Longtime sports radio man Mike Francesa probably doesn’t watch much WNBA basketball. But he clearly reads about it and he doesn’t like what he’s seeing.
On the latest episode of his podcast, Francesa criticized the WNBA’s leadership and players for allowing the league to become “a bubbling, volcanic, political, chaotic situation where every nut is now getting involved politically.” He accused the people in charge of lacking vision and not propping top draw Caitlin Clark up better.
“They have turned their league into a bubbling, volcanic, political, chaotic situation where every nut is now getting involved politically in the WNBA on all different levels,. It’s the worst thing that could have ever happened. I blame the people who run the league, I blame the players who didn’t have the long-range vision and didn’t have the smarts to realize what Caitlin Clark was going to do for their league, and instead, tried to hurt her and run her out of the league at every point,” Francesa said during a lengthy rant.
Back in my day…
Francesa likened the situation with Clark to the late-great Pete Maravich joining the NBA back in the day – and that the WNBA is failing to capitalize on their generational draw.
“There were revolts against Pete Maravich when he came to the NBA,” Francesa recalled. “He broke up a very good Atlanta Hawks team because there was insane jealousy and people felt he hadn’t earned anything and they felt he was just a self-promoting showboat. Caitlin Clark came to that league and energized it in a way that they had never seen possible. They had never been able to sell that league to anybody, and she sold it to everybody. And they’re all trying to ruin it. And now it’s become a political mess way past just the issues with Caitlin Clark. The league’s a disaster right now.”
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WNBA fans weren’t impressed by Francesa’s decision to enter the conversation:
“Given his huge platform, I’m sure the WNBA will be devastated,” one user on X said sarcastically.
“Really Mike there are some things you can just retire and never think about….this guy has no idea about the WNBA. He couldn’t pass a current sports trivia quiz,” wrote another.
“Who gives a (expletive) what he thinks about the WNBA?” a third wrote.
Even Francesa probably doesn’t care about the WNBA as much as he is annoyed by reading about it in the news.
