Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark is in the loneliest of places, surrounded everywhere she goes – by multiple WNBA defenders, thousands of fans, millions of voices – but forced to do it alone.
Or what must feel, at times, alone.
What must Clark have felt Wednesday night after two dangerous plays in one minute by the Phoenix Mercury, trudging off the Gainbridge Fieldhouse court and into the Fever locker room with a back injury as the noise around her grows into a confusing cacophony of support, fear and outrage?
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Fans were furious with Phoenix Mercury star Alyssa Thomas, who reached for a loose ball near Clark and then landed on her with a knee to the midsection and a fist to the throat. Officials didn’t see it, somehow. (The WNBA must’ve seen it Thursday, when the league suspended Thomas for one game.)
Fans were furious with Mercury forward Valeriane Ayayi, who contested a Clark 3-pointer moments later and wound up in Clark’s landing zone, one of her feet underneath one of Clark’s, a brutal injury waiting to happen, a dangerous play in any league. Officials didn’t deem it a flagrant foul, even after reviewing the replay. Somehow.
What must Clark have felt, walking to the locker room? Just another night at the office, maybe, for a player being asked to do the heaviest lifting in professional sports – the heaviest lifting by anyone, male or female, in decades. Since Tiger Woods turned pro on the PGA Tour in 1996, has any one athlete propped up a league as much as Caitlin Clark has propped up the WNBA?
Oh boy is that a topic, a debate, an argument that has raged since the moment Clark left Iowa for the WNBA two years ago and things started flowing in abundance – attention and money, mainly – for a league that had been largely neglected, even ignored.
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Caitlin Clark’s impact on the WNBA
Can we be honest, or can’t we? Probably not, no. Honesty has been lacking in the WNBA culture war known as the Great Caitlin Clark Debate.
People who love her, who are obsessed with her, who create anonymous social media accounts with her name and picture – like that’s not weirdo behavior – see Clark through the prism of something that goes beyond greatness or even inspiration, and lands somewhere closer to worship.
As in, hero worship.
And up to a point, you understand. To those who love her – and to be clear, Clark is loved and supported in positive ways, by positive people here in Indiana, not just by the trolls online – Clark is a vision of equality and excellence, a player the women’s game had never seen before. She’s not quite Steph Curry or Bob Cousy or Pete Maravich, no, but she’s the closest the women’s game has had to a player with such long-range shooting ability, playmaking flair and showmanship.
Like folks tend to do with anything this remarkable, in politics and business and entertainment as well, some have taken their appreciation of Caitlin Clark into really strange waters. They have turned her into the most virtuous character in their make-believe world of Us vs. Them. To these people Clark does no wrong, the heroine when shots are falling and a martyr when they’re not. Everything good around her? She did it. Everything bad? Someone did it to her.
There are lots of these people, and their grasp on reality is tenuous. They see themselves as propping up Clark, and up to a point, they’re doing that if they’re buying her No. 22 Iowa or Fever jerseys or, eventually, her Caitlin 1 Nike shoes. But the pressure they put on her, the vice-grip of sheer hysteria they attach to every Clark-related factoid – good, bad and in between – isn’t helping anyone. It must be isolating, for Clark, to be inside that cauldron of chaos.
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There are lots of people on the other side, too, people whose grasp on reality can be tenuous, people who don’t want to give Clark credit for anything. Not for WNBA ratings and attendance having taken off since she joined the league in 2024. Not for the minimum WNBA salary having risen from $62,000 when she joined the league to $270,000 today. The average salary has risen from $113,000 to roughly $600,000 since she showed up.
The cause-and-effect is right there for all to see, but some people take one kernel of truth – Caitlin Clark didn’t grow the WNBA by herself – and turn it into this lie:
Caitlin Clark isn’t so special.
Of course she is. She’s unique. The WNBA was rolling along for 27 years, making its way slowly in this world, until Clark arrived and attached a rocket booster to the game.
To deny the timing, the connection, is intellectually dishonest.
The WNBA – its players, its leadership – seems at times to be intellectually dishonest, which must be the loneliest feeling of them all for Clark. Is she the only reason for the rise of the WNBA? No. But she’s the catalyst, the biggest reason more eyes than ever are on A’ja Wilson and Jackie Young and Breanna Stewart, on Angel Reese and Kahleah Copper and Kelsey Plum.
Paige Bueckers is special, too. So are Wilson and Reese and the other names listed above, and dozens of others, including Fever stars Kelsey Mitchell and Aliyah Boston.
The more eyes on players like that, the better for everyone. More tickets sold in more markets. More eyeballs on more TV screens, even for games not involving the Indiana Fever. It’s a cycle, and if handled correctly by everyone involved, it would be a beautiful cycle.
Alas.
Alyssa Thomas mauls Caitlin Clark, and WNBA refs miss it?
It turns ugly when people who should know better refuse to admit that nobody else in the WNBA, individually, has done for the league what Clark has done since 2024. Collectively, yes, the talent is remarkable and the league itself is a worthy product. All of that. But until Clark showed up, where was the attendance, the average salary, the historic TV deals?
That said, players seem to resent Clark. And you get that … right? They are too close, too competitive, to anoint her. But when the league allows Clark to take the beating she takes routinely, and the beating she took Wednesday night in particular – “Egregious,” Fever coach Stephanie White called it – you have to wonder what is going on. Why the league’s golden goose, to use a literary allusion from childhood, isn’t being protected more.
Why she isn’t being protected at all.
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We’re being honest here, remember? So let’s be honest and concede this point: Caitlin Clark is difficult to officiate. She is her league’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander or Jalen Brunson, the best player on the court most of the time, attacking the rim all the time, all eyes on her – then flailing her arms wildly or snapping her head back theatrically or falling to the floor as if she’s been hurt badly.
At times, Clark looks like a World Cup soccer player trying to draw a call.
At times, it can be hard to take any of them – Gilgeous-Alexander, Brunson, Clark, the best soccer players in the world – seriously.
Does that mean Clark deserves Alyssa Thomas’ fist into her throat Wednesday night, or Valeriane Ayayi’s dangerous closeout later in the game, or for game officials to somehow miss what everyone saw in real time or replay?
No. Clark doesn’t deserve that, or for truly dangerous fouls to be ignored. To make another allusion from our shared childhood: Even the little boy who cried wolf did, that one time, see an actual wolf.
The disconnect between who Clark is, and how she’s treated by her own league, is wild. Who is she? Not the best player in her league, no, but one of the most influential female athletes in the world, perhaps the most influential female athlete in the world – perhaps ever – given she plays a team sport and is not, like tennis superstar Serena Williams, an individual contractor.
Clark is her game’s Serena, if not bigger – her game’s Tiger – but Tiger received more support even as his pursuit was designed to be solitary, no teammates or city depending on him. Purses skyrocketed during his career because of all those new eyeballs drawn to golf, and players on tour revered him. They wanted to beat him, yes, but they appreciated him.
Does anyone appreciate Caitlin Clark?
Or will she have to leave, for that to happen?
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This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Doyel: Caitlin Clark is WNBA’s most important player. The WNBA doesn’t seem to understand
Reporting by Gregg Doyel, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
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By Gregg Doyel, Indianapolis Star | USA TODAY Network
