The events of the past week surrounding Caitlin Clark have elevated some of the officiating shortcomings of the WNBA, and the seeming unwillingness of WNBA officials to enforce rules against rough play.
One photograph encapsulates this: a picture of Alyssa Thomas, kneeling over a supine Clark, arm extended, fist jabbed into her throat.
Thomas was suspended for one game, while Clark has had to miss a couple of games due to a concatenation of injuries this season.
It’s gotten to the point where columnists, not the least of which is Christine Brennan of USA Today, have called out the WNBA for being unwilling to protect its biggest gate draw:
“For three seasons now, in ways big and small, the WNBA and its players have continued to show their unabashed jealousy, disdain and outright hatred for the greatest thing to happen to them. The league’s paltry one-game suspension of Thomas, with a tiny $1,000 fine (she makes a base salary of $1.2 million a year) and no mention of punishment for the officials overseeing the incident, barely begins to address the problem. Ten games and a fine well into five figures would have sent a significant message. One game does not.”
Brennan, of course, is right. However, in the grand scheme of sport, she’s somewhat unrealistic. How can you justify protecting one player in the entire WNBA at the expense of the other 179 salaried players currently on rosters?
After all, there are very few regulations in any sport which are specifically written to protect players. It’s been only recently in football where penalties were called for hitting players in the head, hitting quarterbacks below the knees, or hitting a defenseless receiver. In basketball, the flagrant foul has only been around since 1980.
For most other sports? The players police themselves — by retaliation, or even by fists. As one NFL player said in a documentary a number of years ago, “You have to be the judge, the jury, and the executioner.”
Clark, the Indiana Fever, and the entire league are at an interesting juncture. I feel as though Clark is going to have to engage in some sort of retaliatory action on the court the next time she suffers her next flagrant foul. It would be an action which might not put her in the best light when it comes to the legion of companies whose products she endorses.
But I think it would right the ship a bit, and show that she has that toughness that says, “Don’t tread on me.”
That day is coming.