The photograph of Caitlin Clark on the cover of Time magazine honoring her as its athlete of the year is a stunner. Her dark hair blows back breezily as she faces the camera with a confident half-smile. Her workout top exposes her muscular midriff and sinewy arms, while the fingers on her right hand are perfectly poised to dribble the basketball. Inside, the magazine devotes close to 7,000 words describing her off-the-court life (new BFF: Taylor Swift), her basketball brilliance (“her signature 30-ft. launches. . . are akin to home-run balls”), and her impact on the WNBA during her rookie year with the Indiana Fever (incalculable).
In its 27-year existence, the WNBA has languished in relative obscurity, with most basketball fans viewing it as inferior to the men’s game. A WNBA playoff game almost never drew as many as 1 million viewers before Caitlin Clark arrived, while a typical NBA playoff game had more than 10 million viewers. Salary caps for entire WNBA teams was $1.4 million—not much more than the $1.1 million minimum salary for a single player in the NBA.
So you would think the league and its players would be overjoyed to have one of their own on the cover of Time.
But as was the case for most of her first season as a pro, nothing is simple when it comes to Caitlin Clark and the WNBA. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that there’s nothing simple when it comes to Caitlin Clark and the subject of race.
You see, Clark, 22, is not just the first women’s basketball player to grace the cover of Time, she’s the first white women’s basketball player to make the cover. And despite everything her presence has meant to the league—the increased TV ratings, the standing room–only crowds at every arena the Indiana Fever played, the infusion of excitement around the league—there has always been an undercurrent of resentment among many of the league’s black players. (A little more than 63 percent of the league is black.)
A’ja Wilson of the Las Vegas Aces, and the league’s MVP, said it straight out to Time—Clark’s race was a “huge” reason for her popularity. “It doesn’t matter what we all do as black women, we’re still going to be swept underneath the rug,” Wilson said. “That’s why it boils my blood when people say it’s not about race because it is.” More than once during the season, Clark was blindsided by a black opponent for no obvious reason except, well, the obvious reason.
Soon after the Time magazine cover was on the newsstands, Sheila Johnson, the black owner of the Washington Mystics, echoed Wilson, telling CNN that the only reason Clark was getting the acclaim was because she was white.
“I feel really bad because I’ve seen so many players of color that are equally as talented and they never got the recognition that they should have.” Wilson added, “Why couldn’t they have put the whole WNBA on the cover and say ‘The WNBA is the league of the year?’ ”
A commenter on X quickly pointed out that 31 percent of the Mystics attendance for the entire season came from the two games they played against Clark’s Indiana Fever. Indeed, the Mystics last game against the Fever drew close to 21,000 fans—an all-time record for the WNBA. Several games had to be moved to larger arenas to accommodate all the people who wanted to attend.
I’ve been watching women’s basketball since the mid-1990s, and I can say with confidence that I’ve never seen any woman play basketball the way Caitlin Clark does. She is a truly transcendent talent, who can shoot practically from half-court—her shooting is what initially dazzled fans—and who throws some of the most gorgeous passes you’ll ever see. To my mind, she’s the female Larry Bird. Why does she fill up arenas? Because she’s fantastically fun to watch. Her presence in the WNBA is lifting all boats.
To put it bluntly, black players—or black owners—who refuse to acknowledge that reality are practicing their own form of racism.
Throughout Clark’s rookie season, she deflected every effort to draw her into a discussion about race. She attributed the hard pushes, for instance, to the heat of the moment in a tightly fought game when many others, including the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune, saw something far darker.
But in the Time magazine profile, she finally talked about race and women’s basketball. Rather than gripe about the way she’d been treated, she went hard in the opposite direction, acknowledging the debt that she owes all the black players who have come before her in a predominantly black league. “A lot of those players in the league that have been really good have been black players,” she said. “This league has kind of been built on them. The more we can appreciate that, highlight that, talk about that, and then continue to have brands and companies invest in those players that have made this league incredible, I think it’s very important.”
But she also said this: “I want to say I’ve earned every single thing, but as a white person, there is privilege.”
You can imagine the response. For days now she has been torn apart by those on the political right who saw her as carrying water for woke politics.
“Look at this,” tweeted Megyn Kelly. “She’s on the knee all but apologizing for being white and getting attention. The self-flagellation. The ‘oh pls pay attention to the black players who are REALLY the ones you want to celebrate.’ Condescending. Fake. Transparent. Sad.”
Scott Jennings was a bit more gracious about it, but said much the same thing: “Caitlin Clark is the best thing to happen to the WNBA, and it’s sad that her co-workers hate her for it. She’ll learn a tough lesson—no matter how much you say ‘my truth’ and apologize for your ‘white privilege,’ it will never be enough for the woke mob.”
“Gonna be honest,” read another tweet. “When I said Caitlin Clark bending the knee to the racial grievance industry was just going to lead to them doubling down against her, I didn’t expect to be proven right within two days.”
And on, and on.
In the middle of all this, I saw one tweet I quickly took to heart. “I feel bad for Caitlin Clark,” it read.
Caitlin Clark is a 22-year-old woman from West Des Moines, Iowa, who is one year out of college and finds herself, unwittingly and unwillingly, the center of ongoing controversies over race. She knows how to win on the court. But in the culture war—caught between black resentment and white scorn—she doesn’t stand a chance.
I started watching the WNBA when my then-favorite player, Diana Taurasi, joined in 2004. So I know what I see when I watch Caitlin Clark: not an avatar of the culture wars but simply a preternaturally gifted basketball player who happens to be white. As for her “privilege,” well, what would you expect from a young college graduate? Let’s let her grow up a little. She didn’t ask to be part of any culture war; all she wants to do is play basketball. Give her a little grace.
Or as LeBron James put it when he tweeted in April: “If you don’t rock with Caitlin Clark game you’re just a FLAT OUT HATER!!!!!”
