Also, she once scored 101 points in the first half of a game and the opponent walked away.
Don't worry. Juju Watkins will break all of Caitlin Clark's records.
Hmm, so some nobody on an insignificant website, and a bunch of nobodies on a rapidly declining social-media site, say stupid and racist things; and I get to decide whether to get exercised about that. Pass.
Speaking of passing, what this longtime UConn Women Huskies fan and his family have enjoyed for many years is watching the patient playmaking of this best-ever program in Division I, passing and moving to create the best scoring opportunities, then playing defense just as intensely.