The 2025 WNBA season was supposed to be a celebration—a new draft class, record-breaking ticket sales, and a league finally basking in mainstream attention. But as the confetti from draft night settled, a different kind of electricity crackled through the air. It wasn’t just excitement. It was tension. It was rivalry. And at the center of it all, like a lightning rod, stood Caitlin Clark.
Clark had barely caught her breath from a rookie season that turned the basketball world upside down. She’d shattered records, packed arenas, and dragged the Indiana Fever into national relevance. Yet, the moment the season ended, the noise started. Not the applause—though there was plenty of that—but the sniping, the jabs, the subtle shots from rookies and veterans alike.
The 2025 draft delivered a fresh batch of talent—confident, social-media savvy, and unafraid to speak their minds. Among them was Haley Van Lith, Chicago Sky’s newest guard, who wasted no time stirring the pot. In a viral “start, bench, cut” interview, Van Lith left Clark off her “start” list—a bold move, considering Clark had dropped 40-point games on her in college.
For some, it was playful. For others, it was reckless. But for Clark, it was fuel.
She’d seen this pattern before: hype, hate, domination. Every time someone tried to diminish her, she responded not with words, but with performances that left scoreboards smoking. The league, it seemed, hadn’t learned.
The media fanned the flames. Clips of Van Lith’s comments ricocheted across social platforms, with fans and analysts dissecting every syllable. Old-school WNBA fans grumbled about the “new era,” while younger fans relished the drama. Rivalries, after all, were good for business—and the WNBA was booming.
But this wasn’t just about one rookie’s comments. It was a generational clash. The old guard—players who’d spent a decade grinding for every bit of recognition—watched as Clark and her peers sold out arenas and drove up salaries. Some welcomed the change. Others bristled, their own legacies suddenly overshadowed by the new wave.
Meanwhile, Paige Bueckers, another college phenom yet to play a pro minute, was already drawing fire from critics and fans alike. The message was clear: in this league, nothing is given. Everything is earned.
Clark felt the pressure, but she wore it like armor. She heard the chatter—about her “marketability,” about her “privilege,” about whether she was “ruining” the game with her popularity. She ignored it all. While the world argued, she was in the gym, working.
Her offseason was silent but surgical. Under new head coach Stephanie White, Clark focused on her weaknesses: building core strength, diversifying her finishing, developing a lethal mid-range game. White saw what many missed—Clark wasn’t just a shooter; she was a basketball genius, capable of orchestrating an offense and elevating everyone around her.
The plan was simple: make Clark unpredictable. Use her off the ball, let her slip screens, force defenses to guess. A multi-dimensional Clark wasn’t just a star—she was a nightmare.
But as Clark’s game evolved, so did the business. The Dallas Wings moved their home game against Indiana into an NBA arena—20,000 seats, sold out in minutes. Ticket prices soared into the thousands, and while some fans grumbled about the cost, most recognized it for what it was: proof that women’s basketball had arrived.
Yet, with growth came growing pains. Longtime fans complained about rising prices, about “bandwagon” supporters, about the league changing too quickly. The cognitive dissonance was palpable—demand growth, then curse its symptoms. But Clark and her cohort weren’t apologizing for it. They were the reason the league was thriving, and they knew it.
### The Calm Before the Storm
As opening night approached, the Fever’s locker room buzzed with anticipation. Clark was quiet, focused. Her teammates noticed a difference—not just in her physique, but in her demeanor. The chip on her shoulder had grown, but so had her resolve.
“Let them talk,” she told her teammates. “We’ll answer on the court.”
Game one: Indiana vs. Chicago. Clark vs. Van Lith. The storylines wrote themselves. Reporters packed the arena, cameras swarmed the tunnel, and social media braced for fireworks.
The ball tipped, and Clark went to work. She didn’t jaw at opponents. She didn’t taunt the crowd. She just played—harder, faster, smarter than ever. She slipped screens, hit logo threes, threaded passes through impossible angles. Every time Van Lith tried to check her, Clark responded with a bucket or a dime.
By halftime, Clark had 22 points and 7 assists. By the fourth quarter, the Fever led by double digits. The box score was ridiculous: 40 points, 12 assists, 8 rebounds—two boards shy of a 40-point triple-double. The crowd roared, the internet melted, and Van Lith, humbled, could only watch.
But it wasn’t just about the numbers. It was about dominance. Clark didn’t celebrate with chest thumps or trash talk. She walked off the court with a simple nod, her expression unreadable. The message was clear: if you come at the queen, you best not miss.
The chaos didn’t end with the buzzer. Pundits debated whether the league was “too focused” on Clark, whether rivalries were good or bad, whether the old guard was being left behind. But the only voices that mattered were the ones in the locker rooms and on the hardwood.
Clark’s teammates, once skeptical, now believed. Her coaches marveled at her growth. Even her rivals, grudgingly, admitted her greatness. The league, for all its drama, was better for it.
Meanwhile, Paige Bueckers watched from afar, knowing her time would come. The cycle would repeat—hype, hate, domination. But that was the price of progress.
The chaos surrounding Caitlin Clark wasn’t about disrespect. It was about change. The WNBA was evolving, and evolution is never smooth. The rivalries, the debates, the sold-out arenas and viral moments—they were all signs of a league in motion.
Clark didn’t just survive the chaos. She thrived in it. Every slight, every snub, every “start, bench, cut” list was fuel. And as the season unfolded, one thing became clear: you could target Caitlin Clark, but you couldn’t stop her. Not now. Not ever.
Because in the end, it wasn’t chaos. It was history—and Clark was writing every word.
Fox News Declares Caitlin Clark the ‘Jackie Robinson of the WNBA’ After Hard Foul
Brian Fluharty/Getty
WNBA rookie sensation Caitlin Clark last week denounced the use of her name to inflame culture wars, calling those efforts by pundits and politicians “disappointing” and “unacceptable.”
But after Clark was flagrantly fouled by her college rival Angel Reese on Sunday, Fox News and right-wing media blatantly ignored the Indiana Fever star’s pleas and continued to fuel the outrage flames surrounding the 22-year-old guard.
“This is the Jackie Robinson of the WNBA,” Fox News contributor David Webb exclaimed on Sunday night. “She is getting abused!”
Webb’s comparison of Clark to the man who broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier in the 1940s briefly left his Big Weekend Show co-host Tom Shillue a bit tongue-tied, though Shillue did eventually agree that Clark has become a “target” for the WNBA’s other players.
Fox & Friends, also got in on the action on Monday morning. The flagship morning show’s hosts expressed dismay that Reese defended the hard foul as “a basketball play” and suggested that Clark was getting special treatment from the referees.
“That is worse than a regular foul?” Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt wondered after airing a clip of the play, which featured Reese hitting Clark in the head after swiping at the ball.
“The worst ever without being arrested,” co-host Brian Kilmeade responded, prompting a laughing Lawrence Jones to note that the refs “didn’t kick her out” of the game.
“Not yet!” Kilmeade reacted, adding: “We’re covering it because we like it. We like controversy!”
Reese and Clark have been engaged in a yearslong heated rivalry dating back to their on-court meetings in the NCAA tournament. Reese was immediately pilloried by conservative media outlets over the hard foul.
The Daily Caller blared in a headline that Clark nearly got her “head taken off after a classless whack from Angel Reese.” Far-right sports commentator Jason Whitlock groused about Reese’s contention that the foul wasn’t flagrant, claiming she is “delusional” and “always a victim.”
Right-wing sports site OutKick, which is owned by Fox News’ parent company, published a piece raging about former NFL quarterback and current ESPN analyst Robert Griffin III’s claim that Reese and Clark “are being used in a race war that is not fair to either athlete or the game of basketball.”
“There are some people intent on turning the situation between Clark and Reese into something it’s not. Claiming there’s a ‘race war’ is absolutely nuts and not true,” OutKick’s David Hookstead wrote. “People don’t dislike Angel Reese because she’s black and people don’t love Caitlin Clark because she’s white. Some fans dislike Reese because they think she’s a sore loser and a dirty player.”
It would appear that Hookstead was unaware that his own boss is one of the “people intent on turning the situation” into one about race.
During a Monday morning appearance on Fox News’ America’s Newsroom, OutKick founder Clay Travis asserted that Reese was making “an impossible argument” by suggesting she was unfairly called for a flagrant foul.
“This is the argument I’ve been making for several weeks now, the Fever need to get an enforcer to protect Caitlin Clark because she’s getting wrecked. And it doesn’t seem to me like anyone on her team is out there providing the body, the support, the protection that sometimes you need when you have a young talent that is getting treated unfairly.”
He continued: “I think there are lots of reasons for that unfairness, and everybody has their opinions. But I think certainly that, in my opinion, it is jealousy. I think it’s race. I think it’s sexual orientation.”
Indeed, Travis has been banging the drum for weeks now about how Clark has been targeted for being a white player in a predominantly Black league.
“Caitlin Clark is a white, heterosexual woman in a Black, lesbian league and they resent and are jealous of all of the attention and the shoe deal that she got,” Travis told Sean Hannity earlier this month. “They don’t like her because she’s white and they don’t like her because she’s straight. And as a result, the league is coming undone around her even though she’s bringing new fans.”
Invoking the conservative media’s ongoing outrage over trans athletes, Travis has also implored the Fever to sign a man to “wreck bitches” who get physical with Clark. “Go find Dennis Rodman, put him in a wig, he would make several million dollars,” he proclaimed on his podcast. “It would be very brave, he could keep his dick, no need to chop it off. Just put him in a sports bra, he could run around and just wreck chicks like he used to do protecting Michael Jordan.”
While Travis is now singing Clark’s praises and demanding she be protected at all costs, it wasn’t that long ago when he said she should count herself lucky to get any salary because “nobody cares” about women’s basketball. “Caitlin Clark could not start on a top state champion high school boys team,” he insisted this past March.
As for Webb comparing Clark to Jackie Robinson, he somehow isn’t the first to make the connection. A quick review of X (formerly Twitter) shows that this particularly hot take has been going strong since Clark was the recipient of a hard foul earlier this season from Reese’s Chicago Sky teammate Chennedy Carter.
The culture wars surrounding Clark will only continue to simmer this summer. GOP lawmakers and former Republican presidential candidates have already called for investigations into why Clark was left off the Olympic team, and have pushed the WNBA to discipline Carter for knocking Clark down.
