Just as some ESPN talent leaned into Caitlin Clark‘s efforts to refocus the conversation on basketball and ignore outsiders who politicize her career, Monica McNutt took a different tack.
During ESPN’s Women’s Sports Sunday studio show this past weekend, McNutt was asked to respond to comments Clark made to ESPN during an interview at WNBA All-Star weekend in which the Indiana Fever star said narratives about her were “not based in reality” and that she sometimes borders on being “fearful” of the fervor behind the controversies that she faces in the league.
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“When I walk out of the locker room, I shouldn’t be, not fearful, of what the conversation is gonna be. But it’s emotionally exhausting. It’s draining,” Clark said. “It makes your shoulders tense. Because people don’t want to talk about the basketball, they just wanna stir it up and make something else.”
McNutt argued that Clark was wrong to suggest she was scared of these fan and media narratives, given that other WNBA players have faced real threats, sometimes as a result of run-ins with Clark.
“I thought the choice, the word of being ‘fearful’ of the conversation after a game that she alluded to was interesting,” McNutt said. “Because oftentimes, it seems, at least in the larger discourse, and not that this is not an emotional experience for Caitlin Clark because I believe that it is, but it’s the folks that are accused of doing outside the parameters of competition who are fearful, when you look at their social media.”
Recently, Hilton Grand Vacations fired a man who was found to have sent a racial slur to Las Vegas Aces guard Chelsea Gray. Not long before that, Phoenix Mercury star Alyssa Thomas called out agitators who “threaten our lives,” directly in reference to an on-court incident with Clark for which Thomas was later suspended.
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In McNutt’s mind, Clark could have been more mindful of the direct threats someone like Thomas allegedly received when claiming that she was the one who might feel threatened. McNutt added that Clark ought to take more “accountability” in order to uplift her fellow WNBA players.
“Caitlin Clark is 24, she is a shining star in the galaxy of the WNBA,” she continued. “But I do think as she continues to matriculate through this league, there is room for a little bit more accountability and self-awareness in terms of her role in the larger sisterhood, if she sees it that way, of the WNBA.”
Just last week on First Take, ESPN’s Chiney Ogwumike urged women’s basketball media to “recenter” the conversation about Clark back toward basketball. But McNutt, a fellow First Take contributor, believes the onus is more on Clark to clean up the situation.
Even beyond McNutt’s issue with Clark using the word “fearful,” which she interrupted herself to correct, it often feels difficult to see how any individual could truly stop the news cycle around the megastar. At a moment when national politicians are co-opting her as a pawn in the culture war and media figures of all stripes are building a cottage industry around Caitlin Clark commentary, the Fever star has largely lost ownership of her own reputation. When she has previously addressed the circumstances around her rise in the predominantly Black WNBA, Clark’s words have been ignored.
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McNutt seems to believe that it would be helpful for Clark to form stronger bonds with her fellow WNBA players, strengthening the unity and resolve of the league as a whole. That may lead to a more singular message coming out of the league, but it wouldn’t negate the reason these players are in the line of fire in the first place: a relentless mob from all lanes of society is co-opting her for its various ends.
The post Monica McNutt counters Caitlin Clark’s comments by calling for ‘accountability and self-awareness’ from Fever star appeared first on Awful Announcing.
