nomorezorro wrote:DuckIII wrote:The best thing that ever happened to the women of the WNBA since its founding is Clark, and there are way too many current and former players throwing baby fits for the last 4 months about it happening.
the current players are literally competitors with her!
Which is why they should go at her as hard as they can to win the games exactly like they would any other player.
if you took basically any group of active professional athletes and presented them with a prospect who attracts an inordinate amount of media attention and is hailed as a savior of the sport, someone who is uniquely good at the game they all make a living playing, i'm pretty confident you're going to generate a lot of resentment toward that person.
Well its an interesting year for that proposition, isn't it? Clark and Wemby. Would you like to make a one to one comparison on that one? I will since it pretty powerfully supports my point, but it kind of goes without saying doesn't it? Wasn't the most dramatic Wemby event that time Brittney Spears tried to touch him?
Regardless, yes you absolutely expect in a professional environment that a highly touted rookie is going to get at least some "extra attention". No doubt. People are calling Caleb Williams a Mahomes level talent. He's going to get some extra love for that no doubt. Though football and basketball aren't exactly equals on the cheap shots. They are an inherent part of basically every football play, whether they should be or not.
Regardless, getting back to the specifics there are obvious distinctions with Clark. You have former all time greats at minimum diminishing her and at worst aggressively downgrading her achievements (including with several outright lies). Before she even leaves college. You have former league MVPs taking shots at her in the press, including A'Ja Wilson acknowledge her anger at Clark being popular because she's white. Which is a pretty significant oversimplification, but also a big part why she's popular. Find me the modern day comparable here.
she's gonna get other people's best efforts, she's gonna get pot shots in the press, and she's gonna sometimes eat a hard screen or an elbow. it's part of being a transcendent athlete who plays a physical game, and it's not a phenomenon unique to caitlin clark.
That is all part of that. But as outlined above, this is something very different than merely that. Very, very different, with many more layers.
(the expectation that her opponents should be expressing gratitude toward her, on the other hand...)
I don't know if that's a twitter thing or not. Its certainly a stupid concept, which would make it par for the course in non-specific mass consumption social media. I don't think anyone in here is saying that anyone in the WNBA should outwardly express any gratitude towards Caitlin Clark at all. I'm certainly not saying that. The issue is the outright hostility and vitriol toward what is literally the one person in the entire human race who has ever been capable of making the world care about what you do for an entertainment-based living. Whose success is contingent on human beings caring enough about what you do to pay to watch you do it.
Its downright bizarre. And if its not, please cite the many examples it would require to establish that this is a common state of affairs in your typical hazing of a touted rookie.
I'll finish with this. Its also fascinating from a social perspective to see in America what one could argue (and I do actually believe) is in part a backlash from decades of mistreatment of and disregard for gay and black women by mainstream white America. The resentment that exists in the WNBA - and it exists, but its certainly not universal within the league - that the savior of their league is a white straight girl from Iowa, is to me perfectly understandable. I just wish they would be bigger about it for their own good and the good of the whole product. Its just an ugly turn of events that, in part, exists because of prior and much more serious and widespread ugliness.
