After Alyssa Thomas received a Flagrant 2 foul and a one-game suspension, the expectation was that the controversy involving Caitlin Clark would die down. However, things only got worse as Thomas faced online backlash. From endless debates over player safety to even members of Congress sending a letter to the WNBA, the debate rages on. Now, three weeks after the incident, NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s latest take has promptedBarstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy to respond.
It all started when 11 Republican lawmakers sent a letter to WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert describing Clark as “the face of the league” while raising concerns over the repeated physical play against her. Abdul-Jabbar, however, admitted his first reaction to that was to check that “it wasn’t April Fools’ Day.” Because from his perspective, “calling any one player the face of the league, absent the sort of on-court and cross-platform dominance of a Michael Jordan or a LeBron James, is an insult to an awful lot of great players.”
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That argument did not sit well with Portnoy. “Let’s keep in mind (Caitlin Clark) didn’t ask for this,” he wrote on X. “She’s never said she was the face of the league. She’s always showed respect for those who came before her… But she is by far the most popular player in the league by every metric possible… The market dictates who the face of the league is and it’s clearly Caitlin. This argument makes zero sense and is just steeped in jealousy and stupidity.”
Long before LeBron James won his first MVP or NBA championship, he was already the talk of the town. Dubbed “The Chosen One” by Sports Illustrated while still in high school, James entered the league with a historic Nike deal and unprecedented national attention even before he played a single NBA game. By his third season, he was already widely regarded as the face of the league despite not yet owning the résumé Abdul-Jabbar referenced.
That’s because being the ‘face of the league’ has never been synonymous with being its most accomplished player. But even besides that, Clark herself has repeatedly gone out of her way to credit the players who laid the foundation for the WNBA.
“I’m somebody who grew up a huge fan of this league. I know where this league comes from—a lot of Black women that grew up making this league what it is. That’s kind of the shoulders that we stand on… They deserve all the credit, and the more we can give credit to them, the better,” Clark said last season.
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So while the debate over whether she is the ‘face of the league’ continues to divide opinions, the fact is that this label has largely been assigned by fans, media, and the league’s unprecedented commercial momentum since her arrival.
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The post “Steeped in Jealousy and Stupidity”: Dave Portnoy Doesn’t Hold Back Over Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s Caitlin Clark Claim appeared first on EssentiallySports. Add EssentiallySports as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
