Aren’t we all tired? It’s clear Indiana Fever head coach Stephanie White is after once again eviscerating officiating and an overall lack of game control following what she called two “cheapshots” to two-time All-Star Caitlin Clark on Wednesday night.
Clark exited the game in the second half with a back injury; her status moving forward is unclear.
White spoke to reporters nearly an hour after the 111-109 loss to the Phoenix Mercury ended, still as heated as if she were on the sideline watching a game that verged on the edge of chippy to full-on blows. She had clearly had enough, more than a year after, well, clearly having had enough.
“The one thing that we keep asking for is consistency,” White said, an echo of comments she made in a different, no-less-physical battle last year against her former Connecticut Sun team. She then went one further.
“She (Clark) is not called the same way everyone else is called,” White said.
Is Clark treated differently? Maybe. Maybe not. The list of examples of increased physicality and alleged cheap shots toward her is growing long. Chennedy Carter’s shoulder check. Marina Mabrey’s shove. Alyssa Thomas, who in the 2024 playoffs directly called out “racial comments from the Indiana Fever fan base,” appearing to push her fist into Clark’s neck and stepping over her during a skirmish in the paint.
The WNBA, upon review on Thursday, deemed Thomas’ actions as egregious as White did by issuing the veteran forward a Flagrant Foul 2 and a one-game suspension “for recklessly making contact with her fist to the throat area.”
Frankly, whether all of this is a clear targeting of Clark should not be the topic mooring this conversation. Because if you put it into “Clark over others” territory, you’re playing into the nasty rhetoric that divides people who, at their core, simply want to consume basketball.
And isn’t that the point? No one on either side seems to be enjoying it anymore. At this point, there are too many takes to count, burning hotter than a backyard bonfire, where a group of unbalanced power brokers — the league, the players union, the talking heads, fervent social media crusaders among them — sit around, stoking the fire or leaving it to die in an attempt to appease another. Booby traps are out there in the dark. It’s hard to know where to step.
That it was Clark, again at the center of it, trying to protect herself on the floor, is what prompts the outrage. Whether purposeful or not, Thomas putting a fist into Clark warrants repercussion.
The bombastic morning show segments will run their course, and we’ll do this all again soon. It’s how it’s gone since Clark entered the WNBA as the No. 1 overall pick in 2024. There’s no reason to think it should be any different now.
Even though it should absolutely be.
It is inarguable that Clark drew a new fanbase to the WNBA. There are going to be people who read that sentence and think, “but what about…” before reaching the period.
And that’s fine. Because this applies to them, too.
Every single one of those new fans — in addition to the fans who have held this league so close to their hearts through the tough times — began watching for a reason. And if their reason is a person, they want that human being treated well. But it doesn’t matter whose name is on the back of her jersey, generational talent or end-of-the-bench warmer. It’s clear officiating is still the league’s great Achilles heel.
“It can be physical sometimes,” Paige Bueckers, the No. 1 pick in the 2025 draft and a favorite of fans and players alike, told SportsCenter on Wednesday. “It’s like WWE SmackDown sometimes.”
In all fairness, officiating a professional basketball game in an era where every game can be rewatched, clipped and critiqued to the masses is a tough job.
In all seriousness, it’s a crucial one that cannot continue like this. There’s the safety element mentioned ad nauseam over the last few years, punctuated by the potential loss of Clark for more than just 15 minutes of game action on a random Wednesday in June.
There’s also a growth element. This isn’t working. We’re all sick of it. Anecdotally, new fans are becoming former fans. A transformational collective bargaining agreement (CBA) and 30 years in the can don’t automatically lead to more success, a case that 13-time NCAA national champion Geno Auriemma made earlier this week in a video call with a few reporters ahead of a one-off WNBA broadcast appearance.
“I don’t want it to go unsaid that all of us have to keep working really, really hard to make sure — and put a lot of pressure on the players — that the product has to be really, really, really good, and it has to continue to get better,” Auriemma said.
One year ago, nearly to the day, White called out “bad officiating” after referees lost control of the Fever’s game against the Sun. Physicality brewed and peaked with Sophie Cunningham tackling Jacy Sheldon, long after Mabrey pushed Clark and received only a technical for it. Mabrey said this summer she went “too far,” citing a cocktail of competitiveness and Clark’s standout play pushing the margin wider.
It’s hard to see the league capitulating to Clark. None of the entities said or did anything about officiating then. Not the league, and not the WNBPA. And Clark can’t exactly come out to make her own case, even if she felt strongly about doing so. For most of her career, other than advocating for the game, she has stayed out of the rest. There is a clear understanding that anything she says can and will be twisted.
It wasn’t until Napheesa Collier breathed fire onto the issue at the end of last year that Commissioner Cathy Engelbert directly addressed it, designing an officiating task force as a result. The WNBPA, which announced Collier as first vice president on Thursday after Kelsey Plum did not run for re-election, shared audio of Collier’s prepared statements on its social feeds.
White is part of the officiating task force that met throughout the offseason. She said during a foul-heavy first weekend of action that there “is going to be frustration early. But it’s necessary.”
This frustration was surely not what she meant. There is always a lead-up, and everyone called it out after the Fever and Mercury met in a chippy contest on Monday. Six technicals were called in eight seconds, yet the officiating crew still let the game on Wednesday go out of hand.
Forgive the broken record, but maybe the bruises on a player’s thighs and forearms shouldn’t be a point of pride for a game well played. Maybe this stronghold on praised physicality is just a straight-up refusal to evolve the way many publicly insist the league must in order to continue its ascension.
Maybe, just maybe, power brokers are too caught up in celebrating the last 30 years that they’ve lost sight of what’s best for the next 30. Because even if Clark, as many pundits said on Thursday, jumped ship for a different league, the WNBA will still exist. Talking heads will still have hot takes. Another superstar will emerge, with haters and supporters alike.
There can be no more weathering the storms. Everyone knows the severity and what’s at stake. It’s time to be proactive and fix the entire mess, whether or not Clark is in the eye of it.
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