Getty Image
University of Iowa senior point guard Caitlin Clark is one of the biggest stories in sports these days, as the NCAA Division I all-time leading scorer is looking to lead the Hawkeyes to their first-ever national title in men’s or women’s basketball.
While Clark is already considered to be one of the greatest women’s college basketball players, a championship would only further cement her legacy as a pantheon player.
Given how much of an expert Clark is at her craft, she’s obviously quite a driven 22-year-old, which sometimes reveals itself on the court in outbursts — both justified and unjustified (which, obviously, is a subjective concept) — at opponents, refs, fans, coaches, etc. This is something that most athletes have done for a decades.
Clark’s attitude, however, seems to be triggering the worst type of sports fans, as a dude who called her behavior in this year’s tournament “disappointing” is going viral on Twitter with over 4 million views at the time of this writing.
Caitlin Clark is a talented basketball player, but her behavior during this tournament has been disappointing. We need athletes to set good examples for young people, and CC had the opportunity to be a positive role model but fell short.
It’s not just her, players in all sports… pic.twitter.com/fYZYjAIEBz— 𝙅𝙤𝙣𝙖𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙣 '𝙅𝘾' 𝘾𝙖𝙧𝙩𝙚𝙧 (@JonathanCarter9) March 26, 2024
Another media outlet wrote an entire 560-word blog about Clark’s trash-talking and said her “constant complaining and whining is getting old” and that “America is beginning to notice.”
Even official NBA broadcasters are calling out Clark, as she caught a stray shot from the commentary team calling Monday night’s Celtics-Hawks game, as if LeBron James, the face of the NBA for two decades, isn’t known for that very thing.
To be fair, those complaining about Clark’s attitude while playing certainly have a point, as evidenced by how often she’s seen yelling at teammates, opponents, and refs in the below video — there’s even another 8-minute-long compilation on YouTube!
Wait, sorry, never mind — that’s seven-time Super Bowl champion Tom Brady, who also used to famously yell “Let’s f—— go!” to the crowd before every game. Here’s the video:
Wait, no, messed up again — that’s NBA-leading scorer Luka Doncic.
What makes Clark’s behavior perhaps even more excusable is the fact that she’s facing a pressure that those two, nor any male athlete, has ever faced before (which is also not to say that they haven’t faced immense pressure, as well): and that’s being the present and future of an entire women’s sport. Business analysts are already calculating the financial impact she could have on the WNBA.
Clark is a senior — this is her last shot. National sports shows literally have debates about how a championship will impact her legacy. ESPN analyst and perpetual bad take-haver Jay Williams said that Clark “can not be considered great” unless she wins a championship… with IOWA! Clark’s games with the Hawkeyes are putting up record numbers.
There’s also the star treatment factor: star players, particularly in the sport of basketball, get calls, and Clark is perhaps the biggest star the sport has ever seen. Of course, she’s going to leverage that — what great athlete hasn’t?
Perhaps a counterargument might be that even Clark’s own father was seen telling her to cool it from the stands during the Hawkeyes’ first-round game, to which the obvious answer is: uhhh, yeah, duh? Have you ever had your father at one of your sporting events, let alone one as high profile as this — they’re always going to be the biggest critic in the gym, or, in Clark’s case, historically sold out and widely broadcast arenas.
How about we just let the kids play and Clark seek to achieve greatness in her own way, shall we? And, for posterity, this article is 579 words long, by the way.