I never thought the day would come when the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) would be newsworthy enough to write about. But in an era where deranged leftists think men can become women and get pregnant, I suppose anything is possible.
The story in question centers around an incident that occurred during a Sunday matchup between the Chicago Sky’s Angel Reese and Indiana Fever’s Caitlin Clark. Most Americans are likely familiar with Clark for her dominating performance at the University of Iowa last year, in which she smashed numerous NCAA records and won several accolades. In her senior year alone (2023-2024), Clark not only scored the most points in a single season in Division I women’s college basketball history, but she also became the all-time NCAA Division I scoring leader for women and men’s college basketball.
While driving to the basket in the 3rd quarter of Sunday’s game, Clark was flagrantly fouled by Reese, who rammed her arm into the Iowa alum’s head on her way up to the basket. Clark fell to the ground and was later helped up by her teammates.
The potshot wasn’t a first for Reese, who seemingly elbowed Clark during another game earlier this month.
A Wave of Hate
Like with any sport, basketball players are going to get physical with one another on the court. But Sunday’s incident likely wouldn’t have received much attention if it wasn’t one of numerous examples of WNBA players making egregious hits against Clark since she entered the league.
During a Fever-Sky game earlier this month, for example, Reese’s teammate Chennedy Carter “appeared to shout something at Clark and then hip-checked the Fever rookie” while the latter waited for her teammate to inbound the ball, according to Outkick. While initially called a foul, league officials later upgraded Carter’s hit to a Flagrant 1, which the WNBA defines as “unnecessary and/or excessive contact committed by a player against an opponent,” according to ESPN.
The on-court hits have coincided with a wave of vitriolic attacks against Clark by leftist media — none of which have anything to do with her undeniable talent as an athlete and everything to do with the fact that she’s white and heterosexual.
But don’t take my word for it. MSNBC’s Joy Reid and The Atlantic’s Jemele Hill all but admitted during a recent segment on Reid’s “news” program that their disdain for Clark and her fans stems from their identity politics-based worldview. Hill also separately told the Los Angeles Times last month, “We would all be very naive if we didn’t say [Clark’s] race and her sexuality played a role in her popularity.”
Jealousy is a Bitter Poison to Swallow
For a league whose only significant news coverage resulted from one of its players getting arrested in Russia for illegal marijuana possession, you’d think the WNBA, its players, and left-wing media supporters would be happy that Clark’s success has drawn more people to the league. And yet the attitude coming from the WNBA and its (very few) sycophants is that Clark is a terrible person deserving of flagrant hits and whose growing success must be ignored.
Ask yourself: How many WNBA players or coaches have spoken out against the egregious fouls against Clark? Or better yet, how many of Clark’s teammates and coaches have spoken up in her defense?
The violent hits, in conjunction with the media’s relentless smears and snubbing of Clark from the 2024 U.S. women’s Olympic team, point to a sport and its supporters consumed with jealousy. They cannot stand to see Clark — who happens to be straight and white — single handedly pull their dumpster-fire league from the depths of irrelevancy.
A deep dive into WNBA attendance and viewership statistics confirms that newfound WNBA fans aren’t tuning in to watch your average players — they’re doing so to watch Clark. As The Blaze’s Andrew Chapados recently highlighted, the “[a]verage attendance of Clark’s games are double the league average,” with the latter’s presence “account[ing] for 33.5% of the WNBA’s total attendance in 2024.”
“The Clark bump also equates to more eyes on screens,” Chapados wrote. “Through the first weekend of June 2024, WNBA games that featured Clark had an average of 1.099 million viewers. Games without her averaged only 414,000 viewers.”
Those aren’t terrible numbers when considering the league is subsidized by the men’s National Basketball Association.
While the WNBA and its teams are still projected to lose $50 million this year, Clark’s presence has turned an irrelevant league into a slightly less irrelevant league. Instead of appreciating the new eyes and support she’s generated for women’s basketball, her fellow players would rather the league collapse than give her a modicum of credit.
If that’s not a perfect encapsulation of modern “feminism,” I don’t know what is.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
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