On Monday, the WNBA named Caitlin Clark its rookie of the month, a nice reward for the 22-year-old who couldn’t come at a more difficult time.
Since entering the league as the top pick just weeks ago, Clark has not only been under pressure from the outsized expectations that come with her immense collegiate stardom; she had to do this while being guarded all over the floor, blindly running into screens and losing nine of her first 11 games with the Indiana Fever, who finished last in their conference the past three seasons. While many close WNBA followers expected Clark wouldn’t make it nearly as easily as he did in Iowa — not least former top pick Diana Taurasi, who warned a month ago “reality is coming” — that hasn’t stopped Clark’s legion. from fans who took the criticism of her personally and attributed it to a broader conspiracy by the league to cut corners on their shiny new meal ticket.
Case in point: a moment late in last Saturday’s game against the Chicago Sky, the highly anticipated rivalry matchup between Clark and former college foe Angel Reese that ultimately dominated the cable TV ratings. Clark was waiting for an inbound pass when the Sky’s Chennedy Carter unexpectedly shoulder-checked her and dropped the rookie like a bag of onions. Carter declined questions about the play after the game and Reese skipped her mandatory press conference in solidarity, resulting in four-figure fines for Reese and her team. That was enough to turn the already shaky discourse surrounding Clark into a spiky, nonsensical pile.
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The panel on ESPN’s First Take, a graveyard for nuanced sports conversations, spent 40 uninterrupted minutes debating whether there is a vendetta against Clark; that’s Dallas Cowboys level outrage. On the next ESPN show, Pat McAfee opened with an impassioned defense of Clark, who boiled over and called him a “white bitch who is a superstar.” (He has since apologized.) Golf influencer Paige Spiranac spoke on behalf of the bandwagon fan. “Imagine bringing millions of new fans to the game, which in turn will make every player more money, and yet they treat you like this,” she wrote about a clip of the foul that has been viewed more than five million times.
On Monday, the editorial staff of the Chicago Tribune – home newspaper for the other team, mind you – called Carter’s foul on Clark egregious. “Outside a sporting event,” the op-ed said, “it would have been seen as an attack.” And this is weeks after Charles Barkley, Austin Rivers and other NBA stars begged the W players to cut Clark some slack.
“It should be just like WWE,” said former NBA All-Star turned podcaster Jeff Teague. ‘You have to play hard on her, but let her kill. Because if she starts playing bad games and it doesn’t look the way it’s supposed to look, it’s going to get them [the league] back to reality.”
This is the real reality, the reality that Taurasi was dismissed as a bitter old crone for raising in the first place: young players (not exclusively rookies) in all kinds of sports go through an initiation process. It’s just that, as Michael Harriot rightly notes: “When someone is expected to dominate their sport, teams and players often adopt a common strategy: ‘What if we beat them up?'”
The NBA had the Jordan Rules and Hack-a-Shaq. The NFL has made all kinds of changes to its rulebook to protect Tom Brady and Peyton Manning from excessive hits. And then, of course, there was the brutal hell Jackie Robinson suffered when he integrated baseball in 1947. “When he came up to the plate, they beat him down all the time,” said Bob Kendrick, president of the Negro Leagues Museum. “When he slid to second base, he often ended up wet where the opponent had spit on him. As the opponent slid to second base, they high-piped in an attempt to cut him off. They did everything they could to break Jackie, but Jackie wouldn’t break.”
Stars are still treated harshly in other leagues today. Reigning MVP Connor McDavid led the NHL in penalties drawn last season. Suffice it to say, if Clark were playing a men’s game, we wouldn’t question the overly aggressive defensive tactics, as many fans mistakenly fail to imagine that female athletes are as mean as their male counterparts. We’d give these tactics a fun name: the Clark Codes.
“I remember Richard Dent slamming me into the ground with my left shoulder,” former Pro Bowl quarterback Jake Plummer told me, recalling his 1997 NFL debut in Philadelphia. “He said, ‘Take that, you rookie! You’re too small for the competition!’ I jumped up and said, You’re too old! You need to retire!’” Anyone familiar with Dent’s Hall of Fame career and heyday with the ’85 Bears will see Plummer’s comeback for what it was: a death wish.
Harriot’s analysis goes further. He also takes into account the NBA rookies who attempted the most free throws in a single season, a list full of Hall of Famers (Jordan, Shaq) and top draft picks. (Ray Felix, who made history in 1953 as the NBA’s first Black No. 1 draft pick, was fouled more times in his rookie season than all but three players in league history.)
The WNBA version of that same rookie list (average free throws per game) is no different, a who’s who of Hall of Famers (Cynthia Cooper, Tamika Catchings), league MVPs (Taurasi, A’ja Wilson) and r2008 rookie of the year Candace Parker – the focus of Detroit’s biggest hoops battle since 2004’s Malice at the Palace. Also on that list, for good reason, is Chennedy Carter – a feisty scorer who has been on a downward trajectory since her rookie breakout in 2020. Carter was unhappy with multiple suspensions and benchings in 2022 and was out of the competition until Sky coach Teresa Weatherspoon called her number. It just goes to show how difficult it is for young players to stick around in the league, where pay is expensive, roster spots aren’t guaranteed and the competition is dying down.
Actually, Carter is not that different from Clark, who was guilty of bullying in college. Clark has been no less confrontational in the pros, nor does she hesitate to complain to the officials when she doesn’t get her way. As of Tuesday, Clark had been called for 32 personal fouls (fourth-most in the league) and was involved in 78 total fouls (more than any player) while making the second-most free throws in a game among rookies this season attempted. Still: It says something that Reese, the only member of the 2024 draft class to crack the all-time top 20 in average rookie free throw attempts, is just ahead of Clark.
Reese also came into the league with dizzying hype and has been subjected to as much rough play as Clark, if not more rough. In a game against the Connecticut Sun last month, Reese jumped for a rebound when the Sun’s Alyssa Thomas grabbed Reese by the neck and ripped her to the ground, leading to Thomas’ ejection. Reese played on, not complaining or arguing, as many of her fans have done, that the referees would treat her differently if she were white. “It would be a tough game,” said Reese, who had expressed her admiration for Thomas before tip-off. “That’s what I was built for. And my teammates were behind me the entire game.” Then, like clockwork, Reese earned her first career ejection on Tuesday night against New York — seemingly for her dismissive response to a questionable technical foul.
Unfortunately for Clark, it doesn’t appear she can count on the unquestioned support of her Indiana colleagues. “I’ve seen a few girls grin when she got knocked down, half-ass trying to pick her up,” noted former NBA enforcer Matt Barnes. “You all have to protect the property, protect the star. And even though this is a team, you always protect your star. You fuck with Kobe, [Chris Paul]Blake [Griffin]the list goes on, it’s going to be a problem.
Plus, brutal welcome cars like the one Clark received from Carter are the stuff the best leagues are made of. People want to see their hero get knocked down and struggle before rising to dizzying heights. If Clark were to waltz into the W and dominate on day one, the conversation around her wouldn’t be about how great she is; it would be about how great the WNBA is is not and about how maybe she should have taken Ice Cube’s $5 million offer to play in the BIG3.
Clark is not a princess locked in a tower. She is the gladiator who storms the castle with a sword in hand. As long as she remains her team’s top scoring option, most turnover-prone ballhandler and a major defensive liability, she’ll get what’s coming to her. Each hit is its own strange compliment, a not-so-friendly reminder to do better. This is how it is codified in the Clark Codes, the final amendment to the unwritten rookie initiation rules.
Moreover, she accepts this. “I think at this point I know I’m going to hit some tough shots a game and that’s it,” Clark said after the Chicago game. “I try not to let it bother me.”
