Courting controversy

Surely, Caitlin Clark never signed up to be a lightning rod concerning issues of race and sexuality in the Women’s National Basketball Association.

Let’s state the obvious up front: The rookie guard with the Indiana Fever is a white player in a sport largely populated by black athletes. She’s also heterosexual in a league where nearly 40 percent of the players openly identify as LGBTQ, according to a 2022 study. Some in the media, including OutKick’s Clay Travis, estimate the percentage of WNBA players who are actually LGBTQ to be even higher. And Clark has a wholesome, distinctly feminine appearance that some fans find refreshing—especially when contrasted with tatted-up players who appear more masculine, such as Phoenix Mercury center Brittney Griner.

Fresh off a college career in which she became NCAA Division I’s all-time leading scorer and led the University of Iowa to back-to-back NCAA title games, Clark is a major reason why the WNBA, a once (and arguably still) floundering league that has struggled to be relevant, is garnering more attention than ever. Whereas the league once struggled to fill even the lower bowls at its arenas, teams such as the Washington Mystics have had to move games to bigger venues to accommodate the demand for tickets when Clark and the Fever have come to town. Television ratings for WNBA games are higher than ever. And whereas discussion of WNBA games was once noticeably absent from sports talk radio, even in towns that boasted WNBA teams, fans can now hear hosts of national programs discussing the league regularly.

Clark has even been credited with inspiring the WNBA to spring for charter flights for its players—who, up until last year, had to fly commercial, often on no-frills airlines like Southwest. (I once shared a Southwest flight with Seattle Storm players the night after covering the Storm’s game against the now-defunct Sacramento Monarchs.)

Understandably, this has created some resentment among players who now find themselves playing in Clark’s shadow. A’ja Wilson, a five-time WNBA All-Star and two-time league champion with the Las Vegas Aces, has openly complained that companies seeking to cash in on the WNBA’s newfound popularity see Clark as more marketable than herself because Clark is white. And Clark has been the victim of some rather vicious on-court fouls, leading some in the media to speculate that opposing players are targeting Clark—not just out of jealousy for the attention she’s received, but because of her race and heterosexual identity—not to mention the fact that she is a devout Catholic as well.

Such speculation has brought back to the surface claims that former WNBA player Candice Wiggins once made. Drafted out of Stanford University by the Minnesota Lynx in 2008, Wiggins spent eight seasons in the league with four different teams before retiring in 2016.

Roughly a year later, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported Wiggins’ claims that she left the WNBA following years of bullying for being straight and Christian.

“Me being heterosexual and straight, and being vocal in my identity as a straight woman was huge,” Wiggins told the Union-Tribune in 2017. “I would say 98 percent of the women in the WNBA are gay women. It was a conformist type of place. …

“People were deliberately trying to hurt me all the time. I had never been called the B-word so many times in my life than I was in my rookie season. I’d never been thrown to the ground so much. The message was: ‘We want you to know we don’t like you.’”

In fairness, rookies in any pro sports league should expect less than a warm welcome from their opponents. Phoenix guard Diana Taurasi—one of the WNBA’s all-time greats and perhaps the friendliest pro athlete I’ve ever been around—even warned Clark that she was in for a rough ride after Indiana took Clark with the top pick in the WNBA draft back in April. (Taurasi’s comments were by no means threatening. She merely let Clark know her competition was about to get stiffer after leaving the college ranks.)

Clark, to her credit, has taken the high road whenever the media have peppered her with questions about hard fouls she’s taken or nasty comments hurled her way. She may not have a choice: Doing otherwise is all but certain to provoke further retaliation.

Still, whether her opponents like it or not, Clark is the face of the WNBA now. More than any other player in the league, she’s the reason why people are tuning in and buying tickets at an unprecedented rate. And if that trend continues, Clark will be the reason why WNBA teams can afford to pay their players salaries comparable to what their male counterparts in the NBA make.

But if Clark’s opponents want to keep the WNBA at the forefront of the national sports conversation—a place it’s taken nearly three decades to reach—they’d better check whatever prejudices they might have when they enter the doors of the arenas.