Indiana Fever phenom Caitlin Clark has a case as the biggest star in all of basketball at the moment. The reigning WNBA First-Team member and WNBA Rookie of the Year is responsible for a massive jump in the league’s attendance and television viewership ratings.
Clark’s stardom is at such unfathomable heights that 41 of the Fever’s 44 regular-season games next season will be nationally televised. Unfortunately for Clark, one ESPN personality thinks Clark’s play alone isn’t responsible for her stardom, but that her race played a big part.
“I think Caitlin represented — and again, some of this to me probably is not fair to her, because it was not anything that she said or was truly based on her personality — but she was a white girl from the middle of America,” Monica McNutt said, according to Awful Announcing.
“And so she represented a whole lot to many people, whether that is indeed what she ascribed to or not.
McNutt did admit that Clark’s play on the court is at least partially responsible for her success.
“We can all say she’s a dynamic basketball player and a force both on the court and in a marketing sense. But I do think the same thing applies to folks who may have fallen in love with Angel Reese; she may or may not have agreed with everything they had to say, either.
We attach our fandom to these icons for all types of reasons, and sometimes they may not be based in truth.”
Fans reacted to McNutt’s statement on social media.
“And yet more proof that racists come in all shapes, sizes, and colors,” one person wrote on Twitter.
“She’s 1000% right,” someone else added.
It’ll be interesting to see if Clark decides to respond to McNutt.
About Qwame Skinner
Qwame Skinner has loved both writing and sports his entire life. In addition to his sports coverage at Comeback Media, Qwame writes novels, and his debut; The First Casualty, an adult fantasy, is out now.