Caitlin Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes celebrated a Final Four berth on Monday night. While the conversation mostly felt celebratory, Monday morning turned over, and things got awkward.
NBA legend Paul Pierce joined Undisputed on Fox Sports 1 on Monday. The former Celtics great claimed he was surprised by Clark’s prodigious performance against the LSU Tigers. It wasn’t so much how Clark played, but who she played.
“We saw a white girl in Iowa do it to a bunch of Black girls… that gained my respect,” Pierce said on the show to his cohosts Skip Bayless and Keyshawn Johnson. Pierce continued, saying, “That gained my respect! That’s like, oh she didn’t do this to some other little white girls that were over in Colorado or wherever. She did it to some girls from LSU who we thought were some dogs!”
Pierce’s comments didn’t go over well with many observers who found them. It’s true that what Clark did Monday night to LSU was prolific and absurd. But Clark is… also prolific and absurd on the basketball court on a regular basis against most teams.
She’s the all-time leading scorer in NCAA history. She makes the extraordinary ordinary, so Pierce’s comments don’t make a lot of sense when you consider who she is and how good she is.
Several others who found the comments weren’t thrilled about them and also felt that the former Celtic missed the mark entirely.
About Chris Novak
Chris Novak has been talking and writing about sports ever since he can remember. Previously, Novak wrote for and managed sites in the SB Nation network for nearly a decade from 2013-2022