You might be wondering why in the world am I talking about the WNBA? I’ve never mentioned it here before and paid no attention to it at all since its inception in 1997. Well, this will shock you to know that I did pay attention to it during its first two years in existence in ’97 and 1998. I’ve rarely paid any mind to it since as the novelty wore off.

The main reason I even watched it in its first two seasons was being the ‘Sports Guy’ that I am, I consumed just about anything related to sports in my younger days. This being the time I was in middle school. I remember there being plenty of publicity at the time for a women’s professional basketball league. The 1996 summer olympics had finished in Atlanta, Georgia and the representatives for that women’s basketball team were going to be playing in a professional league starting in the summer of 1997.

For anyone that claims today that the league has never gotten the attention that it deserves, they are either blatantly lying or are completely clueless of how this league got its start.

As a potential fan, I grew out of the novelty of the league and it was really for one reason. I was bored. That doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate what women can do on the basketball court. If you’re entertained by 10 players who can’t dunk the ball, aren’t as fast or as athletic as every man playing in the NBA and struggle at times to complete basic layups, more power to you.

Basketball was the first sport I heavily consumed in my youth. Every woman who plays basketball professionally will most likely kick my butt. However, I do have a physical advantage that must be acknowledged. It doesn’t mean I will succeed, but that’s my one advantage. I’d rather watch men playing a particular sport than women. Again, it doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate what women can do in whatever sport they are playing. Anyone that puts in the time and effort it takes to excel in any sport I will give you maximum praise.

Since those early years of the WNBA’s existence, it has become apparent that this league has been nothing short of a tax write-off for the NBA. Fact of the matter is that the league has never turned a profit. The NBA has been financially backing the WNBA the entire time. And with that fact, it was nauseating to hear the players in the WNBA complaining about their salaries and comparing them to the NBA.

Basic economics tells you that if you have a reasonable profit margin, you reward your employees and in the case of every major sport league, you collectively bargain your salaries. It might surprise you to know that the average salary of a WNBA player in 2022 was $102,751. A six-figure salary for a woman playing 36 regular season games during the summer of ’22. The salary increased to $147,745 for the 2023 season.

That kind of salary is generational wealth for just about everyone and yet, a lot of the players were complaining about the likes of a LeBron James making $30-$40 million a season?

Again, the reason LeBron makes that kind of money playing the same game is because the NBA is profitable. The WNBA has never made a profit in its existence, but pays its players a salary that most folks will never have in their lifetime.

I mention all of that to preface what I’m about to discuss in the present day with the WNBA. You might have heard of a woman by the name of Caitlin Clark. I recently did a livestream where I talked about watching two women’s college basketball tournament games in their entirety. I had never done that before and the main reason I did is because I wanted to see the phenomenon that is Caitlin Clark.

She nearly won two consecutive championships at the University of Iowa, but lost in both national championship games. The publicity surrounding her at Iowa was on a national stage that propelled women’s basketball on a level that hadn’t been seen before.

With all of that notoriety and fame coming Caitlin’s way, you would have to be salivating if you were a higher up in the WNBA. The amount of attention, ticket sales, sponsorships and media coverage. This is going to be a profitable season in all likelihood.

I have my doubts with how the WNBA’s players have conducted themselves with the newfound attention they’ve found themselves in to start this season. The WNBA is known more for its political activism than its accomplishments on the court. And that’s the bed they wanted to lay in.

When the ‘Summer of Floyd’ had somewhat subsided in 2020, another person by the name of Jacob Blake, who had an outstanding warrant for third-degree sexual assault, trespassing and disorderly conduct against his baby mama. Decided to violate the terms of the restraining order against him and showed up to the mother of his children’s residence, take his children to his car and when police showed up because of him violating a restraining order and him having a warrant, he decided to grab a knife while police were attempting to detain him. He was shot as a result of that action in his vehicle while he put his own children in that volatile position.

The NBA and WNBA while playing in the bubble tournament in Orlando, Florida decided to protest and not play for Jacob Blake, despite the fact that it was known at the time that he was a wanted man and put his own children in harms way. That action by those two leagues was the last straw for me and I haven’t watched a single NBA game since. The WNBA and its players doubled and tripled down on their protest.

With just two examples that I’ve provided in context, the conclusion is rather simple with the WNBA leading up to the debut of Caitlin Clark. They’d rather be a victim constantly and play into a virtuous pursuit that it is always men who have kept us down and we don’t need men to be successful. A sort of ultra-feminist philosophy if you will. If that were the case, then why are women not attending your games in droves? Why aren’t women watching you play on television? Why would you be antagonistic towards half of the population? You immediately put yourself in an upward hill battle to get an audience by saying half of them are horrible people.

Now the impact of Caitlin Clark’s arrival has been felt immediately. Viewership is up in the games that her team, the Indiana Fever are playing in. When the Fever are playing on the road, ticket demand has forced some teams to host those games at larger venues. If you average just under 5,000 fans per game with only 18 home regular season games in a 36-game schedule, you damn well better put that home game in a larger venue.

Of course with all of this newfound attention paid to a league that no one cared about, you’re going to have a lot of resentment, envy, jealously and hatred towards that one player. Michael Jordan certainly had it when he entered the league. LeBron James did as well. Many others in the NBA have gone through something similar, but a lot of them prevailed by putting in the work on the court to change that opinion among their peers. That’s one way that Caitlin Clark will have to change that opinion among her peers. Win and win often. That will shut them up real quick.

Yet, with Clark this seems to be different in the sense that it isn’t just being more physical with her on the court. With what they are saying to the press with all of the added media attention, they legitimately want her to fail and they want her out.

Is it really as petty as she’s white? Racism is alive and well and it’s okay if it’s done to a white person. She’s a heterosexual and has a boyfriend. We can’t have that in a league that promotes the alphabet mafia. She shouldn’t be given all these accolades because so many others have done the same thing before her. If that’s the case, why aren’t you taking advantage of this added attention and use Clark’s notoriety to promote your greats of the past?

It really isn’t hard to make this a successful league, but the WNBA and its players have put on a masterclass of how to destroy a gift of an opportunity to put yourselves in a position to sustain yourselves. They’d rather continue to be victims in a society that has been rewarding a victimhood mentality for many years now. Let’s continue to receive those welfare checks from the NBA while saying in the same breath that we don’t make as much as they do even though they are paying your six-figure salaries.

And to top it off, players for the Chicago Sky have perpetuated a lie that they were ‘harassed’ outside of their hotel. A video of the alleged incident shows a man with a camera asking one of the players if she had a chance to reach out to Caitlin Clark. That player, Chennedy Carter is the one who gave Clark a rough welcome to the league in a game that the Fever defeated Chicago in.

The reason I say it’s a lie that the players were ‘harassed’ is that the evidence paints a different picture with the video and what the Chicago Sky’s general manager Jeff Pagliocca said about the incident;

“It was over as fast as it started, I’m very confident in our security always making our players feel safe. Today was a great example of how critical they are to our team.”

“The man had a camera and was trying to approach guard Chennedy Carter, however security was able to de-escalate the situation without the assistance of police.”

If other evidence comes to light that supports the harassment claim, then I will stand corrected. The WNBA’s history tells me otherwise and I don’t think that it can be fixed. Short of a complete gutting of the toxic environment that they have embraced for decades now, this league has no redeeming qualities.

This isn’t me saying that Caitlin Clark is a perfect person. None of us are. If she starts to dominate this league like her male counterparts that I’ve mentioned, maybe attitudes will begin to reverse themselves. I’m of the belief that if the kind of envy, resentment and jealousy that has been allowed to fester for so long gets the kind of wake-up call that it has needed to course correct, the resistance to that will be hard to overcome.

Having the type of player that Caitlin Clark has proven herself to be as the all-time leading scorer in NCAA basketball history come along at this particular time for your league should be treated as a gift. She has quickly become one of the more productive players during the regular season even as her team sits second to last in the league standings.

Nothing should be given to her. She’ll have to earn it just like she did while playing at Iowa. Yet, the powers that be continue to make it hard to understand the logic in their decisions when they exclude her from the Olympic roster for the 2024 summer games in Paris, France. Already the arguments have been made about not needing a Christian Laettner on the women’s roster. It holds no water on this front since Laettner was added to that ‘Dream Team’ roster in 1992 because the rule was to have one amateur in order to have professional players.

That rule doesn’t exist here and the fact that you are keeping her off of the world stage at this crucial juncture of your existence only fuels the doubts that you actually want to be relevant at a time when viewership is down across all sports not named football.

Whether they ever admit to it or not, the WNBA is being talked about for one reason and that reason is Caitlin Clark. She is the reason why I’m writing about the WNBA, being a cautious outside observer and why I watched a basketball game on television for the first time since the beginning of that bubble tournament in 2020.

If the WNBA wants to keep fans attention, they must be far more welcoming and nurturing of the product you have currently. They embraced that victimhood mentality for far too long and that ship has sailed. It isn’t going to work and frankly it never worked, hence never turning a profit. The United Stats post office is jealous of your business model.

The fans have arrived in droves to watch Caitlin Clark and they will leave in droves if you continue to be this volatile towards her and anyone that espouses to be a fan of hers.

This league has done everything it can to not be successful. They are the perfect example of what not to do when an opportunity presents itself to be relevant for once in your existence.