The Caitlin Clark double standard is real and suffocating
· Yahoo Sports
Indiana Fever superstar guard Caitlin Clark can be as brash, boastful, downright disrespectful and occasionally antagonistic as any player in WNBA history.
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It's part of her swagger going back to her days at Iowa; she runs boiling hot as a competitor and wants to win. She hurls those game-breaking logo 3-pointers and crosses people up like it's nothing because she can; she's the greatest show on court right now. She's not going to be humble about it, either, at least not in the moment. She can own up to when she's in the wrong just as easily as she can stand defiant when she thinks she's right.
That's part of the cinematic rush of live sports with generational talents; we don't gather to watch these people humbly score layups and bow their heads when a call doesn't go their way. Live sporting events go all the way back to the time of gladiators, when the crowd could decide the fate of the warrior depending on how badly they wanted to see them win or lose. Braggadocio may have gone a long way in keeping the person in the arena alive.
Competition is adrenaline.
Victory and defeat at the highest stages of professional sports carry so much professional and personal weight. Emotions get high all the time. Sometimes, the passion skyrockets through the roof of the arena and crashes into the stratosphere. Particularly when you're the best, the world presses you harder than anyone else. You're the money-maker; the stadium-packer; the role model and the poster child; the heavyweight who draws the cheers and boos; the beloved and the despised. You're the center of the universe.
This age of media consumption rewards commentary that matches that level of intensity. It's why Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith made their careers out of outrageous debates that rarely embraced nuance or analytics. If the athletes were going to punch through the noise and create spectacle, the sports commentators were going to have to catch up. Of course, the audience ate it up because it was high theater. Mindless, sure, a toxin that flooded the atmosphere and degraded the discourse beyond repair, but these cars were never designed with a governor. They were designed to slam down the gas pedal, bust past the starting line and drive until the fiery explosion of the final bell. Either you'd win the debate or you lost; that didn't matter as much as the jolt of watching people beat the stuffing out of each other with scorching hot takes until the merciful commercial break... then it'd begin again.
There's nothing particularly unusual about Clark's demeanor in the WNBA.
There's nothing particularly unusual about Clark's demeanor in the history of professional sports. This is the most purely results-driven business in all of entertainment. The best athletes are rarely reserved. They're big personalities who know they're great and demand reality to bend to their will whenever they compete. If they don't, they might crash out in spurts or waves. It's part of it; generations of athletes are aggressively trained to push themselves beyond their limits to achieve a goal. When emotions get hot, we can't be surprised, especially when money, attention and legacy get involved. It's always been this way; it's always going to be this way. Charles Barkley was right: Athletes aren't the best role models.
That's not to say athletes can't be bright lights in their community. If you follow Clark, you know she's a class act with the fans. She signs waves of autographs for the fans who clamor for her (and occasionally even gives the shoes from her feet), is active in the Indianapolis community and even recently wrote a children's book to encourage a new generation of hoopers. By all accounts, Clark has built an endearing legacy off the court.
On the court? She's a firecracker. She's Diana Taurasi Jr. Like that WNBA trailblazer, Clark will unleash an unholy fury on the referees if she doesn't like a call. Taurasi literally broke a door in anger after a loss in the 2021 WNBA Finals; she was ejected numerous times in her career and holds the record for most technical fouls in league history. She once told a WNBA referee, "See you in the lobby later" after arguing against a call. The WNBA celebrated Taurasi after she retired by asking fans what their favorite DT technical foul was through out her 20-plus season run.
And that's fine!
Part of the show of live sports is the eternal antagonism for athletes for referees. Athletes hate referees. Coaches hate referees. Fans hate referees. Referees probably hate other referees. Nobody likes the hall monitor. Clark has been incredibly vocal throughout her career to the referees, disrespectful, even. Is she the first? Heck no. She's not the first to jaw at a ref, and she won't be the last. She hasn't been ejected yet, but that's probably coming one day. It's part of her competitive fire. Taurasi was celebrated for her aggressiveness on the court. The league prided itself for years on how physical its style of play was. With aggressiveness and physicality in professional sports comes an outpouring of negative, disrespectful emotion. It's beyond par for the course.
Can Clark tone it down a bit at times? Sure! Strategically, her mouthing off to a referee doesn't always help the Fever's cause for competition. Has it gotten better since her rookie year? Yes. Yes. Oh, goodness, yes. In her third season, Clark still gets mad at referees and lets them know when she doesn't like a call. She'll play up contact to draw the foul... like most any other athletes who understand the annoying power of "flopping." However, she's composed herself more for the long haul than in her crash-out rookie campaign. In that season, Clark was far more unpredictable and explosive. In her third season? Less so. The dynamite is still there, but the fuse is much longer.
Part of that probably comes with Stephanie White's influence, an equally fiery coach who matches Clark's intensity. It's good for Clark to have a coach who can challenge her, not just in schematics but in potential for a technical foul. Clark has nodded gleefully through White press conference when the latter is railing against the referees. She's on a team with players bound for a good crash-out; Clark and Fever forward Aliyah Boston joked together on a recent podcast about their best WNBA crash-outs. Fever guard Sophie Cunningham is perhaps more fiery than Clark is. The Fever are a good basketball team whose intensity runs high... like most, if not all, good teams in the WNBA.
Are we gasping in shock when Las Vegas Aces coach Becky Hammon goes on a furious tirade against the refs in a postgame presser? Do we prepare the finger-wagging when Phoenix Mercury superstar forward Alyssa Thomas gives somebody a hard foul, or demand a reckoning for Atlanta Dream superstar forward Angel Reese, who so far leads the WNBA in technical fouls this season? Do we want less on-court pettiness from Aces superstar center A'ja Wilson, likely the best player in the sport's history? Of course not. Fire makes the game fun. It adds the edge needed to build storylines, fuel rivalries, produce viral clips to increase WNBA visibility and gets the fans going.
Clark is one of the league's true fire-starters.
Her antics will rub some people the wrong way. She's already under a historic microscope because of the once-in-a-lifetime attention she's brought the WNBA. She's changed the league forever; she's the league's face. She's going to have some of the game's fiercest critics and fiercest defenders. She's going to inspire thousands upon thousands of hot takes because they'll gain serious traction. She'll inspire as much debate as any athlete in professional sports right now. She's got stans who will go to war for her at any given time and haters who will rally against her every move. The CC Conspiracy Theoriesspray nonsense gasolineon the tire firethat is online Clark discourse. Being nuanced about the most popular women's basketball player on the planet was probably always going to be a tough sell to a public ingesting a healthy daily diet of piping-hot takes and fantastical fan fiction. Clark is a human just like anyone else; she's also far from the first athlete like her. She's not a damsel in distress, and she's not a fire-breathing dragon. She's just a generational talent who contains multitudes.
Why is she special? Why does she get a double standard applied to her when she complains to a referee or possibly argues with an assistant coach? Why does she have to be a hero or a villain? Why can't she just be a fierce, flawed competitor in a long and proud tradition of fierce, flawed competitors who stand as global magnets for the sport?
You don't have to like Clark. You don't have to hate Clark. You can think of Clark whatever you'd like, just like you did with all the athletes like her for the history of professional sporting. However, it doesn't make her different. It just makes her a passionate professional athlete with the eyes of the world always on her. She deserves to be treated just like everyone else. Trying to place her on a pedestal or prematurely dig her grave would be silly and juvenile. Just give her good grace when he needs it, fair criticism when she deserves it and respect when she's owed it. Her fire burns on a torch that she carries, passed down from the last generation of all-time firebrands. One day, she'll pass it along to the next Caitlin Clark. May we finally recognize that tradition and stop acting like Clark is some sort of pariah deserving of scathing scorn or messiah deserving of unrelenting praise. Can we just be cool about this?
This article originally appeared on For The Win: The Caitlin Clark double standard is real and suffocating