When Caitlin Clark entered the WNBA in 2024, she instantly became the biggest thing the league had ever seen. She brought a surge of attention and exposure to the WNBA that it had never before experienced, regularly breaking viewership and attendance records, and with it came a windfall of money for both the league and the other players.
Clark was the best and biggest thing to ever happen to the WNBA. But now, just two years later, Clark is quickly turning into a major problem for the league.
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While Clark used to make headlines for good and fun reasons – logo threes, no-look passes, and scoring outbursts – the tide seems to have turned, and the headlines are much less flattering.
Over the past several days, Caitlin Clark has been the source of all kinds of discourse, from her exclusion from the WNBA’s 30-year anniversary poster, the suspension of Alyssa Thompson for striking her in the throat, her mounting technical fouls, and the injuries that have kept her sidelined.
What was supposed to be an exciting comeback season for Clark after she missed most of last season with an injury has been anything but fun, and people are taking notice.
“This isn’t fun. The Caitlin Clark experience. It was supposed to be a whole bunch of logo 3s and a staggering amount of no-look passes. Instead, it’s become a sizzle reel of flagrant fouls, interrupted only by troubling injuries and league-wide PR nightmares,” wrote Candace Buckner of The Athletic.
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“She spends nights going 1-versus-3 — against the three officials assigned to her games — convinced that her real enemies blow whistles for a living. Although Clark stands as one of the league’s leaders in scoring, she also shares top billing with Angel Reese, no less, because of her five technical fouls. She whines at refs, yells at her own coaching staff when demanding that they review foul calls, and when she taunts an opponent, she’s aghast at her punishment. Sports fans should appreciate the inferno from any athlete who cares, but it becomes emotionally draining to have to watch a star fume in misery,” she continued.
Barstool Sports personality PFT Commenter is tired of the discourse, going as far as to call her a “loser” who does not deserve the attention the media has been giving her.
“Can I say something about the Caitlin Clark situation? I would like to opt out of all Caitlin Clark discourse until she wins something. Why are we wasting all this time talking about a loser?” PFT Commenter said on his Pardon My Take podcast.
“She’s never won a title,” he added.
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Rob Knox, an award-winning sports journalist, wrote in a thoughtful piece that he reached his “breaking point” with the discourse surrounding Clark.
“I’ve noticed a troubling pattern. Whenever something negative happens to Clark, a wave of people emerges from the darkest corners of the internet. They weaponize the moment to spread racism, demean Black women, attack the WNBA, and say things they would likely never utter face-to-face,” he wrote in his blog post. “The basketball disappears. Humanity disappears. What’s left is outrage without boundaries.”
And that’s just a sample of what has been written about Clark over the past several days. And that’s a major problem for the WNBA.
At the start, Clark was nothing but good news for the WNBA, bringing unprecedented attention, fandom, and money to the league while producing highlight plays and record-breaking performances regularly. This season, however, the fun is gone, and the negative discourse surrounding Clark has overshadowed anything that has happened on the court.
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The league desperately needs to the fun to return and the discourse to die if Clark’s impact on the league is going to continue to be positive.
The post WNBA has a Caitlin Clark problem appeared first on The Comeback: Today’s Top Sports Stories & Reactions.
