Christine Brennan Has Fully Lost It Over Caitlin Clark

If you listen to a certain subset of the media—not necessarily the sports media—the state of the WNBA is dire. A generational talent is being squandered. Weak leadership has failed a league on the cusp of great opportunity. Something must be done. Once we figure out what exactly that something is, it's going to get so done. USA Today columnist Christine Brennan, who has written a book about Caitlin Clark, belongs to this subset, and has committed to viewing an entire sports league through the lens of one All-Star guard on the Indiana Fever. Clark is certainly a popular and exciting basketball player to watch, but adherence to a religiously Clarkcentric worldview can warp one's commentary over time. Eventually you come off like someone who doesn't know or care about anything else happening in the WNBA. Clark's Indiana Fever lost their first-round playoff series to the Las Vegas Aces last week, leaving Brennan to select some strained reporting angles as her book subject spun out of the postseason. Late in Game 2 of that series, Aces star forward A'ja Wilson confronted a courtside Fever fan who she felt had "disrespected" her. "If I see a man come at me, taking steps towards me and pointing at me, I don’t give a damn what you said. I don’t give a damn how you said it, the tone. That is unacceptable," Wilson told press after the game. Brennan sought comment from the WNBA and, 36 hours later, was disappointed not to have heard back. According to her, the WNBA's slow response to queries about Wilson reflects its "leadership vacuum," and a league source's bog-standard obfuscatory description of the event is somehow a "PR nightmare."

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