Exploring Caitlin Clark’s Impactful WNBA Rookie Season

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00:00 (upbeat music)

00:03 - It is great to have Mike DeCoursey

00:05 from the Sporting News with us,

00:07 as we always love to chat about things all around sports,

00:10 usually collar tubes, usually some soccer or whatever,

00:12 but Mike had an absolutely phenomenal column the other day

00:17 about this entire Caitlin Clark situation

00:21 going on right now as she navigates through,

00:24 I guess you could say, Mike, her rookie season in the WNBA.

00:28 Good to see you as always, Mike, how are you?

00:31 - I think her rookie season is already over, Mike,

00:34 because the WNBA scheduled the entire thing

00:36 in the first three weeks of the season.

00:38 She's done, right?

00:39 - Let's start, let me start there,

00:41 and there's a couple things obviously to discuss here,

00:44 'cause I read that in the cop.

00:45 I didn't realize, now I knew they played a lot of games,

00:49 and they've played, I guess it's 11 over the first few.

00:52 I didn't realize that like Vegas have played like seven,

00:55 other teams have played like eight.

00:56 Like I didn't realize that the gap was that wide,

01:00 and it's specifically for what you said.

01:01 They tried to, right out of the gate,

01:04 hammer home as many Caitlin Clark games

01:07 as they possibly could to catch the wave,

01:09 and boy, Mike, if they caught it.

01:11 - Well, they allowed the wave to subsume her.

01:16 She fell off the board

01:17 and went head over heels into the surf,

01:21 and it shouldn't have been that way.

01:23 She should have been allowed to move into her rookie year

01:27 with the same pace as every other rookie in the league.

01:29 75% of the league has played eight or fewer games.

01:34 They've already played 11, this is as of Sunday.

01:38 They had already 11 games in the first 20 days of the season,

01:42 and that included a road trip that went to Seattle

01:45 from Indianapolis, then to LA, and then to Vegas,

01:48 a 4,500 mile road trip.

01:51 It was three games in four days.

01:54 How do you like that?

01:54 That's great stuff.

01:55 That's really treating your prize rookie,

01:59 the player who electrified college basketball

02:03 over the last two years,

02:04 that completely changed the dynamics of the viewing patterns

02:08 for women's college basketball,

02:10 and promised to do the same for you based on television,

02:14 excuse me, on ticket sales

02:15 for the first several weeks of the season,

02:17 promised to do the same for you,

02:19 and all you could do was grab everything you could.

02:23 Not let's do this strategically,

02:25 but let's grab as much as we can early,

02:27 and who the heck cares if it wrecks her rookie season?

02:31 - Yeah, there's a lot of things that are kind of,

02:35 I guess you could say, wrecking her rookie season.

02:38 At this point, Mike, let me get your thoughts on Saturday,

02:42 the incident with Carter and Angel Reese.

02:46 I guess we could say Angel Reese was kind of a part of it

02:48 with her jumping off the bench and cheering,

02:51 and her press conference yesterday,

02:52 and Carter hip checking Clark.

02:55 Your thoughts on that whole incident

02:56 from Saturday against Chicago.

02:58 - Well, first of all,

03:00 obviously Kennedy Carter was out of line,

03:02 but it's not the,

03:03 I mean, some of the things we've seen,

03:04 some of the reactions that we've seen to that play

03:07 have been absolutely hysterical,

03:09 including the editorial in the Chicago Tribune.

03:13 That was ridiculous to say that that would have been

03:19 beyond objectionable on the street,

03:22 as opposed to on a playing surface.

03:24 It was a problem.

03:25 It shouldn't have happened.

03:27 It certainly was at least a flagrant one foul.

03:30 And the real problem with that, again,

03:34 begins with the league, which is its game officials.

03:37 If they missed it, Mike, I could live with that.

03:39 You miss things, especially it was transacted in a period

03:43 where there wasn't any real basketball activity going on.

03:46 So it would be understandable if they were looking elsewhere

03:49 but they saw it enough to call a foul.

03:51 And they didn't call it a flagrant foul.

03:53 How is it not a flagrant foul?

03:55 It has nothing to do with the game.

03:57 It had nothing to do with the ball

03:59 or the pursuit of the ball or any of that.

04:01 So it's definitely a flagrant foul, A,

04:04 and they saw enough of it to call it a foul.

04:07 And then they didn't review it to assure

04:09 that it wasn't a flagrant foul, which of course it was.

04:12 The only good thing that came out of that

04:15 was that it didn't affect the outcome of the game.

04:18 As we saw in the Boston Pacers series

04:21 a week and a half ago or so,

04:24 when Jalen Brown clearly committed a flagrant foul

04:27 against TJ McConnell and the officials

04:29 didn't call it a flagrant live

04:31 and then checked and didn't call it.

04:32 That was bad and it did affect the outcome of the game.

04:35 At least this didn't.

04:36 But it starts with the league.

04:39 It goes to the game officials.

04:41 I do have a problem with how Kaitlyn Clark

04:44 is being treated by fellow players,

04:46 but it's not all physical.

04:48 Some of it's verbal as well.

04:50 This idea that they have to chop her down.

04:53 Look, you can do whatever you want to do.

04:56 It's your league.

04:57 But if you want your league to grow,

04:59 and you know what happens when the league grows, Mike?

05:02 The money grows.

05:03 If you want to make more money,

05:05 then you embrace her entry into the league.

05:08 And I'm not saying you let her,

05:09 here, take an open shot, Kaitlyn.

05:10 It's not about that.

05:12 But you don't have to cheap shot her

05:14 and take pot shots at her verbally as well.

05:16 - That's the part to me, Mike, that I can't grasp.

05:21 And listen, I'm not gonna sit here

05:22 and try to tell anybody that I've been watching

05:24 a ton of WNBA games over the last 20 years

05:27 since the league's been born.

05:28 I have not.

05:29 Have I watched a few in the last month

05:32 since Kaitlyn Clark started playing in it?

05:34 Yeah, I have.

05:35 And I think there's probably a lot of people like me, Mike,

05:38 that are in that situation.

05:39 And let me say that.

05:40 Here's what I can't figure out the most.

05:42 Why is everyone in that league, not everyone,

05:45 why are a lot of players in that league,

05:47 at the root of it, Mike,

05:48 so upset that this girl is bringing notoriety, money.

05:53 I mean, it's not just her that got them the charter flights.

05:56 They should have had that probably a long time ago,

05:59 but I'm sure it helped that she was coming into the league.

06:01 But there is so much to gain, Mike.

06:04 And it seems like a lot of girls are unhappy about it.

06:07 That doesn't make any sense to me.

06:10 It's the same thing that I wrote about back in February

06:12 we were seeing reflected in the college game

06:14 when she was elevating the audience for the college game.

06:17 And let's not forget here,

06:19 a couple of years ago,

06:21 before Kaitlyn Clark made the final four,

06:23 they were happy if they got a 5 million audience

06:26 for the championship game of the women's final four.

06:29 They were happy.

06:30 5 million, okay, that's a good number.

06:32 That's what they were looking for.

06:33 When Kaitlyn Clark played in it last year

06:35 against Angel Reese and LSU, they got 10 million.

06:40 And when they played, and she played it this year

06:43 against Camila Cardoso and South Carolina,

06:46 they got 18 million.

06:48 That's three times the audience.

06:50 If that's what's out there,

06:52 look, you don't try to get mad because,

06:55 oh, why weren't you watching us all along?

06:57 Hey, the audience wasn't.

06:59 You can't explain a phenomenon, Mike.

07:02 Why were the NBA finals of the 1970s on tape delay?

07:07 They just were, the audience wasn't there.

07:10 Magic and Bird come along, all of a sudden,

07:13 it's magical and everybody's watching.

07:15 It's just sometimes that's how it works.

07:19 Joe Namath comes along in 1969,

07:22 and the NFL goes from a very watchable league,

07:26 a lot of fans, to the most powerful sports entity

07:30 in the world.

07:32 All of that happens because a certain player

07:35 at a certain moment draws people in

07:38 and enough of those people stick around

07:41 that everybody's boat is elevated.

07:44 Right now for the WNBA, that person is Kaitlyn Clark.

07:48 Don't try to explain why everybody wants to watch her play.

07:52 I put in my column today,

07:54 look, Sarah McLachlan is a magnificent musician.

07:57 She's a musical genius.

07:59 I've seen her in concerts, she's fabulous.

08:01 I've had her records, she's tremendous.

08:03 Taylor Swift is a musical genius, she's fabulous.

08:07 But when Sarah McLachlan goes on the road,

08:12 she's playing 5,000 seat arenas and packing them.

08:16 When Taylor Swift comes to town,

08:18 she's back to back on stadium nights selling 80,000 tickets.

08:23 It's just how it is.

08:24 So you embrace it and then everybody gets wealthier

08:28 as a result, that's not happening in the WNBA.

08:31 No one at any level in that league

08:34 is embracing what she can do for them.

08:36 - You're right about that.

08:39 And they are everywhere now.

08:40 - I don't mean, I mean there are people

08:42 at every level of the league.

08:43 I don't mean that no one is,

08:44 but every level of league has people that aren't.

08:47 (upbeat music)

08:50 [Music]

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