The vitriol WNBA players face for fouling Caitlin Clark is unacceptable — and racist

With a few minutes left in Friday’s primetime matchup between the Chicago Sky and the Indiana Fever, Diamond DeShields pushed Caitlin Clark.

Trailing by 25 points, the Sky had just turned the ball over, and Clark was zooming full-speed ahead, moments away from converting a layup. A fairly no-brainer flagrant foul was called on DeShields, and Clark subsequently sunk two free throws to set a new WNBA career-high in points (31).

End of story, right?

Not quite.

Since the push, DeShields’s Instagram account has been inundated with hate.

“That tumor should of (sic) took you out,” one comment reads.

“Ms. Tumor are you alright?” — followed by laughter emojis — reads another.

The malicious notes reference the fact that a few years back, DeShields had surgery to remove a rare benign tumor that was pressing on her spine. That 9-hour operation left her unable to walk for weeks, dealing with involuntary muscle spasms, and suffering unimaginable pain. Her miraculous return to the basketball court was chronicled by ESPN’s Holly Rowe in 2022 after the Sky won the championship.

The foul captured the homepage of the Chicago-Sun Times, the local paper that employs one of the only traveling beat writers in the WNBA. The Sports section’s cover photo depicted the foul, accompanied by the caption “Foul ball: Sky send Clark to floor again — this time it’s DeShields — but Fever show who’s boss with rout.”

I’ve watched a lot of basketball in my life, and I’ve also played a lot of basketball. This foul was nothing to write home about — just a regular shove; likely the result of both DeShields’s frustration (the Sky were on the brink of dropping five consecutive games) and the fact that Clark was about to score if she wasn’t stopped. DeShield’s instinct to immediately reach toward her after the collision further demonstrates a lack of violent intent.

It’s not the first time that a hard foul by a Sky guard has been blown way out of proportion. Back in June, it was Chennedy Carter who bumped Clark on an inbounds play — a common foul that quickly exploded into a national news story.

The story got blown so out of proportion that a member of U.S. Congress, Indiana Representative Jim Banks, penned a letter to WNBA Commissioner Cathy Englebert demanding that the “excessive physical targeting of specific players” be investigated. Carter was harassed at a hotel days after the foul.

In both of these instances, Clark was at pretty minimal risk of getting hurt. Both times, fouls were accordingly called — and both times, Clark walked away unscathed.

Was Carter right to shove Clark to the ground? Was DeShields?

Probably not, and that’s why the referees blew the whistle. But, basketball is a contact sport, and it happens.

Caitlin Clark would know — she’s been on the other end of hard fouls plenty of times in her career. Just last week, Clark’s foul on Jordin Canada brought the Sparks’ guard to the ground.

When players get called for flagrant fouls, sometimes it’s the result of poor judgement, like going for a block and inadvertently swatting someone’s face when the ball is out of reach. Frequently, it’s the result of someone simply being out of control, or clouded with frustration. Teams that are flagrant fouled get free throws and the ball back as an additional penalty — it’s baked into the rulebook that these things happen. It’s rare for a player to actually intentionally try to injure an opponent on the court.

There are lots of hard fouls in the NBA too, but they seldom become a major news story, especially when the player on the receiving end walks away just fine. It begs the question — why the vitriol? Why the outrage?

There’s a gendered component, there’s a racial one, and there’s one that’s grown pretty unique to the discourse around Caitlin Clark herself. It’s well-documented that Black women’s emotions and actions are scrutinized at a level that is unrivaled by their white counterparts. The WNBA has served as a perfect stage to highlight misogynoir — a term that describes the unique prejudice faced by Black women — as semi-routine fouls become framed as “bullying” because Clark is white and the players fouling her are (often) Black. The societal response to these incidents is racist, and should be called out as such.

The backlash is also partially a result of the implicit belief held by many fans that Caitlin Clark is the savior of women’s basketball. Clark is an undeniably brilliant talent, and she very well might end up the greatest to ever lace up in the history of the women’s game.

But she isn’t a savior — because women’s basketball doesn’t need saving. The 2023 WNBA season already experienced record-breaking success, and popularity in the league has proliferated since its inception in 1997. While Clark has obviously expedited that growth, she’s not single-handedly responsible for the WNBA popularity boom this season.

Moreover, Caitlin Clark is a tough, fiery player who dishes it out, too. She doesn’t need protection. Many in right-wing media have latched onto her as a publicly apolitical, straight-presenting white woman, and perpetuated the belief that any Black and/or queer athlete who fouls her or critiques her is jealous, or vengeful, because of the the fame, money, and attention she has received.

Photo by Justin Casterline/Getty Images

There’s so many different factors at play here — sexism, racism, and homophobia are just three — and they intersect to create a world in which Caitlin Clark is untouchable, both physically and metaphorically. Anyone who challenges her is deemed an awful human being. This doesn’t benefit the athletes, who must navigate this increasingly complex and sensitive dynamic, and it doesn’t benefit the viewers. It also doesn’t benefit Caitlin Clark, who simply wants to play the game she loves.

Trolls online don’t always reflect the behavior of an entire society, but it’d be hard to argue against the fact that there’s disproportionate backlash unleashed anytime Caitlin Clark is touched — or criticized, for that matter.

Sheryl Swoopes, a Black woman who just so happens to be one of the most decorated players in women’s basketball history, has been routinely lambasted for a few isolated incidents in which she has criticized Clark’s game. Swoopes’s decision to primarily focus on other WNBA players when discussing the league has somehow turned into a scandal that generates new headlines every day.

Diamond DeShields has accrued three flagrant fouls in her six-year WNBA career. She’s not a dirty player. But, she’s the latest player who has been subject to a torrential downpour of hate and criticism after a fairly routine hard foul of an opponent.

The media heavily contributes to the normalization of this type of response. When Carter fouled Clark in June, the Chicago Tribune published an editorial admonishing her actions as “assault.” Alongside the racial dynamic, there’s an element here that’s undeniably gendered — you’d be hard-pressed to find that same terminology used to describe NBA players’ fouls.

In the NBA Finals, for example, when PJ Washington fouled Kristaps Porzingis, ESPN commentator Doris Burke noted that a similar play in the woman’s game would have turned into a massive controversy.

“If that were Caitlin Clark, it might spark a debate for a week,” Burke said.

She’s right. It would take a whole lot more than a shove for a singular play with no impact on the game’s final score to become the main story of a game featuring the sport’s brightest stars.

There’s been a lot of talk about growing the game, and with that growth comes increased revenue and opportunities for the WNBA’s stars. But it also comes at a cost.

The nastiness women like Chennedy Carter and Diamond DeShields have faced should be condemned, and the media has a responsibility to not sensationalize these incidents as more than they are with clicks in mind.

Caitlin Clark would be better off if that were the case, too. All too often, the discourse surrounding the Fever rookie has centered around pushes, shoves and postgame comments, rather than her spectacular on-court performances. Clark is in the first year of a hopefully long professional career. There will be plenty more fouls in the future, and there will be plenty more shoves, and she’s shown she can handle them.

The question is, can the rest of us?