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We love competitiveness in men’s sports. Why can’t that be the case for the WNBA?

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4 weeks ago

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The WNBA’s newfound status as the biggest conversation driver in sports is like a mirror being held in front of an American populace that has never had to truly confront the notion of talking and thinking about female athletes the same way we talk about men. 

And the only conclusion to be drawn so far is that we aren’t ready. 

We’re not ready for the smack talk, the hard fouls, the petty critiques and jealousy of a brand new star coming into the league. We’re not ready for the stars angling to build their social media brands or lean into villainy because that’s what will help them stand out and make money. We’re not ready for the fact that sometimes, the people playing an intensely emotional, physical sport just absolutely hate each other. 

So when it comes to the WNBA, why are we not ready for all the things we absolutely love about men’s sports?

At some point, hopefully women’s sports and the WNBA will become so normalized in popular culture that we can overcome a clear double-standard in how we talk about these athletes. 

But at the moment, it’s embarrassing. Ever since Chennedy Carter took a cheap shot at Caitlin Clark last weekend, one commentator after another − and let’s be honest, it’s mostly men − have completely lost the plot. 

ESPN’s morning screamfest with Stephen A. Smith debating the likes of Monica McNutt and Cheney Ogwumike has been borderline unhinged. The culture warriors in the right-wing media are stoking racial resentment, suggesting that Clark is being targeted because she’s white. Pat McAfee had to apologize for using a sexist, racially-charged profanity during a rant about the way Clark’s colleagues were treating her. Even the Chicago Tribune editorial board − not the sports section, the actual editorial page − published a piece arguing that Carter’s foul on Clark “would have been seen as an assault” outside of sports. Jim Banks, a Congressman from Indiana and the Republican nominee for the state’s open Senate seat, sent the WNBA a letter asking commissioner Cathy Engelbert how the league plans to address “excessive physical targeting of specific players.”

Can we all get a grip here? 

Even if you believe that every player in the WNBA is insanely jealous of Clark’s stardom, doesn’t appreciate what she brings to the league and wants to intimidate her with physical play that might be a little over the line, there’s an easy response: So what? 

Don’t we like rivalry? Don’t we want that little bit of tension when we don’t know exactly what’s going to happen when athletes challenge each other? Don’t we watch even more intently when we know that there’s more to the competition than just who wins the game? 

John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors actively hated each other, and because they hated each other so much their matches electrified stadiums all over the world. 

Michael Jordan left his first All-Star Game in 1985 famously believing that Isiah Thomas froze him out to teach the new kid on the block a lesson, sparking a personal beef that carried on for years.  

When Tiger Woods first joined the PGA Tour, many of his fellow pros either didn’t buy the hype and believed he would struggle at first playing against the best in the world. Former player John Maginnes said on a FanDuel podcast a couple years ago that the rumored $10 million deal Woods got from Nike was a particular object of resentment because it was more than NFL quarterbacks made at the time. 

Before the Cleveland Cavaliers got the No. 1 pick that would become LeBron James, Carlos Boozer told reporters, “We have better players than him at his position already on our team.”

We could go on and on. None of this is new in sports.

It’s just new to us in the context of watching women’s basketball. They’re ready for it; we’re not. 

“I think we would love to be in the same type of conversations as there is with the men and with the NBA, and when they have competitive nature and players are getting up in one another’s (expletive), it’s like, ‘Oh, they’re just being competitive,’” said New York Liberty forward Breanna Stewart. “Whereas if it’s women, it’s like, ‘Oh, something’s wrong.’ And obviously, nothing is malicious. It’s just heat of the moment things. Things happen in the game. Everyone’s just trying to be locked in and be at their best. That’s what’s a little bit frustrating. But at the same time, it’s good to be dissected in a number of different ways because this hasn’t been there before.”

The fact we’re getting this so wrong isn’t on the athletes.  

It’s not on Clark, who is going through the kind of trial-by-fire that pretty much every hotshot rookie with her fame has endured as a welcome to the highest level. It’s not on her competitors, whose job is to beat her, to appreciate the fact that she’s drawing new eyeballs to the league. And it’s not on the WNBA to create some kind of artificial protective bubble because Clark is getting roughed up a little bit by opponents trying to send a message. 

When men do that kind of stuff, we don’t merely cope with it, we encourage it. It’s good content when Brooks Koepka rolls his eyes at Bryson DeChambeau. We loved it when Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant feuded. Draymond Green goes straight from the end of the Golden State Warriors’ season to the TV booth these days because he joyfully stirs a pot full of personal beef. 

What men have in this context, though, is a distinct kind of privilege: It’s just sports, not a cause. 

OPINION: Early WNBA narratives do disservice to Angel Reese. And Caitlin Clark.

For a lot of people in mainstream America tuning into the WNBA for the first time, though, Clark’s breakthrough represents something more than being a point guard for the Indiana Fever. As a result, we’re seeing projecting some of their own cultural views and insecurities onto a blank canvas with no history of women’s sports being discussed at this scale.

Of course, we have a template for how to do it correctly because we do it every single day. When we can give women competing with each other the same credit and regard that we do male athletes, there will be no market for some of the silliness we’ve seen this week after the Carter-Clark incident. 

It’s what happens in sports, and it’s fine. 

The WNBA is ready for it. When will the rest of us be? 

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