The WNBA is heading into the final stretch of its 2026 regular season, but the conversations around the league have had almost nothing to do with what’s happening on the scoreboard.
Caitlin Clark and Sophie Cunningham, two of the most talked-about players all year, were once again the story out of Saturday’s slate, and once again, it wasn’t for anything they did with the ball in their hands.
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The repeated drama has now pushed veteran sports commentator Skip Bayless to question where the league is headed.
Skip Bayless Blasts WNBA After Caitlin Clark, Sophie Cunningham Drama
Saturday’s Fever-Sky game delivered two separate flashpoints. Clark picked up a technical foul for making contact with an official while tumbling out of bounds after a pass. It was her would-be eighth of the season, a number that carries an automatic one-game suspension.
Both Clark and coach Stephanie White were furious over the call. The team appealed immediately and had the technical rescinded within two hours of the game, sparing Clark a forced absence from Indiana‘s next game against the New York Liberty.
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In the same contest, Cunningham, already at the center of the league’s ongoing debate over transgender athletes in women’s sports, was on the receiving end of a hard foul from Chicago‘s DiJonai Carrington, who caught her across the face on a breakaway layup attempt.
The play was upgraded to a Flagrant 2 on review, and Carrington was ejected. She stirred up further controversy by posting “WHITE PRIVILEGE @indianafever” on Threads before deleting it and posting the date of the two teams’ next matchup.
It was against that backdrop that Bayless opened the latest episode of “The Skip Bayless Show” with a message aimed squarely at the WNBA as a whole, captioning the video: “The WNBA has turned into a race war, a sexual identity war, a nearly unwatchable diva war.”
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He didn’t ease into it. The veteran commentator pointed to the Cunningham-Carrington confrontation and Clark’s dispute with the referee as examples of what he sees as a league increasingly dominated by conflict.
“Now it’s DiJonai Carrington vs. Sophie Cunningham and it’s a black referee vs. Caitlin Clark,” Bayless said. “And I for one, I am getting sick and tired of the WNBA. I’m getting disgusted by the WNBA to the point that I am finding it harder and harder to love or even like, definitely watch.”
He closed the segment with an equally pointed message directed at the league’s players: “Come on, women. Wake up. Wise up. Grow up. Embrace what could be great. You should be skyrocketing, and you’re just plunging into the abyss. The race war, the culture war, the political war, the sexual identity war, and in the end, just a divas gone wild war.”
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The frustration lands at an odd moment for a league that’s actually been producing some of its best basketball of the year.
Clark herself made history in that same Sky game, recording at least 25 points, 10 assists, and 5 made threes for the eighth time in her career. She’s also in the middle of a career year, averaging 21.6 points a night.
Minnesota Lynx rookie Olivia Miles has been just as notable a storyline, if for entirely different reasons. The No. 2 overall pick is shooting better than 50% from the field, a mark Clark never reached during her own rookie year.
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Miles has also consistently produced around 20 points per game during her rookie season.
That kind of production has fueled Rookie of the Year buzz and even some MVP chatter. The Lynx themselves have been the league’s best team by record, having strung together a 10-game winning streak before losing to the Los Angeles Sparks.
Likewise, the Golden State Valkyries, in just their second season, have been nearly as impressive, sitting at 23-9 and second in the standings.
None of that, though, has managed to out-shout the noise. Between Clark’s technical foul controversy and Cunningham’s ongoing spotlight, the basketball keeps getting pushed to the background.
This article originally appeared on Pro Football Network.
