Finally, the second victory came for the Indiana Fever in the 2024 WNBA season: 71-70, with a lot of final suffering in a match that seemed controlled just a little before, against the Chicago Sky. It was, therefore, also the second victory for Caitlin Clark, one of the great sensations (22 years old) of American sports after her extraordinary and ultra-media journey with the University of Iowa. The (very popular) number 1 of the last draft, a player called to radically change the ranks of professional women’s basketball, is not having it easy: after this victory on Saturday night came a crushing defeat against the Liberty (104-68), so the Fever are 2-9, stuck in a hellish beginning of the course. They have played their first eleven games in twenty days, something the WNBA has not seen since 2011.
It was not, Fever-Sky, just another game. Clark faced his main rivals from the last two years in College. On the one hand, Angel Reese, who was an LSU interior and another of the most high-profile players of the new generation of women’s basketball. In 2023, Reese left Clark without a title and this year it was Iowa that won the semifinals but was left without a title because it could not beat the powerful South Carolina coached by Dawn Staley and which had the Brazilian center Kamilla as a great reference Cardoso. In the last draft, Clark was number 1 and the Sky, with two picks in the top 10, chose Cardoso (3) and Reese (7).
Clark finished with 11 points, 8 rebounds and 6 assists. Also five losses. But he knew how to read the game well in the fourth quarter. Aliyah Boston (also 22 years old, number 1 in 2023 and another product of the South Carolina factory), added 10+8 and 4 blocks. In the Sky, Reese (22), finished with 8+13 and Cardoso (23), who made her debut because a shoulder injury had stopped her until now, made herself noticed in her first minutes as a professional (11+6) .
A controversial play in the spotlight
But the most notable play of the game came near the end of the third quarter. Clark faced guard Chennedy Carter, who led the Sky with 19 points and 6 assists, after a steal that ended with a Boston basket. Carter responded with a mid-range shot, another errand and an ugly, unnecessary hit before the bag was back in play, to Clark. There wasn’t even a review to see if the foul was flagrant, and that made the Fever players and coaching staff very angry.
Meanwhile, on the Sky bench, Reese visibly celebrated the play and then hugged Carter, who said after the game that he was not going to answer any questions related to Clark. But later, she did enter the fray on social networks, where she did openly criticize the Fever player: “Beyond the three-point shot, what does Caitlin Clark contribute?”
The one from Iowa, for her part, was calm: “At this point, I already know that in every game I’m going to take a couple of hits like that. It is what it is. I try not to let it affect me and keep playing, not lose concentration. If you come, it is what you do that ends up being seen more.” In her previous game, a very clear loss against the Seattle Storm, Clark faced Victoria Vivians in an action that ended in a double technical. After the game, he said that she felt like she was being “beaten.” In her first season in the WNBA, one in which television audiences are responding to her irresistible media hook, Clark is averaging 16.9 points, 5.4 rebounds and 6.5 assists. He has scored 20 points in five games (in one he has reached 30) and is showing that he is going to be a great star also at the professional level while he gets used to his new competition and tries to improve his shooting percentages (37% total , 31% in triples) and reduce his 5.7 turnovers. To do this, he has to adapt to much more physical and tough defenses that also focus on making balls difficult for him: he receives more defensive blitzes (help in two and three against one as soon as he crosses the center of the court) than any other team in total. Against Seattle, for example, she was defended like this 18 times, more than twice as many as any other player in a game this season. That’s affecting her accuracy in what seems like an obvious matter of adaptation and learning.
The Fever coach, Christie Sides, has begun to raise her voice about the way in which the rivals use their rookie and, above all, how these actions are being refereed: “We are going to continue sending videos of certain plays to the League, and at some point and with luck they will begin to value them differently. Let’s see if they realize what is happening, or at least what we believe is happening. I’m very happy with how Caitlin reacts. It’s hard to get hit so many times and not get called for fouls or go to the free throw line. She is being able to live with that and I am really proud of her.”
After the game against Seattle, Sides said that “refereeing had to be improved.” The team’s general manager, Lin Dunn, was much more explicit on social media: “It is one thing to defend hard and another is certain unnecessary actions that go against a specific person. This has to end, the League has to clean up this shit.”
Chiney Ogwumike, former player and ESPN commentator, also believes that there are things that are going too far: “I love this sport and I think these two things are true: on the one hand, the physicality and the competitiveness, and the trash-talk, have always been characteristics of our way of playing; But, on the other hand, there should be no room for plays like this, unnecessary and without possession in progress. “The lines are blurring in women’s basketball, unfortunately.”
It was obvious that the arrival of a player as high in the media as Clark would greatly increase interest in the WNBA, but some toxic debates would also grow that, unfortunately, always accompany the massification of sports competitions.
LeBron James, on Caitlin Clark’s side
LeBron James himself, who was also (more than two decades ago) a child prodigy who was on the cover of Sports Illustrated when he was still playing in high school, has shown his support and recognition for Clark: “The most important thing is that he is bringing people to your competition More people are following it. There is no need to make a mistake or get confused: Caitlin Clark is the reason why many very good things are going to happen to the WNBA. I think she doesn’t have to get too involved in everything she is saying to herself. Just go out on the court and play, enjoy. I’m on her side, I’m going with her because I’ve been in her situation. She has walked the path she is walking and I hope she walks it. She now has the same thing going on with Bronny, my son. There are a lot of people who hate a 19-year-old kid and are dedicated to trying to fulfill her dreams. There are a small number of men and women who achieve that dream of devoting themselves to sports professionally. And you meet older men and women willing to do whatever it takes to prevent them from achieving it. It’s the strangest thing in the world, but it’s what happens. So I’m also very happy that Clark has such a good head.”
In recent weeks, Becky Hammon, the coach who has won the last two titles with the Las Vegas Aces, who came to the WNBA after being Gregg Popovich’s assistant at the Spurs and who was previously an exceptional player, has spoken about the racial debate that It has been raised with the media success of a player like Clark, and others like Sabrina Ionescu, and who seems far superior to that of African-American stars like A’ja Wilson, the best in the world right now.
For Hammon, it is not about criticizing Clark as a white player or insinuating that her recognition comes because of that condition when she is an extraordinary player. It is about assuming that others, also of historical rank, have not had the same exposure or the same treatment over many years: “I adore Caitlin, she is an incredible player and I watch her games whenever I can. She is very loved in our League. That thing about the white and black players… There is nothing like that. We have to put an end to that commotion and noise. Caitlin is a 22-year-old woman under a lot of pressure. And she’s not perfect, she’s still a rookie in the competition. She is trying to sell that some of our black women and other social minorities hate her because she is white. And there is none of that. Let’s leave Caitlin aside. It is not about her and we must recognize all her merits because she has done things at university that no one has achieved, woman or man. “This is about highlighting that many women of other races have not been celebrated or valued in the same way.”
Wilson, star of the Aces, two-time MVP and MVP of the last Finals (and who will seek her second Olympic gold in Paris), expressed herself along a similar line to that of her coach: “You can be a black woman who is one of the best in their field and surely people will not want to value it. It is not going to be seen as something that has its market and can be monetized. So it ends up no matter how hard I work, how well I and other black women do. We are going to continue being swept under a rug. That’s why my blood boils if it is said that certain things have nothing to do with race. Because they do have to do with race.”
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2024-06-04 05:19:42
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