Opinion: WNBA silence on Caitlin Clark fans came at other players' detriment.

The WNBA wanted media attention. It wanted exposure and eyeballs. And, well, the data is undeniable: Game after game with record-setting attendance and record-setting TV viewers. The merch sales and commercial spots. The fact that, on many occasions, women’s professional basketball was a trending topic on social media and the lead story on sports talk shows.

Depending on who you ask, Caitlin Clark was responsible for either all or some of the league’s growth. Ultimately, it’s a pointless debate. Decision makers in and around the WNBA decided early that this would be Clark’s season, that she was the star and all others were mere supporting characters.

It was a decision that kept the coffers full and the hype train barreling along, but it also had an unintended effect. Crowning Clark as the W’s new queen also gave rise to an army of loyal, but malevolent, subjects — men and women who threaten to corrupt everything the WNBA stands for.

Demise of the Negro Leagues Baseball provides lesson for WNBA

This sort of Faustian bargain — wherein one compromises his or her principles in the pursuit of something considered more valuable — is not unheard of in sports. I’ve written frequently about the demise of Negro Leagues Baseball, which was directly tied to the integration of Major League Baseball and, more aptly, the method Branch Rickey used to integrate.

Despite his years in the game, including time in St. Louis during which he built a Cardinals dynasty, Rickey defied all standard business practices for recruiting players when he began signing Black players to his Brooklyn club. He pilfered Jackie Robinson , along with Roy Campanella and a handful of other Black players, without paying a dime to the teams who owned their current contracts.

Immediately, the owners of Negro Leagues teams knew something was amiss, that Branch Rickey’s actions would have a detrimental impact on their teams. But they also knew that the entire Black community was pushing for baseball’s integration, and that Robinson’s 1947 debut at Ebbets Field was largely seen as the long-awaited reward after years of struggle.

So they stayed quiet.

They went along with the plan and the promise of progress until they couldn’t anymore, until their teams ran out of money and they had to shut down operations. Perhaps the shuttering of their business could have been justified — a worthy sacrifice, if you will — if maybe Major League Baseball’s floodgates really did open and scores of Black players were brought into the league.

Instead, it took 12 years for each team to sign even one Black player. Years beyond that, an unwritten quota kept the number of Black players on any given team to no more than a few.

But by then, the damage was long done, and it was far too late to right the ship.

Media coverage lionized Clark while villainizing other players

Like the owners of Black baseball teams, WNBA higher-ups knew what was happening early in this storied season.

During the Indiana Fever’s early-season skid, 2023 No. 1 overall pick and Rookie of the Year Aliyah Boston deleted her social media accounts because of hate she was getting from Clark stans. And well before Alyssa Thomas of the Connecticut Sun called out the racism of the Fever fan base — the likes of which she’d never seen in her pre-Caitlin Clark years in the league — other players, including Angel Reese of the Chicago Sky, were vocal about the vitriol being thrown at them.

Unfortunately, they were largely ignored by the league, while Fever fans and members of the media alike suggested that they were getting what they deserved.

“…[T]he media has benefitted from my pain & me being villainized to create a narrative,” Reese posted on X Thursday night. “They allowed this. This was beneficial to them.”

Reese is right. At some point, mainstream media decided to prioritize new WNBA fans over the (decidedly smaller) group that has been rocking with the league for years. They wrote stories that reinforced the narratives that were spreading online, narratives that victimized Clark and portrayed most other players in the league as the anti- to her hero.

And the W, thirsty for the attention its never had, allowed it.

At the same time, Clark’s own behavior, including profanities hurled at refs and what could be deemed as overly aggressive defensive play , were overlooked or chalked up to her willingness to stand up against the WNBA’s “bullies” and fight for herself.

But Clark has never really had to fight for herself. Most recently, after Game 1 of the Fever’s playoff series against the Connecticut Sun, USA Today columnist Christine Brennan, who’s writing a book on Clark, asked the Sun’s DiJonai Carrington whether a hard closeout that resulted in black eye for the Fever guard was intentional. Brennan even went as far as to ask whether Carrington later laughed about the play with a teammate.

Never mind that Clark herself said the play wasn’t intentional . Never mind that, later in the game, Clark knocked Carrington’s contact out of her eye on a similar defensive play that received no foul call. To Clark stans, the play was kerosene on a preexisting inferno of jealousy and aggression and non-basketball attacks.

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Meanwhile, the silence from the league and skewed reporting from most media outlets only emboldened their stance. When reputable media outlets led reporting with Clark’s black eye — and not, say, her virtual collapse under a stifling Sun defense (she finished with 11 points on 4-of-17 shooting) — why wouldn’t Clark’s fans continue to blame and hurl insults? Why wouldn’t they show up to Mohegan Sun for Game 2 with caricatured fake nails to mock Carrington? Why wouldn’t they send Carrington an email calling her a “n***** b****” ?

Clark's troll was addressed, but other WNBA players can't say the same

People will say that Clark’s entire fan base isn’t racist, that there are some who followed her from Iowa to the W and have legitimately enjoyed getting to know, and root for, other players in the league. I’d say that’s certainly true, but I also know the danger of allowing a small, but vocal, faction to terrorize unabated.

On Wednesday, before the Fever fell to the Connecticut in its last game of the 2024 season, Clark alerted referees to a man sitting near courtside who had been heckling her throughout the contest.

In subsequent media reports, he was referred to as “a fan,” but I’m sure Clark saw him as a troll, a detractor who served little purpose other than to make her job difficult. It didn’t matter that he was there to cheer for anyone else on the floor, Clark’s opponents or teammates included. Neither would it have mattered if he had been calling out Clark’s previous transgressions — like the way she pushed Connecticut’s Dewanna Bonner after not receiving a foul call when Bonner seemingly pushed into Clark’s landing zone after a three-point attempt.

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All that mattered was that he was disruptive to Clark, and she wanted to him removed.

So he was. Security took immediate heed to Clark’s complaint and promptly escorted the man from his seat. Indianapolis Star reporter Chloe Peterson reported that he was allowed to return, presumably after assuring security that he would refrain from disrespectful behavior.

WNBA finally speaks up about racism

On Friday morning, Clark was asked about the racism fellow WNBA players have been facing, and instead of evading the question (as she did when she was initially asked about the behavior of her fans in June), Clark was resolute:

“Nobody in our league should be facing any sort of racism, hurtful, disrespectful, hateful comments and threats,” she said. “ Those aren’t fans. Those are trolls .”

I agree. But while Clark’s own actions show the need to address trolls quickly and decisively, her WNBA colleagues never had that benefit. Even Cathy Engelbert, the W’s commissioner, downplayed the racism directed at certain players by attributing it to the “rivalry” between Clark and Reese.

Throughout it all, Reese, Carrington, et al. were told to stay off social media and ignore the death threats, to be happy that more fans than ever were watching their games.

The WNBA has since reversed its course of silent neutrality, declaring in a statement that it “will not tolerate racist, derogatory, or threatening comments made about players, teams and anyone affiliated with the league.” ( Engelbert also issued an apology) .

And though folks who’ve been paying attention were right to note that the statement came after the Fever’s final loss — and after many Clark die-hards declared that they wouldn’t be watching the remainder of the playoffs with the Fever knocked out, I still think it was an important step for the league.

It’s just too soon to tell whether it was too little too late.

Indeed, many folks on the wrong side of Clark’s fandom can see what others cannot: That the WNBA may have already sold its soul.

Andrea Williams is an opinion columnist for The Tennessean and curator of the Black Tennessee Voices initiative. She has an extensive background covering country music, sports, race and society. Email her at adwilliams@tennessean.com or follow her on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @AndreaWillWrite .

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Opinion: WNBA silence on Caitlin Clark fans came at other players' detriment.