A'ja Wilson made history again while Cathy Englebert made headlines. The Phoenix Mercury are also soft launching Diana Taurasi's retirement, forcing Chauny to stop hating and start reflecting.
Caitlin Clark is in the right place at the right time. If DT, Sue Bird, Lisa Leslie, Cynthia Cooper or two dozen other players were in this moment? The WNBA is a continuum, a spectrum, a long (but not long enough) and wide road traveled by some truly exceptional athletes. Clark isn't the first, the best or the last - she is just the Now, and she is not the Only.
A’ja doesn’t have the interest level that Caitlin does. A’ja has been great for several years but that’s not going to g to get clicks. The only reason Clark gets the overexposure is it is an easy way to get attention
I think the issue is that no one is telling good stories about A’ja. She has a legit hero’s journey in this league. We have all these data points about Caitlin as a star but that’s as much about her skill as it is there’s been great storytelling about her (see Wright Thompson’s story on her). A’ja needs that but for some reason, be it internal or external, no one in media has stepped up to the plate.
This "gosh I sure wish someone would cover this!" passing of the buck in major media when it comes to A'ja has been really weird. I saw Trotter's comments last week, but I'm also thinking about how The Athletic basically asked "gosh, are we covering Clark too much at A'ja's expense?" in its *own newsletter* last week. Sure seems like everyone wants someone else to fix the problem they are contributing to.
Trotter mystifies me a little. He says the W isn't his beat, but he's written at least three columns this year related to the W -- all about Caitlin Clark (in whole or in part)! Where are his A'ja Wilson columns? Maybe he's working on one, but geez, dude--the call is coming from inside the house.
You're absolutely full of it. Clark gets the exposure because the media gives it to her. She's a phenomenon because people covered the interesting things she does. She's not magically more interesting than the next gifted player and pretending that's the case is played. A'ja is interesting. She has a fan base. It can grow if the people clamoring to cover the things other people are already covering because they already built themselves an easy attention grab actually bothered to care about women's basketball and not just the clicks they can garner from the name they grew.
Aw you really brought me down memory lane about DT! I had the exact same experience - while I know a lot of people find her attitude off-putting, all I saw was a female athlete who didn't care what anyone thought, and that was a truly revolutionary concept for me at that formative age
I'm afraid WNBA writers who are "sick of the Caitlin Clark effect" are 1) missing the point and 2) pushing away new WNBA fans. So let's be honest, the reason that A'Ja Wilson does not get the pub she "deserves" is not because she is black. Breanna Stewart, Sabrina Ionescu and Kelsey Plum all white superstars came into the W fairly recently and nobody gave a damn. They are great ... but nobody got excited about Kevin McHale or James Worth or Klay Thompson for that matter ... Clark is the new Bird/Magic/Steph (choose your comp ... Steph is the closest .. I say Steph with John Stockton's passing) she's exciting. A'ja and the others despite their excellence (including the white superstars) are not as exciting as Clark. Sorry. You can give A'ja her props without disparaging Clark's truly remarkable first season. Leading the entire league in assists and setting the single game assist and points produced record are legendary feats regardless of years in the league. But you want to look at something really impressive, check out her True Shooting Percentage compared with the other guards in the league.
I would argue there’s an issue of race at play with A’ja. But the problem, as you note, isn’t that she’s being pushed to the side in favor of white superstars. The issue is the league makes a concerted effort to not follow players when they get in. Every year the marketing push is about the next big thing. The long term hope of the CC effect is that media follows her which in turn continues to build the leagues interest over time, as opposed to their strategy of “flood the zone with the shiny new toy each year”
You don't need to tell this to Chauny, she's been a supporter of Caitlin since she was a freshman at Iowa! I think her point was not that Caitlin doesn't deserve her attention, but that so many want to complain about the hyperfocus on Caitlin and then not actually do anything about it, like Jim Trotter and many reporters like him.
Additionally, I will push back on the idea that the lack of coverage about A'ja isn't about race. While the white players you named did not achieve mainstream success in the way Caitlin did, they did receive a lot more coverage within the WNBA sphere than their black counterparts. There was a study done in 2020 about this, if you're interested in learning more: https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/SB-Blogs/COVID19-OpEds/2021/05/24-IsardMelton.aspx
Such an important study! I would love the study to be repeated for this season. Whenever I google "WNBA," the amount of Caitlin Clark content I have to scroll through to find any substantial coverage of anyone else (with the exception of the nights when records are broken by other players) is astonishing
I find Caitlin sort of a different example because she is new and has un before see popularity so I don’t begrudge the league capitalizing off of it, as that will lead to more eyes and bigger paychecks for everyone, and she’s actually playing at level that warrants attention (unlike, say, Sabrina or Plum in their rookie years).
Caitlin Clark is in the right place at the right time. If DT, Sue Bird, Lisa Leslie, Cynthia Cooper or two dozen other players were in this moment? The WNBA is a continuum, a spectrum, a long (but not long enough) and wide road traveled by some truly exceptional athletes. Clark isn't the first, the best or the last - she is just the Now, and she is not the Only.
A’ja doesn’t have the interest level that Caitlin does. A’ja has been great for several years but that’s not going to g to get clicks. The only reason Clark gets the overexposure is it is an easy way to get attention
I think the issue is that no one is telling good stories about A’ja. She has a legit hero’s journey in this league. We have all these data points about Caitlin as a star but that’s as much about her skill as it is there’s been great storytelling about her (see Wright Thompson’s story on her). A’ja needs that but for some reason, be it internal or external, no one in media has stepped up to the plate.
This "gosh I sure wish someone would cover this!" passing of the buck in major media when it comes to A'ja has been really weird. I saw Trotter's comments last week, but I'm also thinking about how The Athletic basically asked "gosh, are we covering Clark too much at A'ja's expense?" in its *own newsletter* last week. Sure seems like everyone wants someone else to fix the problem they are contributing to.
Trotter mystifies me a little. He says the W isn't his beat, but he's written at least three columns this year related to the W -- all about Caitlin Clark (in whole or in part)! Where are his A'ja Wilson columns? Maybe he's working on one, but geez, dude--the call is coming from inside the house.
You're absolutely full of it. Clark gets the exposure because the media gives it to her. She's a phenomenon because people covered the interesting things she does. She's not magically more interesting than the next gifted player and pretending that's the case is played. A'ja is interesting. She has a fan base. It can grow if the people clamoring to cover the things other people are already covering because they already built themselves an easy attention grab actually bothered to care about women's basketball and not just the clicks they can garner from the name they grew.
Aw you really brought me down memory lane about DT! I had the exact same experience - while I know a lot of people find her attitude off-putting, all I saw was a female athlete who didn't care what anyone thought, and that was a truly revolutionary concept for me at that formative age
I'm afraid WNBA writers who are "sick of the Caitlin Clark effect" are 1) missing the point and 2) pushing away new WNBA fans. So let's be honest, the reason that A'Ja Wilson does not get the pub she "deserves" is not because she is black. Breanna Stewart, Sabrina Ionescu and Kelsey Plum all white superstars came into the W fairly recently and nobody gave a damn. They are great ... but nobody got excited about Kevin McHale or James Worth or Klay Thompson for that matter ... Clark is the new Bird/Magic/Steph (choose your comp ... Steph is the closest .. I say Steph with John Stockton's passing) she's exciting. A'ja and the others despite their excellence (including the white superstars) are not as exciting as Clark. Sorry. You can give A'ja her props without disparaging Clark's truly remarkable first season. Leading the entire league in assists and setting the single game assist and points produced record are legendary feats regardless of years in the league. But you want to look at something really impressive, check out her True Shooting Percentage compared with the other guards in the league.
I would argue there’s an issue of race at play with A’ja. But the problem, as you note, isn’t that she’s being pushed to the side in favor of white superstars. The issue is the league makes a concerted effort to not follow players when they get in. Every year the marketing push is about the next big thing. The long term hope of the CC effect is that media follows her which in turn continues to build the leagues interest over time, as opposed to their strategy of “flood the zone with the shiny new toy each year”
You don't need to tell this to Chauny, she's been a supporter of Caitlin since she was a freshman at Iowa! I think her point was not that Caitlin doesn't deserve her attention, but that so many want to complain about the hyperfocus on Caitlin and then not actually do anything about it, like Jim Trotter and many reporters like him.
Additionally, I will push back on the idea that the lack of coverage about A'ja isn't about race. While the white players you named did not achieve mainstream success in the way Caitlin did, they did receive a lot more coverage within the WNBA sphere than their black counterparts. There was a study done in 2020 about this, if you're interested in learning more: https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/SB-Blogs/COVID19-OpEds/2021/05/24-IsardMelton.aspx
Such an important study! I would love the study to be repeated for this season. Whenever I google "WNBA," the amount of Caitlin Clark content I have to scroll through to find any substantial coverage of anyone else (with the exception of the nights when records are broken by other players) is astonishing
I find Caitlin sort of a different example because she is new and has un before see popularity so I don’t begrudge the league capitalizing off of it, as that will lead to more eyes and bigger paychecks for everyone, and she’s actually playing at level that warrants attention (unlike, say, Sabrina or Plum in their rookie years).