Tag Archives: Caitlin Clark

New school & old school

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Preface: This is a continuation of previously published essay– WNBA mediocrity

I’ve used these terms a lot when discussing basketball without fully defining them. Old school is Red Auerbach. This means the coach/GM runs the organization and is considered the most important person. In old school, no player is above the coach or management. What they say goes, and players who complain or object are benched and/or traded away. Old school was too rigid & deeply unfair to the players, especially star players before free agency. The best players never had any leverage in salary negotiations, and that had to change– hence new school.

New school begins with free agency in any sport, and in basketball it really started with Michael Jordan who was the first player to be above his team because he was so, so great. The Chicago Bulls stunk when Michael Jordan was drafted in 1984, and he immediately made the Bulls the league’s hottest attraction. His Air Jordan shoe deal with Nike and the phenomenon it spawned made Michael Jordan the most popular athlete on the planet. That was the ESPN/cable-TV era of sports, pre-internet.

When I write that Michael Jordan was new school, it doesn’t mean he didn’t have any old school in him. Michael was a team player, who valued winning first, which are old school attributes. New school emphasizes self promotion & getting paid as the priority. Michael Jordan wanted to get paid, so he invented new school to take care of himself. In a pre-sneaker deal era, Michael Jordan would have been reduced to just being the best player, without him being the cultural icon he became in the 1980’s & beyond. It’s a combination of being ready to meet the moment, and society being ready for someone like Michael Jordan in the NBA.

New school means you have your own voice in the media. Media is defined as corporate outlets & social media. All professional athletes have a social media profile and manage it seriously. It’s how they speak directly to their fans & critics. It’s how they express their displeasure with the head coach over minutes, shots, and usage. There is no going back to old school on that.

The best athletes in any sport are the ones who maintain a healthy combination of old school & new school. You need to be able to express yourself publicly, but you also have to look yourself in the mirror first. If you aren’t putting in the work and your performance isn’t meeting expectations, then it’s best to shut up and get to work. This means going back to an old school mentality by listening to the coaches, accepting criticism, taking responsibility, etc. It’s taking an attitude that no one is bigger than the team or the game.

In the old school NBA days, if a ‘star player’ underperformed and started being a crybaby to the sports writers, a team enforcer would find a moment alone in the locker room to set that problem straight. Players simply weren’t allowed to throw a coach or a team under the bus without violent repercussions. With hazing now frowned upon in locker rooms (new school), these issues get handled differently today– for better or worse. The worse is when team drama gets dragged out because no one wants to have an uncomfortable discussion. Too many overpaid snowflakes being enabled is a new school issue.

The WNBA is all about drama. It’s just as much a soap opera as an athletic competition these days. This is different from all other sports leagues that have risen to prominence. The NFL, MLB & NBA all have drama going on behind the scenes, but the game remains the main attraction for the fans. In the WNBA, drama over Caitlin Clark dominates their daily narratives. More people know about that, than the defending WNBA champs. The primary narrative & financial driver for the WNBA is an unremarkable player named Caitlin Clark, and it represents new school at its worst.

Whatever temporary boost her popularity gives the league, in the long run the WNBA will be worse off for hyping Caitlin Clark as a great player. The issue here is all the basketball fans who recognize this garbage and call it out. The WNBA isn’t getting those fans back any time soon. What the WNBA has done with Caitlin C;lark is fundamentally disrespectful to the game, prioritizing hype over performance.

Up until Caitlin Clark came into the league in 2024, the WNBA was solid growing. Ownership embraced Caitlin Clark because she has caused franchise values to skyrocket. The Golden State Valkyries, a second year WNBA expansion franchise is now valued at $1B. The average WNBA franchise value is $460M according to Google. Ten years ago there wasn’t a single WNBA team that could get $100M in valuation.

The WNBA is a financial bubble, with insanely overestimated franchise values, and Caitlin Clark has been a tool for that. The WNBA needed a ‘great white hope’ and so they manufactured one in her. The element of racism that underlies all this is the elephant-in-the-room that can’t be discussed in the corporate media. It’s too uncomfortable.

Meanwhile, WNBA critics are labeled misogynist, racist or whatever semantic inversion they prefer in order to silence any discussion on the matter. The WNBA owners are the ones profiting from this hype, and when Caitlin Clark finally crashes, it will be perceived by them as the fault of those who correctly analyzed this from the start. Because myself (& others) have been critical we’re all slandered as ‘woman haters’, as that’s easier to understand than all the facts & issues involved. That’s NIL new school.

Thu 04 Jun 2026 10:00 AM CDT

Update: It’s been reported that the Indiana Fever revoked the press credentials for Scott Agness, the reporter who broke the story of Caitlin Clark not playing due to a sudden “back injury” on May 20. The team violated league rules by not reporting it on time, and was reprimanded by the WNBA for it as her unavailability was announced just before tip-off. All professional sports leagues take this seriously because of the wagering going on. Tanking (new school strategy) wasn’t the issue here. The Indiana Fever organization claims Scott Agness had his team credentials revoked for spreading “inaccurate and unsubstantiated information,” by referring to load management as the reason for the unavailability. What’s actually going on here is blatant retribution by snowflakes for reporting the truth, which isn’t popular with corporate institutions & their concocted narratives.

Along with this is a new article in the Athletic that is critical of Caitlin Clark’s defense, referring to her as a “sitting duck during hunting season.” None of this is untrue, yet the Indiana Fever and Caitlin Clark fans are (again) in a tizzy over this. It’s been branded a “hit piece” by Caitlin Clark supporters, when the fact is she is a poor defender and a liability to her team for it. The flak from her adoring sycophants is the head coach has the wrong scheme, and isn’t protecting her on the court as she should, etc. This comes mostly from people with money & influence who aren’t experienced enough to coach a JV basketball team, yet insist know best. Ball players counter that if she stinks on defense, that’s her fault and when her coaches call her out Caitlin Clark throws tantrums instead of sucking it up and improving her effort.

Fact: The WNBA still doesn’t make a profit, with annual revenues of only $300M and operating costs being much higher. Now that the CBA has been settled, franchise valuations are what matter most to the league. The hype over Caitlin Clark, and the extreme sensitivity over any criticism of her performance is part of this. The ‘chosen one’ has to be protected (enabled) to maintain these wildly inflated WNBA franchise values. That’s the source of all this media hysteria.

This is nothing more than new school nonsense taking over the game, in which performance doesn’t matter so much, as there’s always an excuse to protect its top attraction. If the Indiana Fever don’t do everything in their power to deflect criticism of Caitlin Clark, then her head coach will be fired, other players will be traded, or perhaps Clark will finally demand a trade. She has all that leverage, simply by being in the right place at the right time. Those are the new school rules in play, and it rubs many in the game the wrong way. Old school would involve what’s been discussed above, and apparently Caitlin Clark isn’t interested in that. This is just the latest dramatic episode in As the WNBA World Turns. It won’t be long before this tired act gets tuned out, which spells big trouble for the WNBA. That’s the Faustian bargain they’ve made which will eventually come home to roost.

To use a NFL analogy sports fans can appreciate, if you are Ryan Leaf instead of Peyton Manning, fans will learn the difference– sooner or later. That may feel extremely harsh to Caitlin Clark, but it’s much closer to the truth than the narratives being floated through the corporate media and onto social media. All this protective enabling isn’t doing Caitlin Clark, the Indiana Fever, or the WNBA any good. The sugar high of inflated franchise values will eventually turn into diabetes of the WNBA, meaning it will cost the league much more than it has gained. This lying & racist ‘great white hope’ campaign is hurting the league’s credibility.

Old school means you work for your rewards, making them sweeter when they are finally achieved. And if you fall short, at least you gave it your best. New school is demanding the reward up front, then deciding if you want to put in the work or not. It’s turned the WNBA into an exercise in projections & speculation. Caitlin Clark isn’t measured by her performance, she’s measured in futures. Like the derivatives market in finance & investing, all the money thrown at her is about image & what bettors believe her future will bring. To honestly assess that, one needs to objectively look at her current professional track record which isn’t favorable. With these examples drawn out in ~1,800 words, lies the difference between old school & new school.

Post script: Defense is half the game. That’s actually an understatement of fact. Good defense leads to easy offense, while bad defense gives easy offense to the opponent. One energizes and the other demoralizes. Defense wins championships. Everyone in basketball knows this. All your teammates & coaches care about is are you an asset or liability on the floor? If you give up too many easy looks & baskets then you are a negative on +/- player rating. That’s a losing player. People who try to spin the truth on basketball don’t discuss defense seriously. For more on old school defense, read this.  For new school defense, read here.

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WNBA mediocrity

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The expansion franchise Portland Fire are currently the 5th seed, while the Toronto Tempo are currently the 7th seed in the WNBA standings. Second year franchise, the Golden State Valkyries are tied for the second-best record in the WNBA early in the 2026 season. Expansion teams, from the NBA, NFL, MLB, etc, are historically awful in their inception, so what explains this?

How about the fact that the WNBA really isn’t that good? The WNBA talent level is a mediocre mish-mash across the board, which allows expansion teams with rosters that are only a few months old to be competitive at the highest level of women’s professional basketball. Sad, but true. Remember there was a WNBA labor impasse due to the protracted CBA negotiations this past winter, so the WNBA expansion draft wasn’t held until April 3. These expansion teams have been together for less than two months, and yet the Portland Fire just rolled the Indiana Fever with Caitlin Clark. That’s not supposed to happen, as it creates an uncomfortable narrative for the WNBA.

While the Indiana Fever were getting pounded on CBS, real basketball fans were watching the Spurs-Thunder Western Conference finals, game 7 on NBC. The Portland Fire-Indiana Fever WNBA game was a sellout with 19,347 people at the Moda Center. Not one person in attendance at the Moda Center can claim to be a real basketball fan because if they were, they would have been watching the Spurs-Thunder game. It’s about respect for the game of basketball, as the Spurs-Thunder is as good as it gets, making it “must see.”

This leads to an important discovery concerning the WNBA– the quality of basketball doesn’t matter because the WNBA isn’t about basketball. The WNBA is about money, hype & promoting its feminist/DEI agenda. Caitlin Clark is the poster-girl for the WNBA bubble that has sent franchise values skyrocketing. The WNBA is all over TV at this point, replacing MLB & NASCAR which have largely gone to paid subscription & Amazon Prime, etc.

During breaks in the Spurs-Thunder game (and there were quite a few), I switched to the Fire-Fever WNBA match-up. When I watch Caitlin Clark play I think to myself, “This girl is not committed defensively, turns the ball over too much, and doesn’t help her team on the boards. She doesn’t connect with her teammates, who are probably jealous of her promotional earnings and frustrated with her inability to be a leader and help them win. She’s weak in her core & upper body, which probably accounts for her re-occurring back problems that have limited her games played & production in her 2+ years in the league. She’s also slow afoot with poorly-developed legs. If she doesn’t dedicate herself to getting stronger and more ‘basketball fit’, she’ll never be a great player. Caitlin Clark is still basically the same player she was when she came into the league in 2024, which is a red flag. I think she cares more about promoting herself than being a great basketball player.”

That’s my capsule scouting report on Caitlin Clark, and if I can see this, then surely management and the Fever coaching staff know this too. The problem is they can’t say it. Caitlin Clark isn’t even the best player on her team. Aliyah Boston is the best Indiana Fever player, or else it’s Kelsey Mitchell. This is a problem for the Fever because the face of the league can’t be your third-best player on a mediocre team, but that’s Caitlin Clark & the Indiana Fever.

Normally, if a star player in the NBA is under performing on a bad team, he gets traded. But in the WNBA, the Indiana Fever have ‘the chosen one’ in Caitlin Clark, who by herself has taken the league to new heights in popularity, largely based on white racism & corporate hype. It comes down to ownership priority, do the Indiana Fever want to win– or make money? It’s an easy choice, all they have to do is keep Caitlin Clark and they will continue to make money. If the Fever trade Caitlin Clark, they might get better but they will lose financially, and making money is the name of the WNBA game.

Inconvenient fact: the WNBA is 70% black, but 8 of the top 10 “most promotable” WNBA players are white. What explains that?

Caitlin Clark has parlayed an outstanding NCAA career at the University of Iowa into promotional gold, and it’s largely because she’s white. Everyone knows this, but no one is allowed to say it publicly. If you’ve noticed, WNBA crowds are mostly upper-middle class whites. There is a strong element of voyeurism in every WNBA crowd. Fans aren’t there for the quality of basketball, otherwise they would be watching the Spurs-Thunder, they are there to dream about themselves and their kids being on the court, making WNBA money, etc…

It starts with NIL deals in high school, then a NCAA scholarship to a Power 4 conference school, and then the WNBA. It’s so easy these days, and there is so much expansion going on now that you don’t have to be that good to play in the WNBA. It’s all there right in front of the fans to dream about, and that’s what they are doing most of the game, as they certainly aren’t watching these games critically.

Feminist, black racialist, and lesbian narratives rule the WNBA. There is a large segment of the sports-watching population that is hostile to the WNBA for this Democratic Party politicking that has infiltrated the women’s game. Support for the WNBA is strong, but the backlash is perhaps stronger. People watch sports to forget about politics, and yet the WNBA throws it in everyone’s face over & over. And when Caitlin Clark doesn’t live up to the hype, it’s always someone else’s fault, etc. The apologetics in her name are embarrassing.

This type of enabling is the opposite of compelling sport. It makes sports lovers cynical to the point where they change the channel in disgust, because none of this is real, much less good. To a certain degree, the WNBA has boxed itself in with its success. It can’t deliver on what it is promising. The league is mediocre, as regular season winners (see the 2025 Minnesota Lynx) are often eliminated early in the playoffs, while expansion teams are immediately competitive, revealing the flaky nature of success in women’s professional basketball.

Conclusion: A’ja Wilson is the undisputed best player in the WNBA, and her Las Vegas Aces are the dominate team of this era. But who are the new players that will transform the WNBA? They aren’t Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese or Paige Bueckers who all fall into a level of mediocrity that defines the current WNBA. NCAA glory doesn’t always translate into professional success as today’s game is physically demanding and has more foreign players than ever. The heavily-favored US women’s Olympic team was lucky to beat France in the finals at Paris 2024, so I no longer buy the ‘American superpower theory’ in women’s hoops.

Caitlin Clark dominated at Iowa largely because women’s NCAA hoops is still thin compared to the men. When facing consistently tougher professional competition, Caitlin Clark’s limitations are revealed, so I don’t blame her for doing so many promotions. It’s easy money compared to competing against better players. Anyone would take it. It’s those who are offering her all that money who are to blame. The root WNBA problem is that its most promoted players aren’t close to being their best players. It’s all being done for the wrong reasons and this level of enabling is new in sports. How long this lasts and how the WNBA will evolve remain very open to question.

Final game notes: The game of basketball is about respect. Michael Jordan always said he considered Madison Square Garden to be the “Mecca of Basketball” because that crowd appreciates greatness & can spot a phony. The true performers will rise to the occasion on the biggest stage, so to say. In contrast, during the Spurs-Thunder game 7, All-Star Chet Holmgren looked like he wanted no part of MSG as he was on the bench as the OKC Thunder season ended. That’s what Wemby did to him. Everyone in basketball respects that, and is excited for the Spurs-Knicks finals.

As mentioned above, the only difference-maker in today’s WNBA is A’ja Wilson. For perspective, in an all-time WNBA draft it’s either her or a young Cheryl Miller at #1. Without A’ja Wilson, France would have won gold at Paris 2024. The rest of the WNBA is a group of players with differing levels of ability, but none are difference-makers. That’s the overall mediocrity of the WNBA that allows one player to dominate.

As for Caitlin Clark, if you are overrated & overpaid this hurts your team because respect at the professional level is (more than ever) measured in dollars– salary & endorsements. The hysterical (and all-too-easy) solution for the Indiana Fever is to fire their head coach in order to protect the underperforming “star player.” This allows a temporary reset, but doesn’t fix the underlying problem, which is Caitlin Clark’s performance & commitment to the game, teammates & organization. Her commitments to be the face of the WNBA are clearly more than she can handle.

Steve Alford is Caitlin Clark’s best historical comparable in the men’s game. All-American under Bobby Knight at Indiana University when the Hoosiers won the NCAA tournament in 1987, Steve Alford didn’t have the physique or game to be a successful NBA player.

Caitlin Clark needs to publicly admit that she is currently the third-best player on her team. This would help take the pressure off her head coach and earn some trust from her teammates by taking responsibility for not being the player she has been hyped to be. I believe Caitlin Clark can be a helpful piece on a championship WNBA team because shooters are always needed, but she isn’t a team leader or primary option. She doesn’t have that game.

This essay has been a critical analysis of the WNBA, something that has been sorely lacking in the corporate media. Most critics of the WNBA simply hate on it. My critical approach is that of a recreational basketball player who respects the game and can differentiate good play from poor. You have to base every critical judgment on performance & numbers. What are you doing to help your team win? What aren’t you doing that you need to be doing, etc? True leaders are accountable in all situations. Too many people running the WNBA don’t want to be accountable, they just want to be paid.

Handling the media is a component every modern professional athlete must deal with. As the saying goes, “It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you place the blame.” Throwing coaches under the bus is what players do in the modern NBA. Kyrie Irving, James Harden, Ben Simmons come to mind as legendary coach killers. Old school NEVER allowed that, but this is new school. Shoot the 3, and if it doesn’t go in, then complain about the coach not using you correctly, etc. Players in all leagues are paid much more now, and thus the head coach has to regularly take bullets for his players in the media to stay solid with them. It’s part of the job, and for which the coach will eventually be fired. In this NIL era, talent & marketability rules the game.

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WNBA CBA issues coming this fall

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The WNBA is now a speculative bubble, and the only way players can significantly increase their salaries is to take ownership of the league for themselves. Expansion fees are now so high that owners won’t agree to any significant payroll increases during the next CBA negotiations starting this October. WNBA expansion fees for the newest franchises in Cleveland, Detroit, and Philadelphia were $250 million each, compared to $50 million paid by the Golden State Valkyries who began play this season.

How can the new owners in Cleveland, Detroit, and Philadelphia afford payroll increases with a $250 million entry fee? They can’t. Therefore that franchise value must go to the players who create the league value, otherwise the disparity between ownership revenues and players’ salaries will become highly contentious, threatening a destructive labor stoppage. The NFL, MLB & NBA have all experienced work stoppages in the past which hurt their leagues. At this crucial point in its development, the WNBA can ill-afford one itself, yet that is where it is heading.

WNBA franchise valuations have ballooned, with the average team value jumping from $96 million in 2024 to $269 million in 2025, according to GoLocalProv, a 280% increase in value in just one year [!]. The jump in WNBA valuation is entirely attributable to irrational exuberance & TV money, as the WNBA has secured a new media rights deal worth $2.2 billion over 11 years.

Caitlin Clark (2025 averages: 16.5 pts, 5.0 reb, 8.8 asst, 1.6 stl), personifies the irrational exuberance, as she has become the face of the league. Caitlin Clark adds value to the WNBA because: 1) she’s a transformative basketball player, and 2) she’s white– not necessarily in that order. The racialist aspect of this is not a good sign for the WNBA. Note that this is not Caitlin Clark’s fault, it’s the fault of ESPN and the media executives who encourage this.

WNBA minimum salary for players with 0-2 years of experience is $66,079, while players with 3+ years of experience have a minimum salary of $78,831 for the 2025 season. The highest-paid players can earn the super maximum salary, which is currently around $241,984, according to ESPN. The players naturally want a bigger piece of the pie as the league grows, but it is likely that the WNBA has already had its biggest growth spurt. It’s impossible to keep growing at a rate of 280% per year. The only other industry that does that is crypto.

So what the WNBA players face is a political choice of insisting on owning their league, or being salary-stunted by traditional ownership. “Pay us what you owe us” is an empty protest that will fall on deaf ears, as owners want to make money, and with such a high WNBA start-up cost the only way to do that is for owners to keep players’ salaries depressed. The only fair solution is for the players to become owners in the franchises they play for, as that’s where the money is.

But instead, the WNBA players have taken up a protest campaign, which may rally some support initially, but history shows that when the CBA negotiations come around, fans won’t be so sympathetic. Sports is entertainment, nothing more, and if these WNBA players strike over salaries that are already higher than what many fans make, they will be seen as greedy & selfish, just like the MLB players in 1994, the NFL players in 1987, etc.

When this much money is involved, it becomes a Marxist issue of worker control over production vs. exploitation. Instead of complaining about this unfairness, WNBA players need to take control of their game by becoming owners themselves, otherwise they will get cut out of the profits and be castigated by casual fans who view striking players as unappreciative of their privilege.

After all, sports is entertainment, and fans can turn off the TV and do/watch something else anytime they feel like it. What basketball players do isn’t essential, so the only way working people & youth (the vast majority of their fans) will get behind them is if they take a revolutionary stance at the next CBA– demonstrating actual leadership against ownership oppression. Any other position is acquiescence to the status quo, which inspires no one and is a losing proposition for the players.

NFLPA corruption: A serious lesson for the WNBA players

When it comes to representation in CBA negotiating, the WNBA players would be well advised to look at the current NFLPA situation where union representatives withheld evidence of ownership collusion from the players after QB Deshaun Watson signed a five-year, fully guaranteed $230 million contract in March 2022. Owners clearly colluded to suppress NFL player contracts after that deal and the players weren’t informed of this by their union representatives after evidence came to light in the courts. The NFLPA kept ownership collusion a secret from the NFL players for three years, until ESPN reporter Pablo Torre, broke the story a few weeks ago.

Union representatives who aren’t rank-and-file members, in any industry including the WNBA, are tools of management & ownership whose job is to keep labor in line and working for suppressed wages. These union representatives are nothing more than well-paid lackeys who collaborate with ownership to maintain their cushy jobs, salaries & benefits. This applies to teachers, auto & factory workers, municipal employees, etc.

This is why the emerging WNBA CBA is now a cutting edge sports issue. The WNBA’s new found success presents the current players with an opportunity to take control of their industry by representing themselves. For this they need to be a united fist of rank-and-file players, insisting on a fair stake in ownership, otherwise they will eventually be crushed by ownership duplicity with union/management collaboration.

These same issues apply to every industry globally, but they are more highlighted here because because sports gets so much media attention. WNBA players taking control of their negotiations and insisting on becoming the owners of the game they’ve created & built themselves is the key to a labor victory for the players. It is the only way to garner lasting public support for their cause without alienating their fans.

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