Skip Bayless has built his reputation on complaining about the NBA’s LeBron James. These days, if you can find him, he’s likely to be defending the WNBA’s biggest name: Caitlin Clark.
This past weekend, Clark and the Indiana Fever lost a hard-fought game against the defending champion New York Liberty that ended with a controversial no-call on Clark’s last-second shot attempt. While Fever coach Stephanie White felt that there should have been a call, others criticized Clark for flopping and failing to get a call. Afterward, Indiana announced that Clark would miss two weeks with a quad injury. Meanwhile, the “disingenuous” narratives around Clark and her relationship with other WNBA players have subsumed the discourse.
On the latest episode of The Skip Bayless Show, the host launched into a rant about how the league isn’t doing enough to protect Clark or, at the very least, ensure she’s being treated as a superstar of her ilk should be.
“It sure appeared that Natasha Cloud body-fouled Caitlin, rammed her, then hacked her across the wrist, then hit her arm as she attempted to get the shot up,” said Bayless of the play that ended the Fever-Liberty game. “No call, loose ball, turnover, game over. What? No call? I mean, Caitlin Clark has at least earned that call at home in that moment.”
Bayless then shifted to the bigger picture, discussing how he perceives Clark’s treatment by other players and how the WNBA isn’t doing enough to protect its investment.
“The attitude I sense from so many other older WNBA players seems to be, ‘What are we, chopped liver? It’s not just her driving these ratings. What have we been doing all these years?’ Sorry, ladies, but compared to her drawing power, you are chopped liver,” he said. “You’re just going to have to accept that she alone is driving the ratings way, way above what all of you together were able to generate before she first set foot on a WNBA stage.
“So come on, ladies. Quit complaining about Caitlin Clark and just accept and embrace that she is the reason all of you ultimately will make far, far more money. But no, petty jealousy kicks in, takes over. Other teams are constantly complaining to the league office about all the publicity and all the credit that Caitlin Clark gets, even though she doesn’t do much on social media, doesn’t say much when she’s interviewed, just says all the right things, nothing but clichés and platitudes, nothing but respect for all of the older stars in the league. Caitlin’s actually pretty boring unless she’s playing basketball.
“Yet this league office is obviously deathly afraid of an open player revolt, just a revolution against Caitlin Clark, a mutiny against Caitlin Clark. So the refs are given the message. They’re clearly afraid to protect Caitlin Clark from the bully tactics and the excessive physicality inflicted on her. Heck, I don’t know. Maybe veteran refs are resentful of all the attention that Caitlin Clark gets. I don’t know. That’s the way it looked on Saturday. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you or letting defenders bite that hand.”