Hear it here!
The good news is that the WNBA (women’s professional basketball league) is being talked about like never before.
The bad news is that it’s mostly unfavorable.
This is a sports league that apparently wants to destroy itself and it’s doing a great job at that.
For years the WNBA went about its business without many people noticing. Then, when Caitlin Clark came into the league three years ago after a sensational college career at Iowa, people started to pay attention. She performed as an extremely fierce, talented team player that people adored. Caitlin Clark became the face of the WNBA and all of a sudden women’s basketball on the pro level became an attraction. TV ratings went through the roof. The league was on the map.
So, instead of celebrating the newfound public interest, and building on it, women’s basketball has too often turned ugly. Clark has been the victim of more than her share of hard, punishing fouls, often knocked to the floor. For her part, Caitlin Clark has been no shrinking violet. She has dealt out her share of hard fouls, some in retaliation to what she’s received. And she’s battled injuries while playing with reckless abandon. Clark has been a welcome addition to the league and set WNBA records and achieved all-star status playing for the Indiana Fever.
But more often than not she is a marked player. A target for the opposition.
She has also remained neutral on what has come to be a hot-button issue of transgender athletes playing in women’s sports.
Clark has been urged to come forth with her views on the subject but so far, she has devoted all of her focus on basketball.
That’s not the case with Sophie Cunningham, acquired by the Indiana team, to serve, among other things, as the Fever’s enforcer, a role as protector of Clark with her own brand of hard-nosed physical play. Cunningham, in an interview with ESPN last month, voiced support for barring transgender athletes from competing with and against women.
Her comments drew national attention dealing with the issue of men playing in women’s sports.
She said biological men had no business crossing over in the athletic field. She said it was a matter of ‘common sense’.
Then came a reaction by an opponent on the court. With about two minutes left in the first quarter of a recent game between the Indiana Fever and the Chicago Sky, Cunningham was ahead of the pack on a breakaway layup when DiJonai Carrington chased her down and leveled Cunningham with a swipe across the neck and face area. Cunningham couldn’t break her fall and landed hard to the floor. Carrington received a Flagrant 2 foul which called for her ejection.
The incident didn’t end there. After the game, Cunningham claimed the hard foul was unnecessary and that she thought it was intentional.
Amazingly, her own coach, Stephanie White, disagreed with her player, saying it wasn’t intentional but that the correct call had been made that the defender should have been thrown out. Puzzling to say the least. Shocking really that the head coach of the victim didn’t vehemently supporter her. That wasn’t the end. Minutes after the ejection, DiJonai Carrington posted on social media the words “WHITE PRIVILEGE”, then said she looked forward to the rematch against the Fever. Cunningham said race wasn’t a factor in the incident but looking at the post, you have to wonder.
Sports Illustrated said the hit on Cunningham was ‘karma’, before removing that word referring to a previous encounter between the two players.
Coaches in the league have come out in support of transgender inclusion playing in women’s sports.
Personally, I believe it is ridiculous to have biological men, obviously stronger, bigger, and more muscular, compete against women. It is unfair, and unreasonable. Women fought courageously for Title IX, giving them equal chances to play sports, share the funds, equipment, and facilities, all the way down the line. Title IX protected women. Who’s protecting them now?
Transgenders exist and they have the right to live their lives the way they please. But creating unfairness in athletics should not be one of them. The fact is, men are different from women.
If anyone hearing or reading this disagrees, even in extreme fashion, please accept it as my view and we move on.
Over the weekend, two former NBA players, said they were going to prepare for next year’s draft claiming they were identifying as women at times, to test the rules of the WNBA in regard to transgender women. The league’s commissioner, Cathy Englebert, declared a task force would be formed involving team presidents to discuss what to do next.
It is interesting that we have yet to see a woman deciding to play in men’s sports.
The WNBA has existed for 30 years. For whatever reason, the league never grabbed the public’s interest as substantially as it did when Caitlin Clark entered the league. It provided professional women’s basketball a springboard to vault to new heights. This should have been the time for real leadership at the top to take advantage of its newfound opportunity.
Instead a series of unpleasant developments have the nation focused, not on the games and the great players in the WNBA, but on incidents on the court, and comments off the court that are hardly pleasing. It’s all been unfortunate and sad.
Caitlin Clark
Takedown
Freedom and White