Aliyah Boston is looking forward to her second professional season.
The 2023 WNBA Rookie of the Year made a successful debut as a television analyst for ESPN at the NCAA Women’s Final Four in April, watching her beloved alma mater South Carolina win the national title after an undefeated season. She is sweeter. Boston University and national team head coach Dawn Staley gave Boston the pleasant recognition, which shows how well-liked the two are in the basketball community. After watching the Gamecocks seek revenge against Caitlin Clark’s Iowa State, the team that ended her college career a year ago, Boston knew she would soon be joining Clark Battle, leading her WNBA team, the Indiana Fever.
Fast forward to now. Clark and Boston are indeed teammates, but the Fever started their season with a five-game losing streak until a narrow win over the Los Angeles Sparks on Friday that gave the team a slight boost. But there’s a more important, unfortunate storyline surrounding the team. ESPN’s Holly Rowe revealed before the Fever’s second regular-season game against the Connecticut Sun in Boston that she has deleted X from her phone and that TikTok is the only social media platform she feels safe on now. The reason is the disturbing and toxic backlash she and other WNBA players received from Clark’s rabid fans.
Before we begin, it’s important to note that this is not Clark’s fault – she did nothing to encourage her abusive teammates. There is much to celebrate about Clark’s superstar status and arrival in the best women’s basketball league in the world. Her historic impact on the college game, which drove TV ratings for the NCAA women’s tournament to an all-time high, appears to have carried over to the WNBA. Clark’s preseason and regular-season debuts with the Heat generated attendance and television audiences that reached the pinnacle of the 28-year-old league. While its players have long fought for charter flights in collective bargaining agreement negotiations, Clark’s emergence as the women’s team’s new popular centerpiece will undoubtedly help usher in long-awaited changes. Hell, Clark’s sneaker deal with Nike might have allowed the best player in the league, A’ja Wilson, to finally get his own signature shoe.
So, Clark is a good thing for the league and women’s basketball as a whole. Some of her biggest fans? Not so much.
Part of the tension stems from the matchup between Clark and Angel Reese in the 2023 NCAA championship game. Reese’s boisterous character was attacked by Clark fans, who praised their heroine’s arrogance as “competitiveness”.
A portion of Clark’s ardent fans have become completely intolerable.
No matter where you turn on social media, Clark’s fans are predictably blaming everyone but her for the Fanatic’s early-season woes. Disparaging comments about Boston’s weight and play, Clark’s other rabid teammates and calls for head coach Christy Seitz to be fired continued. However, these Clark fans aren’t holding the point guard accountable for her WNBA record 10 turnovers in a debut, her below-average defensive performance, and her passion for outside shooting, all of which are key to her performance in the NBA. Iowa is free to play, but needs to scale back until she improves consistency at the WNBA level. Clark’s occasional temper tantrums, which resulted in her receiving a rare technical foul last Monday night, are belied by her fervent supporters, who see her as a celebrity who can never make a mistake rather than as someone still evolving. professional player.
On top of that, many Clark fans have never been WNBA fans and show great ignorance by disrespecting the league’s 25-year history of producing great athletes. Pretending that Clark is the only reason to be interested in the WNBA, or the high level of play the WNBA has long had, or believing that her professional colleagues are jealous of her are traits her ardent supporters must shed. It wasn’t an easy task, though, as NBA legends LeBron James and Charles Barkley only managed to elicit childish antics from the fans.
James said on the latest episode of the Mind The Game podcast with JJ Redick that Clark “is the reason a lot of great things happen in the WNBA.” The Lakers forward even tied Clark’s early-season struggles to his son Bronny’s NBA draft process, claiming both received “a lot of hate and hostility.”
Barkley’s take was even more dire, with the “NBA Insider” celebrity claiming her WNBA counterpart was “too petty” toward Clark.
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“LeBron, you’re 100 percent right, these girls hate Caitlin Clark,” Barkley said nonchalantly. “I hope men are mean-spirited because we are the most insecure people in the world. You all should thank that girl for providing you with a private jet and all the money and publicity she brings to the WNBA. Don’t be such a mean person . Please give her and her followers what she has achieved.
The fact that James and Barkley didn’t specify who has been hating Clark illustrates how counterproductive their superficial sentiments are to having an honest conversation around Clark, whose missteps are completely understandable for a player in his rookie season. As much as James yelled at Boston, he failed to mention how badly some of Clark’s rowdy loyalists treated the forward. He clearly knew nothing about it, which made his comments seem all the more dull.
At the same time, Barkley also shows us why Clark’s toxic fans and casual WNBA fans need to educate themselves on the league. The coddling of the talented Clark is insulting and offensive to the great women of the West End who, despite facing attacks of misogyny, racism and homophobia, took the league to a dangerous level before her arrival. Continuous development. They won’t just make it an open layup and three-point game for Clark, which is what any other league, male or female, would do. The first person to admit this is Clark himself.
Hopefully those toxic fans in Clark can make a change before things get really ugly, which is unfortunate in what should be a golden era for women’s basketball. This is a time when Clark, Boston and everyone who loves the WNBA should be able to celebrate instead of squirm.
