Looks like WNBA will be dragged down after all

Uncertain future in WNBA?

We had to be suspicious when Caitlin Clark missed the first game of the pre-season due to injury. Who misses the first game of the pre-season? You've had an extended time to rest. 

Caitlin's body was signaling something. First it was the "quad" thing, happened twice. Her team tried telling us it was two separate and unrelated injuries. When she came back to play, I really think we were all holding our breath - all Caitlin's fans. We were apprehensive for a reason, as it turned out, because now her "groin" came into play. 

Many fans think this is a mysterious injury situation. Some conspiracy theorists began to be heard: the league realized that Caitlin was getting "beat up" so bad by opponents, she had to be withdrawn, I guess for the sake of the league's image. 

The league's image? My, the WNBA has been small-time for so long. It's sad because there have been so many outstanding players. Look at Maya Moore. Great as Moore was, her name was not a household word among people outside of the real WNBA followers. Caitlin comes along and turns into a phenomenon. Not just a playing phenomenon but a cultural one. 

We have to attribute part of this to her image and personality. She took to the "light" of stardom very well. Lindsay Whalen never had this kind of image. Janel McCarville did not excite fans based on her image. Well, athletes are entertainers. The more they can endear themselves to the fans and the population as a whole, the better. 

Caitlin simply had the gift. Oh, there I go referring to the woman in the past tense. Is it all over with Caitlin now, with her body increasingly looking so brittle? This was the WNBA's big chance to break out of obscurity. 

As I sit here today in mid-August, I'm wondering if the league is in a rapid plunge back to where it used to be. We hear talk of resentment against Caitlin within the league. Overly-aggressive defensive play against the "girl from West Des Moines." Gets described as thuggery sometimes. We are forced to ponder why this is. And I think our immediate reaction is, or ought to be, "it's not so simple." 

Jealousy just based on how talented CC is? There's one theory, but it probably springs from naivete. There is a suspicion with some justification that resentment comes from the fact that CC springs from a quite specific template. And it is not the template that characterizes the league, not at all. I think the professional commentators hate to get in this line of thinking very much if at all. Some of them do put their toe in the water, though. 

  

Just play the game 

There is so much at stake because if the league and its fans could just accept Caitlin as a talented player worthy of the usual, expected defensive attention on the court, she'd be in better shape now. She'd be out on the court which would be a boon for all the stakeholders. Shouldn't monetary gains for the league be No. 1? That is what common sense would demand. What could trump that? 

Well, CC's "template" is as a white openly heterosexual Midwest girl from a white bread background. Anglo name and all. Maybe we could equate this to Norman Rockwell? Rockwell's whole world has dissolved. We live in a rainbow culture now and this includes categories of people and/or sexual preferences. 

Let's be honest: there has been a widely-held perception of the WNBA as being a lesbians' club or hangout. Sex is at the periphery of our minds, and just look at how the recent prank or stunt of throwing a dildo out on the court has become a "thing." We all know who CC's male fiance is. 

And I haven't even gotten into the subject of race yet. Race still hangs over so much of America. Hasn't CC done all she can to be a sister to the non-white players on her own team and other teams? I'm not aware of any evidence suggesting otherwise. But I guess that's not the point. Players of color could well think that the fame of CC is due in no small extent to her whiteness. And is this theory valid? To be honest I think it is, unfortunately. I am commenting on the real world here. Is it fair? No it is not. 

 

Can't escape race 

Race is a specter that has hung over America since the 19th Century. You might argue that it's human nature to "like your own kind," like for white bread Upper Midwesterners to be attracted to this "girl from West Des Moines" with the name so easy to pronounce. 

I go out of my way to root for all of Caitlin's teammates. I cannot deny that I have my own little affinity for someone like Caitlin. But if the lesbian players are picking on Caitlin, assaulting her, they are no better than people like me who admit to a little subconscious preference. Make that affinity, not preference. Human beings simply cannot throw off their shackles of bias. We are the sinful creations of God. 

I frankly think Caitlin may be done in the WNBA. For a while I thought the WNBA could actually displace baseball as our preferred sport of summer. My opinion about that has dimmed considerably. A league with a lesbian image is not going to cut it. The league's legacy weakness is going to drag it down again.

- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com