There’s been beef — perceived or otherwise — between former WNBA star Sheryl Swoopes and Caitlin Clark for a while. And now there’s another log to add to the fire.
Yes, Swoopes has apologized for comments in the past, and too much was made out of Swoopes staying silent on the air back in August during talk about Clark. But then we got Nancy Liberman reigniting the narrative, causing more messiness.
The latest: Swoopes was on Gilbert Arenas’s podcast Gil’s Arena while the former hoops stars talked about Clark’s awesome numbers this season and Swoopes had this to say: “Those are helluva numbers, but to me, that’s not dominating.”
When asked if she was putting up numbers like presumptive MVP A’ja Wilson, Swoopes agreed that would be dominant. And, adding some context, she spoke thoughtfully on the podcast about Clark adjusting after some struggles in the first half of the season.
“I’ve never questioned if Caitlin was a good player. I think she’s a hell of a player,” she said. “I didn’t think she would come in and adjust to being a professional. And to me, I think that’s exactly what she’s done.”
Seems reasonable!
But you don’t see that. What you see is this:
Swoopes does not consider Caitlin Clark's 19.5 PPG, 5.7 RPG, and 8.4 APG this season to be "dominant"
She is the only player in WNBA history to average those numbers or better pic.twitter.com/VM1i5CayNL
— Clark Report (@CClarkReport) September 17, 2024
To me, this is splitting hairs. Is Wilson MORE dominant and deserving of the MVP? Sure! No argument there.
But Clark’s numbers are dominant in her rookie year. There’s zero doubt about that and you don’t need to be an expert to say it. To say anything else would belittle what she’s done in Year 1.
Here’s the issue: because it’s Swoopes saying it with all the history of what she’s said about Clark, it’s blowing up. It gets clipped and shared and goes viral and here we are.
Maybe if she had more specific takes on what Clark is missing in her game instead of a generalization like this, it would be better, but no matter what, at this point Swoopes saying anything even remotely critical is going to go viral.
Maybe Swoopes takes a pause on talking about Clark as the playoffs loom, or maybe she just leaves this all out here and continues to say that Clark is good and not DOMINANT.
But the cycle will begin anew, and we’ll be back here again.
