Two longtime female journalists are now feuding over the Caitlin Clark, WNBA saga.
Longtime USA TODAY columnist Christine Brennan has been on the offensive against the WNBA since Clark arrived in the league. Brennan has consistently accused the WNBA of failing to take advantage of Clark, who went No. 1 overall in the 2024 Draft, and her popularity. Now, she's accusing the league of failing to protect Clark, in the wake of the Alyssa Thomas incident.
"For three seasons now, in ways big and small, the WNBA and its players have continued to show their unabashed jealousy, disdain and outright hatred for the greatest thing to happen to them. The league’s paltry one-game suspension of Thomas, with a tiny $1,000 fine (she makes a base salary of $1.2 million a year) and no mention of punishment for the officials overseeing the incident, barely begins to address the problem. Ten games and a fine well into five figures would have sent a significant message. One game does not," Brennan wrote.
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Former ESPN "Around the Horn" star Sarah Spain is clapping back at Brennan, though, accusing her of failing to maintain her journalist integrity.
“We would never say the ‘NBA hates’ fill-in-the-blank,” Spain said in a video posted to LinkedIn on Monday. “That’s describing every single player in the league as having that opinion and being a part of an agenda. She does that all the time with the WNBA, and it is frankly dereliction of duties as a journalist.”
Spain is not happy with Brennan for downplaying the WNBA's popularity and success in the early days.
“Nineties WNBA games, the first couple years, still have some attendance and viewership records. It was not nothing,” Spain said, per Awful Announcing. “It was sunk, at one point, with intention from certain executives, and it struggled with highs and lows. But the WNBA has had moments well before Caitlin Clark that were giant, that were huge, that could have been capitalized on if the same investment and coverage and streaming services and money and everything else was where it is now.
“So to presume that this never could have happened with a different player who had arrived at this very time is, to me, to intentionally erase decades of talent, of star power, and so many women who came before and helped bring us to where we are now, in service of being able to continue this narrative that Caitlin is being done wrong.”
Brennan, meanwhile, stands by her claims
Brennan knows that a lot of WNBA fans will disagree with her. But she's standing by her claims.
“These facts make some longtime WNBA players, reporters and fans (especially those from UConn) mad, even sad. I understand they wish a player like Maya Moore, Clark’s favorite growing up, would have been so famous that everyone — sports fan or not — knew her name, as they do with Clark. I wish it happened too. But it didn’t. Do they want the small thing to stay small forever?”
