WNBA thread… 28.5 ain’t your pay cut

I’d be more than happy to list my grievances with those sports as well.

Where should I start? The NBA? NHL? College football?

 

Clark vs. Reese has quickly become the most predictable and simplistic Internet ragefest ever.

 

I think this is a pretty good take on it.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/le48_P4bHSE

 

Black guys, as well, based on what I keep seeing in my Youtube suggestions.

 

My two cents:

The WNBA really wants Reese vs. Clark as its Magic vs. Bird, but right now, it’s not happening.

Why? Clark doesn’t say anything bad out there. Now, she may down the road, but right now she is always courteous and polite. Bird, if people remember, was a trash talker amongst trash talkers.

Reese doesn’t play like Magic. She doesn’t look like she is reinventing the game. However, I love watching her play because she fights for rebounds, takes ugly shots, makes bad passes, but somehow has an excellent opportunity to be one of the first two players in wnba history to get 500 points and 500 rebounds in league history. It ain’t pretty, but somehow she ends up with a good game every night. I love it. I hate it to say, “if she was white,” but we’d hear how gritty she plays and how tough she is and how she does the little things.

 

Clark is a deceptively good shit talker and flopper.

 

It's not about Reese. She's a hard worker being used as a temporary foil to Clark because Bueckers chose/is being paid to stay in college for one more year. Next year, it'll be Bueckers. Three years from now it'll be Watkins (who really is as good as Clark, and maybe better.)

This is about Clark. A decent chunk of the WNBA doesn't like how she acts on the court, who she is off of it, the college she played at or what she did at that college - which should send messages to girls about what can happen when they don't play at UConn and South Carolina. For a very long time at Tennessee then UConn then Baylor then South Carolina, the message has been join a super team, sacrifice personal achievements and do what Pat/Geno/Kim/Dawn tell you to do for the advancement of the sport. And pro women's basketball didn't particularly advance much in the last 20 years from a TV viewer/zeitgeist standpoint.

Until Clark. And there's just people who don't like that.

 

But there HAVE been women's players who have been individually sensational (see Wilson, A'ja; Parker, Candace; Moore, Maya) before Clark AND who (gasp!) actually won titles in college.

Their moves to the pros were met with no buzz, however.

 

None of those players created 1/10 the buzz that Clark did as a collegian. They were not seen as being bigger than their program or coach. Clark was. I'd bet 3/4 of her fans couldn't even tell you the name of her college coach, which (quite frankly) has now eluded me.

 

Lisa Bluder.

But I went to Iowa and have followed the Hawkeye women’s program since their early 1990s Final Four run under C. Vivian Stringer, so I might not qualify as a “typical” Caitlin Clark fan!

 

But WHY didn't those other players create the buzz in college?

Typically today's athletes get noticed for their looks (not just pretty, but being demonstrative about it), their outspokenness, their wardrobe . . . and yeah, their talent.

Clark is shooting .250 there. She's Pete Sampras in a world of Andre Agassis. Magnificently talented, but just does her job. So how did her buzz eclipse everyone else's who preceded her, and by such a large margin?

Is it really as simple as, er, black and white? And logo 3s?