On the subject of the intense discourse in regards to the WNBA recently, I ponder: Can’t folks simply shut up and watch girls dribble?
Ever since faculty basketball phenoms Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese entered the WNBA as rookies this yr, mainstream curiosity within the league has skyrocketed. The sport between Reese’s Chicago Sky and Clark’s Indiana Fever pulled in almost 3 million viewers, essentially the most for a WNBA recreation in 23 years.
All of this has been years within the making. Viewership for faculty girls’s basketball has been rising steadily over the previous a number of years. For the reason that Nineteen Nineties, there have been famous person gamers, dynastic girls’s groups and million-dollar coaches. I keep in mind as a younger participant wanting as much as Lisa Leslie, Sheryl Swoopes, Diana Taurasi, Sue Fowl and watching the College of Tennessee Vols coached by the pioneer Pat Summitt.
All of this historical past is there to be taught. And the current can be stuffed with spectacular younger gamers comparable to Reese and fellow rookie Cameron Brink, in addition to a bunch of fantastic veterans comparable to Taurasi. However to take heed to Clark’s excessive followers, she alone is the divine spirit elevating the game. Having fun with the 22-year-old newcomer from the College of Iowa is just not sufficient; her acolytes demand that each one followers and the league itself should bow down and specific gratitude for the curiosity in Clark, particularly the curiosity from White and male audiences. Implicit is a menace that if Clark doesn’t get what they consider she — (cough) that viewers — deserves, their curiosity may very well be taken away at any time.
Comply with this authorKaren Attiah’s opinions
On condition that the WNBA is greater than 60 % Black, it’s onerous to not really feel like the brand new followers are utilizing Clark as a proxy for their very own points and attitudes about race, sexuality and gender.
Take the current resolution to depart Clark off the Workforce USA roster for the Paris Olympics this summer season. The introduced staff is stacked with veteran expertise, a feminine dream staff, together with Taurasi and her Phoenix Mercury teammate Brittney Griner. Sabrina Ionescu and Breanna Stewart had been additionally named. No rookies had been named to the staff. No gamers beneath the age of 26 had been chosen.
However for 2 weeks, commentators have been squawking about how girls’s basketball is lacking the “biggest alternative ever” to develop the game. Writing for USA Right this moment, columnist Christine Brennan described the Olympic resolution as a snub, and charged that USA Basketball “dumped” Clark. Barstool Sports activities got here out with a T-shirt with 5 photos of Clark, every holding one of many 5 Olympic rings. “The Solely Participant That Issues,” the shirt declares.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver just lately mentioned of the selection: “I wouldn’t say I’m disenchanted, however it might have been good to see her on the ground.” He added that the basketball governing physique “has a really particular mandate about fielding the absolute best staff, from a aggressive standpoint, and I settle for that all of them did their jobs the best way they had been instructed to.”
In different phrases, the job of Workforce USA is to win. To her credit score, Clark acknowledged gracefully that she has room to develop earlier than she is totally the equal of the most effective veterans within the recreation. “Actually, no disappointment,” she mentioned after the roster was introduced. “It simply provides me one thing to work for; it’s a dream. Hopefully, in the future I may be there. I believe it’s just a bit extra motivation. You keep in mind that. Hopefully, when 4 years comes again round, I may be there.”
In fact, grace is in brief provide on sports activities radio and social media. Proper-wingers have used Clark not solely to race-bait however to stir homophobia. Skilled blowhard Jason Whitlock known as the WNBA a “touring lesbian intercourse cult.” Whitlock continued: “It’s being very hostile in the direction of Caitlin Clark as a result of they’d like to interrupt her, wreck her and destroy her in order that they’ll set up a lesbian or a Black girl, ideally a Black lesbian girl, because the face of this league. … Have you ever ever heard one among them discuss what males have accomplished for them?”
When requested about her title being weaponized to push racism and misogyny, Clark mentioned, “I believe everyone in our world deserves the identical quantity of respect. The ladies in our league deserve the identical quantity of respect. Individuals shouldn’t be utilizing my title to push these agendas. It’s disappointing. It’s not acceptable.”
It’s a great factor, and the character of sports activities, to see superb younger expertise rising to problem, and ultimately change, the very stars they grew up idolizing. Clark is rising into the nice and rising custom of ladies’s basketball, and doing so with grace and maturity. However she simply arrived within the WNBA. Her followers must observe her instance and respect what the ladies earlier than her have constructed.
However that is the crux of our cultural and political second, proper? The rise of the WNBA coincides with a broader wave of conservative male forces claiming to “save” America from numerous “threats:” crucial race principle, DEI, migrants of colour and LGBTQ+ folks. Clark isn’t asking to be saved from something. Her extremist followers ought to pipe down.
“Let’s simply cease the hysteria,” Karen Attiah mentioned. (Video: Shih-Wei Chou/The Washington Submit)
