\u201cOn Her Game: Caitlin Clark and the Revolution in Women\u2019s Sports,\u201d the title of USA Today columnist Christine Brennan\u2019s new book about the WNBA star, is doing a lot of work.<\/p>\n
On one hand, it\u2019s about the game, right? Nobody can deny Caitlin Clark\u2019s talent on a basketball court, where her rookie season stats with the Indiana Fever were eye-popping: 19.2 points, 8.4 assists and 5.7 rebounds per game while leading the WNBA in assists and 3-pointers made. On the other hand, why is Caitlin Clark the poster child for a \u201cRevolution in Women\u2019s Sports?\u201d The WNBA\u2019s been around since 1997 and plenty of female athletes are or were the very best at what they do, inspiring millions of young women to play all sorts of sports \u2014 from Serena Williams to Simone Biles to Lindsey Vonn.<\/p>\n
But there\u2019s something more to the Caitlin Clark phenomenon, and it\u2019s that something that Brennan\u2019s reporter instincts sensed early, when Clark was filling the Carver-Hawkeye Arena in Iowa City for every home game, well before her remarkable first year in the WNBA.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat was going on?\u201d writes Brennan in her introduction. \u201cWas this because Clark is white and straight in a league that is 74% Black or mixed-race, with a sizable gay population? Was it because of her eight-year $28 million Nike shoe deal? Was it jealousy? Was it all of the above?\u201d<\/p>\n
Hoping to find answers or at least insights into those questions, Brennan convinced her editor to let her cover six straight weeks of Clark\u2019s first WNBA season, giving \u201cOn Her Game\u201d a comprehensive feel, except for one thing: Clark never sat down for a one-on-one interview with Brennan. She did, however, answer every question Brennan posed at press conferences, and they are widely quoted throughout the book, along with all sorts of other Clark content like TV appearances and social media posts as well as interviews Brennan conducted with other WNBA players, coaches and various experts.<\/p>\n
Brennan\u2019s presence at Fever games, home and away, and her intense focus on Clark as a singular story became a story of its own in September 2024, when Brennan asked follow-up questions of DiJonai Carrington, a Phoenix Sun player whose fingers made contact with Clark\u2019s eye during a playoff game. Brennan asked Carrington if there was anything intentional about it, she said no, and days later the WNBA Players Association called for Brennan\u2019s media credential to be revoked for \u201cunprofessionalism.\u201d Ten months later, it\u2019s a good bet only the most diehard sports journalism fans will care about that controversy. Brennan makes it very clear how she feels about it. \u201cI was doing my job,\u201d she writes.<\/p>\n
Clark\u2019s race and the frosty reception she got from some in the league is returned to again and again, with Brennan and the people she talked to asserting with incredulity that the WNBA wasn\u2019t ready for all the attention.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe league needed to do a better job in preparing to take advantage of the tsunami of popularity that is raising all of the boats,\u201d legendary civil rights activist Dr. Harry Edwards told Brennan.<\/p>\n
Instead, Brennan cites example after example \u2014 from WNBA legends like Diana Taurasi and Sheryl Swoopes, to fellow female athletes like the WNBA\u2019s Breanna Stewart \u2014 who made statements minimizing Clark\u2019s impact.<\/p>\n
It all makes for an interesting read and speaks to the divisive \u201cus vs. them\u201d moment the world finds itself in, but fans looking for tidbits about Clark that are not already part of the public record \u2014 how she learned to shoot like that, her on- and off-court life \u2014 will have to stay tuned to the current WNBA season. Clark\u2019s Fever team is in the middle of the pack in the Eastern Conference, with their superstar having missed several games with a quadriceps injury. The playoffs begin Sept. 14.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cOn Her Game: Caitlin Clark and the Revolution in Women\u2019s Sports,\u201d the title of USA Today columnist Christine…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":48616,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[1339,233,2208,234,37176,37175,62,67,132,68,232,1707],"class_list":{"0":"post-48615","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-caitlin-clark","10":"tag-christine-brennan","11":"tag-indiana-fever","12":"tag-media-controversy","13":"tag-revolution","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-us","18":"tag-wnba","19":"tag-womens-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114817515106262055","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}