Christine Brennan Has Not Fully Lost It, According To Christine Brennan In Two Baffling Phone Calls

This past Friday, Christine Brennan asked to speak with an editor at Defector. The USA Today columnist's request was somewhat expected, since Giri Nathan had written about her in an article published two days earlier, the piece critical of her fixation with measuring the WNBA's success through the singular metric of Caitlin Clark. While writing his article, Giri had reached out to Brennan for comment on what her ideal strategy would be for the league to properly market the Indiana Fever's star player. But Brennan didn't reply to share her multi-point plan. Mostly she wanted to take umbrage with the post's headline: "Christine Brennan Has Fully Lost It Over Caitlin Clark." For the record, Giri emailed Brennan on Oct. 6, the day before the piece ran. He asked her, "If you were made WNBA commissioner tomorrow, what would be your five-point plan for running a league that has Caitlin Clark in it?" We published the following morning, and Brennan's response came in Wednesday night: Thank you for your email and my sincere apologies. This went to a spam folder and I just saw it now. As you might know, I’ve covered the WNBA since it began in the late 1990s and have fought very hard for it to get attention from the male-dominated mainstream sports media and national media for whom I work, including USA Today, CNN and ABC News. You can find a lot about my coverage of the WNBA and its incredible advocacy in my book, On Her Game: working to get BG home; being a month ahead of Colin Kaepernick protesting the killing of Black men; working to get Sen. Warnock elected, etc. To have the opportunity now to get that attention and coverage is something I never thought would happen in my lifetime. And then to witness the rudderless “leadership” of Cathy Engelbert at this crucial moment…well, that’s why I continue to speak out. As you can see on my social media and in my book, I believe the great Dr. Harry Edwards had it right about preparing for Caitlin Clark’s arrival. I also believe Adam Silver finally needs to engage; this is his legacy too. There are things big and small I’d love to speak with you about: for instance, immediate investigation of the messages Kelsey Mitchell and other players say they are receiving. That should be the highest priority of the new commissioner: investigate everything happening to the players and take the appropriate action. As we know, that happened with Clark’s stalker, who is now in jail. Also, the W needs a transgender policy. As I’ve said on some recent podcasts, it is the only major sports league or organization without one, as far as I know, which creates the massive controversy we’ve seen the past few months. The W needs to address this issue. It’s not easy but the commissioner needs to be taking this on, not leaving it to the players.

Read it at Defector ↗

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