When you hearken to a sure subset of the media—not essentially the sports activities media—the state of the WNBA is dire. A generational expertise is being squandered. Weak management has failed a league on the cusp of nice alternative. One thing should be performed. As soon as we work out what precisely that one thing is, it should get so performed.
USA As we speak columnist Christine Brennan, who has written a e-book about Caitlin Clark, belongs to this subset, and has dedicated to viewing a complete sports activities league via the lens of 1 All-Star guard on the Indiana Fever. Clark is actually a well-liked and thrilling basketball participant to observe, however adherence to a religiously Clarkcentric worldview can warp one’s commentary over time. Finally you come off like somebody who would not know or care about the rest occurring within the WNBA. Clark’s Indiana Fever misplaced their first-round playoff sequence to the Las Vegas Aces final week, leaving Brennan to pick some strained reporting angles as her e-book topic spun out of the postseason.
Late in Recreation 2 of that sequence, Aces star ahead A’ja Wilson confronted a courtside Fever fan who she felt had “disrespected” her. “If I see a person come at me, taking steps in the direction of me and pointing at me, I don’t give a rattling what you stated. I don’t give a rattling the way you stated it, the tone. That’s unacceptable,” Wilson informed press after the sport. Brennan sought remark from the WNBA and, 36 hours later, was upset to not have heard again. In response to her, the WNBA’s gradual response to queries about Wilson displays its “management vacuum,” and a league supply’s bog-standard obfuscatory description of the occasion is in some way a “PR nightmare.”
Days later, whereas circulating a Sophie Cunningham podcast clip in regards to the Wilson incident, Brennan famous that her reporting afterward led her to consider that “there’s a palpable realization (lastly) that Cathy Engelbert’s WNBA appears ridiculous pushing away/not wanting new followers.” Who precisely is pushed away by a sports activities league’s reluctance to punish a four-time MVP for barking at a fan? Would Brennan have cared in any respect in regards to the league’s response if it weren’t a Fever fan?
A lot of Brennan’s WNBA commentary takes as a on condition that league management is intentionally deterring hordes of Clark-sympathetic followers, and, for some motive, rejecting their enterprise. This can be a fairly robust assumption. I am skeptical that there is any particular person on the market who was on the trail to turning into a honest WNBA fan however was dismayed by the WNBA’s inadequate punishment for A’ja Wilson, after which gave up on the league. If one such particular person exists, I might settle for Brennan’s framing that this was a “nightmare,” however within the meantime I will assume that the gradual motion of a sports activities paperwork is a “nightmare” solely within the eyes of unwell culture-war contributors who don’t watch the WNBA and had been by no means going to have interaction meaningfully with the game within the first place.
It is exhausting to know why such a gaggle of individuals needs to be painstakingly accommodated, or why a revered veteran sports activities columnist would deputize herself because the spokesperson for these individuals. Absolutely the reply cannot solely be that she has books to promote. It is also value questioning why her most persistent reporting angles lend credence to the notion, widespread amongst this cohort—which, once more, doesn’t comply with the WNBA outdoors of no matter viral clips flicker earlier than their glazed-over eyes—that black colleagues’ racialized jealousy of Clark is holding the white celebrity again.
Final weekend, Brennan wrote that “the WNBA has mismanaged the best factor to ever occur to it,” referring to Clark. On Sunday, the columnist criticized the league for not following the recommendation of civil rights activist and sociologist Harry Edwards, who in 2024 proposed that the league set up a “sequence of seminars” for all WNBA groups within the preseason forward of Clark’s rookie marketing campaign, to move off any resentment. Brennan additionally castigated outgoing WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert for her “ridiculous minimization of Clark’s impression,” and sounded a uncommon word of optimism whereas reporting that the seek for Englebert’s successor will likely be led by the manager search arm of Clark’s company, Excel Sports activities Administration. Brennan even used the turnout for an Atlanta Dream dwelling playoff sport versus the New York Liberty—nominally a Caitlin Clark-free occasion—to slam Engelbert for insufficiently appreciating Clark’s “drawing energy.” (A spokesperson for the Dream informed Entrance Workplace Sports activities the higher stage of the world was closed as a consequence of uncertainty about which of two venues can be chosen, and a “brief turnaround” between playoff sequence. The Dream will likely be enjoying all their 2027 dwelling video games on the bigger enviornment.) To make clear, each remark on this paragraph was made prior to now week. That is Brennan’s most urgent journalistic concern.
A lot of Brennan’s commentary reads as whether it is aimed toward a hypothetical WNBA government who refuses to simply accept that Caitlin Clark is a well-liked basketball participant, and is making poor enterprise choices because of this. Certainly, if there is a single throughline in her writing lately, it is that the WNBA, on an institutional stage, has didn’t sufficiently respect Caitlin Clark. I am undecided what it will seem like to take action, however I might welcome a 10-point plan from Brennan about the way to apply the exact correct quantity of respect to Caitlin Clark. At the very least then we would have some specifics to debate. Till then, her quest to fast-track Clark into the only, totalizing supply of worth for a complete league stays delusional and embarrassing.
