Covering Caitlin Clark: It's about everything BUT basketball

From the moment she began her WNBA journey, she's been a centerpiece of this country's endless culture wars. And it isn't fair to her.

Writing about Caitlin Clark and her life in the WNBA is downright exhausting. But that’s my fault because I was foolish enough to think all or most of the coverage would be focused on basketball. Little did I know it would involve racial politics, homophobia, misogyny and something called “intersectionality,” which I had to look up on Google recently. From the moment she got here, beginning with that unfortunate introductory press conference, it’s been about almost everything BUT basketball.

She’s become a Rorschach Text that exposes pre-existing fault lines across the culture. For the Pat McAfee’s of the world, she’s a cause celebre for all their criticisms of the current political moment. To liberals, she exposes the hollowness of that same culture. Sports have also been politicized, but you’d have to go back to the Sixties to recall a time when it was this pronounced.

And Clark is at the vortex of it all.

That’s why Sunday was so nice. I got to sit in front of my TV and watch a home victory over the rival Chicago Sky, and it was glorious. Clark was terrific, playing arguably her most well-rounded game and looking as comfortable in her own skin as she’s looked all season. She scored, she delivered pin-point passes, she rebounded and she looked like the presumptive WNBA Rookie of the Year. Everything you wanted, everything you expected. And there’s more to come now that the Fever’s inhumane early schedule has morphed into something more manageable with games against lesser teams and actual time to practice.

Sometimes I think, though, it would be great to start the whole Caitlin Clark Era all over again.

Seriously.

Has this been an unholy mess, or what?