Caitlin Clark's Delayed Launch isn't Just Nike's Fault
Caitlin Clark is targeted, but also not a helpless victim
There’s a player component to the WNBA All-Star vote and Caitlin Clark rated far lower in it than she did with the fans. Clark’s first in the fan vote, setting all time records, but 9th among guards with the players. Controversy, that somehow works for the always acrimonious WNBA, ensues. HoS guest KANG was even inspired to mix it up with Clark biographer Christine Brennan.
It’s an archetypal Clark situation, similar to last season’s Olympics snub. Again it’s a scenario where she’s probably been slighted out of continued petty resentment from fellow WNBAers, though the slighting has a plausible statistical justification (injury-undermined season, questionable production), which then sets up a stretch run where Clark can make the oversight look worse retrospectively. The arc of history is long, but it always bends towards this exact Clark Controversy.
Overall, the Clark Discourse has settled into a pattern and gotten a little rote. Because the WNBA and Nike have been so overtly uncomfortable with their golden goose, there’s a natural tendency to treat her like she’s a helpless victim. Since she’s the blameless target of certain cultural pathologies that peaked in 2020, it’s easy for some of us to blame only those pathologies for whatever snags she hits as a burgeoning icon.
Reality is a little messier, though. Clark is often outwardly humble, but also often outwardly arrogant. She takes time to sign kid autographs, but also appears to have ruthlessly gotten her first coach fired. Caitlin Clark is a human being, and a young one at that. She does not go about her actual existence as some idealized two dimensional projection. Even if certain forces opposed to her might represent a petty sort of insanity, their target itself is not perfect.
Given what I’m hearing, I’m going to say something that might seem counter to what you’d expect. As critical as I’ve been of Nike’s squandering of this moment, I think we might have reached a point to where they’re more game for promoting the Caitlin phenomenon than the client. Nike’s commencing the rollout, making the giant poster in downtown Indy. Clark’s reluctance is a discourse confounder, but I believe it to be the case.