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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