Fever’s Caitlin Clark called a ‘distraction’ in surreal comments from ex-NFL player originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
The WNBA’s meteoric rise to prominence in the 2020s has many factors affixed to it, but perhaps none as significant as the Caitlin Clark factor.
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Clark has long been used to the spotlight’s glare amid her own rise to superstardom — first at the University of Iowa, then as the Indiana Fever‘s All-Star point guard.
But whatever Clark does tends to draw an inordinate amount of attention — and any controversy she is involved in inevitably draws hot takes from the wider sports media, including analysts who rarely have anything to say about the WNBA but want to get their cheap shots in when traffic is highest.
MORE: Stephanie White sends clear message about Caitlin Clark’s replacement after Fever win
Take Emmanuel Acho, for instance.
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Acho, a former NFL linebacker, now makes a living as a talking head on sports debate shows, and he has waded into the WNBA’s waters amid last week’s controversy involving Clark and Phoenix Mercury forward Alyssa Thomas.
During the Mercury’s 111-109 win over the Fever last Wednesday, Thomas caught Clark with a fist in the throat during a scramble for a loose ball. The WNBA retroactively reviewed the incident and suspended Thomas for one game, which has prompted debate about the league moving the goalposts with regard to player discipline in an effort to quell frothing online defenses of Clark.
Such defenses often include accusations that the league is “unfair” to the two-time All-Star and often include contentions that other players are “jealous” of Clark’s success and thus look to injure her at any opportunity.
First, former NFL quarterback Boomer Esiason used a racially motivated argument to declare that Clark should continue her career overseas in light of the Thomas incident. Now, Acho on Sunday stated that the WNBA might be better off without the whole Clark experience altogether.
“Caitlin Clark has gotten the WNBA over the necessary threshold they needed. Now people are watching, now we realize there is talent in the W, talent that’s actually even greater than Caitlin Clark,” Acho said on the Speakeasy YouTube channel. “Caitlin did what only Caitlin could do, and we don’t necessarily need her to do anymore.
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“Unless we can take off our gloves for Caitlin Clark and stop trying to act like she’s a messiah, the WNBA could and would be better off without Caitlin Clark.”
Acho and Esiason are arguing two sides of the same coin, though Acho was kind enough to namecheck some of the league’s other stars in A’ja Wilson, Paige Bueckers, Kelsey Mitchell and Olivia Miles.
Both Acho and Esiason are arguing that the WNBA does not have the capacity to handle a star of Clark’s magnitude and thus should give up trying. Either the league cannot police players properly (as Esiason intimated) or it is policing players too much and should move past one of its most popular players (per Acho).
Clark’s first signature shoe with Nike comes out in October, and she is poised to start her third consecutive All-Star next month in Chicago. Some Clark fans have detracted from WNBA discourse, but there is no denying that she has brought a lot of positive attention to the league as a whole — not just to herself, and not just to the Fever.
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It goes to show how the WNBA continues to be infantilized in certain areas of sports discourse as an organization that needs hand-holding to run properly. In fact, The W is having its cake and enjoying it too; the league is in the first year of a $3 billion media rights deal and struck a landmark CBA deal with the WNBPA in the spring.
