Caitlin Clark is in an unenviable position. One of the WNBA’s biggest stars is a lightning rod for attention, and the darling of the sport too for, let’s say, people with very specific biases. A relentless spotlight has been on Clark for her entire basketball career, but she’s remained resolutely against making waves when it comes to anything but basketball. This was the case during her much-hyped rivalry with Angel Reese in college, which was picked up as a pseudo race battle by the worst people on the internet. Clark always downplayed the rivalry as competition between two successful athletes, and nothing else. It took the wind out of the sails of those who wanted to position Clark as the white, midwestern bastion of virtue — and Reese as a lowly “thug.”
Clark has been a master at avoiding the bait when it comes to headlines, focusing solely on basketball. Now she finds herself at the crossroads of a culture war, thanks to teammate Sophie Cunningham. Cunningham’s endless thirst for attention began with her simply being Clark’s on-court enforcer, but has since morphed into a MAGA darling as she famously marginalized the trans community in an ESPN profile, before doubling, even tripling down on her remarks by posing alongside former Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines, most notably known for finishing fifth in the NCAA championships and dovetailing it into a hateful media career because ONE of her opponents happened to be trans woman Lea Thomas.
This bizarre dichotomy has been difficult for both Clark and the Fever to navigate. The arrival of Cunningham and her subsequent rise to fame were due to her willingness to take attention away from Clark on the court, but it wasn’t supposed to manifest headlines away from basketball — not in this way. Indiana is now left with a juxtaposition in which their best player simply wants to focus on basketball, but their loudest figure is a role player who is obsessed with making waves off it. That has led to the entire organization being asked questions about Cunningham, pressured to both stand by their teammate while also being cautious not to side with her views.
Sophie Cunningham has become the WNBA’s biggest distraction at the worst possible time, as the Fever are in the middle of their final push for the playoffs with the Dream, Liberty, and Mystics all within striking distance. Instead of being able to focus on basketball, instead Clark has been peppered with questions about topics raised by her teammate.
This non-answer is the ideal the right has been pushing for years now: The athlete who wants to shut up and dribble. At every turn we’ve heard from pundits how athletes aren’t qualified to have opinions on social issues or political issues, that they shouldn’t speak up — but because Clark didn’t wade into this water there’s no shortage of these same pundits who are now denouncing Caitlin Clark, simply because she didn’t take up arms for their side.
“Caitlin Clark might be the biggest coward in the history of sports,” said right-wing influencer Matt Walsh. “I’m done defending Caitlin Clark. If you’re going to sit there and take elbows and refuse to stand up for both yourself and other women, that’s your choice, and you get what you get,” added right-wing podcaster Brittany Hughes. Former conservative news-anchor turned SiriusXM host, Megyn Kelly simply called Clark a “coward.”
The frothing-mouth rage that Clark won’t be a pawn in their culture war is on full display, as the very same people who supported her a week ago, championing her as the oppressed white woman of the WNBA, now feel betrayed that Caitlin Clark wants to focus on basketball and not the bullshit storm of unforced errors that Sophie Cunningham has brought to the Indiana Fever.
Of course, this really shouldn’t surprise anyone. The entire ethos of Laura Ingraham’s “shut up and dribble” comments directed at LeBron James in 2018 wasn’t about athletes needing to be quiet, it was specifically about wanting black athletes to shut up. It was fundamentally about wanting anyone who didn’t support a narrow, backwards way of thinking to be quiet so that all the oxygen in the room could be dominated by the flapping gums of bigots.
Clark’s statements following Indiana’s loss on Sunday was the picture-perfect response that some want out of athletes: She deflected, said it wasn’t her place to comment, and that she was focused on basketball. If Clark had said this about immigration, or civil rights, or police brutality, she would be the paragon of virtue as the “apolitical athlete.” However, because she decided not to speak either way about trans rights, suddenly she’s a traitor to the “cause,” a cause she never championed, a movement she’s never been a part of — outside of Caitlin Clark fan fiction written about her on social media.
At the end of the day Caitlin Clark is who she’s always been: A fierce competitor, an athlete, a basketball player focused solely on the game at hand. That’s all she wants to be right now. Perhaps that will change over time, maybe it won’t — but the vitriol Clark is dealing with right now was started by Sophie Cunningham, fueled by influencers, and poses a very real threat of derailing the Indiana Fever’s season. Meanwhile, all Clark wants to do is play ball. She wants to shut up and dribble, but it’s becoming clear that isn’t possible now.
