WNBA great claims narratives around Caitlin Clark are 'insulting'

WNBA legend Sue Bird has claimed narratives around Caitlin Clark are “insulting” on Megan Rapinoe’s A Touch More podcast. Bird didn’t hold back in her criticism of how Clark has been spoken about during her rookie year.

Bird blamed “trolls” on social media for continually bringing up Clark negatively, creating a circus around the Indiana Fever guard.

Bird pointed the finger at Diana Taurasi for claiming the “reality was coming” for Clark before her rookie season even began.

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The 13-time WNBA All-Star continued her unabashed criticism by claiming, “Once Diana's comments went viral, it led to the Twitter trolls and bots taking over,” before adding, “And what started there was this narrative of petty, jealous players hating on Caitlin.”

Bird then suggests this maelstrom of media around Clark forced opposing players to “dislike” her, and that some were even “hating on her”.

Throughout Clark’s rookie season, members of the media were quick to suggest opponents were targeting her physically, something Bird claims wasn’t true, saying, “Not at any point did I think anybody was playing dirty against Caitlin.”

Despite Bird’s opinion that Clark wasn’t targeted, her presence as the new face of the WNBA led to extraordinary media coverage, which created, “petty, jealous narratives.”

Bird believes media narratives were way off base surrounding Clark, telling Megan Rapinoe, “people saw people blocking Caitlin's shot or picking her up full court, it then became 'Oh, they're targeting her. Oh, they're trying to hurt her.' I cannot stress enough how insulting that is.”

There is no doubt opponents attempted to shut down Clark on the court, even Bird agrees with that, but the reasoning wasn’t due to anything other than trying to win the game, as Bird says, “people were up in arms about Caitlin getting picked up full court ... it was like, well, you have to. If you don't, she's going to drop 35 on you,” calling the decision to do so, “smart defense.”

Clark’s presence in the WNBA has brought millions of new eyeballs to the league and led to vastly more media coverage than in previous years, often causing narratives to form out of nowhere at times. Overall, this is probably a good thing for women’s basketball, but it may take some time for media coverage to level out around Clark given her superstardom.

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