I feel sorry for Caitlin Clark.
Not because she’s had an inconsistent start to her WNBA career while suffering on an Indiana Fever team that is on pace to lose as many games in her first 40-game season as she lost in four seasons (and 139 games) at Iowa.
Not because her salary is 0.6% of what last year’s NBA No. 1 overall draft pick — Victor Wembanyama of the Spurs — made his rookie season.
Not because she’s dealt with some hard fouls in her rookie season.
And definitely not because of the latest “hardship” she’s had to accept — being left off the U.S. Olympic team for the upcoming Summer Games in Paris.
No, I feel sorry for Clark because the passion of some of her biggest backers is becoming a problem, one she probably wants to deal with but that calls for walking the fine line between reining in their outrage and scaring them off.
Clark entered the league this season as probably the most hyped women’s basketball player ever. Some of that is a product of the times. Sure, in her Hawkeyes career, she scored more points than any college basketball player in history, but she also did it in the era of social media saturation, and right at the beginning of the NIL era. There have been great — some would argue greater — women’s college basketball players before, but they were easy for fans who limited themselves to watching men’s sports to avoid. They weren’t popping up in State Farm and Gatorade commercials during every NFL and NBA broadcast.
The combination of her on-court accomplishments and her media ubiquity made her not just a top athlete but a celebrity — so much so that she was invited to do a bit during Weekend Update on “Saturday Night Live.”
Clark became the Taylor Swift of women’s basketball — complete with sellouts everywhere she went. It was a big win for women’s basketball, with more people watching it than ever, both in person and on TV.
Fans of all ages turned up at games in Clark’s No. 22 Iowa jersey or holding up signs celebrating their favorite player, hoping to see her hit one of her signature logo 3s. Little girls wanted to grow up to become her, sure, but she won over little boys too.
TV ratings were unprecedented. Clark’s last three games for Iowa were the three most watched games in the history of the women’s NCAAs, and the final — a loss to South Carolina — drew 25% more viewers than the men’s final, the first time more viewers watched the women’s championship game.
The drawback of the kind of wide appeal Clark has is that you bring a lot of people into the tent who are not familiar with the way things work. I remember when Manti Te’o was one of the top players in college football his senior year (2012), even finishing higher in Heisman Trophy voting (second) than any pure defender ever has, some people in Hawaii thought that meant he’d automatically be a top pick in the NFL Draft.
Never mind that there is no correlation between Heisman voting and draft position and that a middle linebacker had not been taken first overall since the ’70s, folks confidently believed this was a possibility. Te’o wound up being drafted 50th overall.
So it’s no surprise that every road bump in Clark’s career has been met with shock, every perceived slight viewed as a “snub” or a “dis.”
Diana Taurasi, one of the most accomplished women’s basketball players ever and still averaging 16.3 points per game as she is about to turn 42 years old Tuesday, drew criticism for delivering to ESPN what most sports fans saw at the time as a perfectly reasonable assessment of what Clark could expect upon joining the WNBA:
“Reality is coming. There’s levels to this thing. That’s just life. We all went through it. You see it on the NBA side, and you’re going to see it on this side. You look superhuman playing against some 18-year-olds, but you’re going to come play with some grown women that have been playing professional basketball for a long time. Not saying it’s not going to translate, because when you’re great at what you do you’re just going to get better, but there is going to be a transition period when you have to give some grace as a rookie. It may take a little bit longer for some people.”
Those words had less knowledgeable fans calling Taurasi a “hater” but have proved quite prescient, and if those fans had given those words from a three-time WNBA champion and five-time Olympic gold medalist the respect they deserved, maybe they would have been less disappointed when the player they were so certain was already the GOAT debuted with 10 turnovers and 5-for-15 shooting (20 points) in a blowout loss to the Connecticut Sun and followed it up with a nine-point showing in an even bigger rout dealt her Fever by the New York Liberty.
Those fans could have saved themselves some anxiety, as 12 games in, Clark still has a lot of growing to do but so far is averaging more points per game (16.8) than any No. 1 pick in her rookie season since A’ja Wilson of the Las Vegas Aces in 2018.
They should choose patience over panic again with Clark’s omission from the Olympic squad. One of the arguments being presented is that the opportunity to capitalize on the growing interest in women’s basketball is being frittered away, but if Clark has had the impact they say she has had on the sport, shouldn’t these new fans tune in to see the all the players they’ve learned about watching her games?
And if she had been selected, how would fans tuning in to watch her feel about her getting only six to eight minutes a game as seems likely? The answer is that they would have complained that she isn’t starting.
Most importantly, though, Clark needs to earn what she gets with her play. She is not nearly the highest-scoring WNBA player left off the Olympic roster. Arike Ogunbowale of the Dallas Wings is second in the league in scoring at 26.6 ppg and averaging more than 20 ppg in a career in its sixth season and was also left off.
The amount of credit being given to Clark is already wearing thin on veteran players and her fellow high-profile rookies alike. Clark may well be on her way to being one of the league’s best ever, but the league will only benefit long term if people see the value of the players beyond her.
