Caitlin Clark went from a charmingly fun story about a generational basketball player to a referendum on us as a people real quick, didn’t she?
A few months ago, Dominique Foxworth was on Bomani Jones’ podcast and described Clark as a “lightning rod”; this was in late April, after college basketball season wrapped and a few days after the WNBA Draft. One wonders, a scant six weeks later, what word Foxworth will use going forward, because “lightning rod” isn’t going to cut it anymore.
Our current sports media landscape is not equipped for this right now. What we have here is a league that has spent most of its existence on the fringes of major-leaguedom—not Big Four, but too big to be considered niche—suddenly thrust wholly into the spotlight, hitting leadoff on every talking head show and spawning a thousand horrible think pieces on every aspect of the subject in question, over something that on the surface seems largely inconsequential.
Let’s review, real quick, the subject and the circumstances before we move forward.
The best college basketball player of her generation currently enjoying mixed at best results in her professional debut1
A league that might finally have its Bird/Magic-level crossover rivalry between Clark and Angel Reese
One player (Chennedy Carter) with a history of Pat Beverly-esque behavior that merits a “Chennedy Carter Controversy Timeline” headline suddenly thrust into the center of the whole thing by playing like she plays
A whole bunch of extremely talented veteran players who believe they didn’t need a savior to come in and validate their league2
Local media that understands the game and the league suddenly having to make room for people not nearly as well-versed in the product