Caitlin Clark set the sports world on fire during her last two years of college, and it hasn’t changed a lot since she moved to Indianapolis.
The doubters and the haters had no trouble following her here, and they are getting more and more aggressive in their attacks.
And they look more petty and more unfair with each new wave.
They are trying to bring Clark down, and she’s having none of it.
She just goes about her business like she always does—like she has since we first met her at Iowa. She plays basketball, she makes her team better, and her teams win games.
Her attackers are trying to throw buckets of mud on her. They are trying to cause division where there is none. They are trying to get the country to turn on her.
We are too smart for that too.
Clark is Teflon, and none of this is sticking.
The paint brush is broad, and it’s trying to color her as being a selfish basketball player that is resented by her teammates and worried about her own brand and image to the detriment of the people around her.
Truth is that her teammates at Iowa loved her—legitimately loved playing with her and being around her. Black teammates and white ones alike.
Truth is that her teammates with the Fever love her. They are sitting together at Colts games and Pacers games. They are laughing out loud with each other and clearly enjoying being with her and she with them.
That color they tried to paint her with is green—the tone of their own jealousy.
They tried to make her look selfish.
She broke the Fever record for assists by a rookie in a season, then broke the team record for any-aged player for a season, then set a new mark for WNBA rookies for a season, then went ahead and added the WNBA record for all players in a season.
She loves to pass the ball to teammates, and we love watching the flair with which she does that.
They tied to make her into a ball hog, but she disproved that by breaking the franchise records for made three-point baskets by a rookie, then by any Fever player, then put the WNBA rookie record in her pocket with 122 and just missed the all-time single-season record by six.
They said she couldn’t just come into the league and take over.
It was offensive to them that someone that played four years of college basketball could come in and dominate the league, and except for two players in the league she did exactly that.
It should be noted that it took her and her team and her coaches about two weeks to figure it out. Remember, Clark and the others who went from deep runs in the postseason immediately to WNBA training camps had little or no time to catch their breath. They didn’t have time to celebrate their wins or mourn their losses.
They didn’t have any time to let their bodies heal. They had no off-season time to build bonds with their new teammates.
Oh, and by the way, they had to find places to live in their new cities and then move there while they were learning new schemes and coaching philosophies.
And Clark had as good of a season as anyone could ever have hoped for.
Some people can’t stand the thought of that.
Why?
I’ll give you four reasons.
One, she’s white.
Is part of why we all are mesmerized by her because she’s white? I rejected the concept before, but after a season of not only watching her play in the WNBA but watching the country watch her first season in the WNBA, some people believe it is.
Second, there is some age bias at play here.
Some older current and former players have said the most harmful things about her. I am thinking of Sue Bird and Diana Turasi, who poo-pooed her before she’d played a WNBA game, and Sheryl Swoops who said the three-point line is the only reason why anyone cares.
We don’t hear from them about her anymore.
It could also be that we have been waiting for someone to capture our attention who is from the Midwest, or at least who doesn’t have ties to the University of Connecticut.
She fits that bill.
And is part of it because she is attractive? I think so.
Understand this: The WNBA culture is not one that is thrilled about having its highest-profile player be an attractive player with a handsome boyfriend.
And yet, through all of that, there she is in a suite or at the end of the playing surface laughing with her teammates. Having fun. Being friends.
How refreshing…to some of us.