Nancy Lieberman says her decades-long friendship with Sheryl Swoopes fell apart after she called to correct false claims about Caitlin Clark Edit by Liam McGuire, Comeback Media.

When Nancy Lieberman saw Sheryl Swoopes trending for going after Caitlin Clark, she didn’t fire off a subtweet. She picked up the phone.

Lieberman says she was on the treadmill when she heard Swoopes speaking critically — and inaccurately, in her view — about Clark’s scoring records. So she called her. That call, Lieberman says, ended a decades-long friendship. And though Swoopes later disputed that the call even happened, Lieberman says she has the screenshot to prove it.

At the time of the aforementioned feud, the WNBA legends found themselves working for the same organization, the Dallas Wings. Shortly after the initial jab was thrown, Lieberman told Stephen A. Smith the relationship has “pretty much… not happening at this point.”

Swoopes was contracted to work seven Wings games in 2024. She didn’t return to the broadcast team in 2025. Whether that absence is directly tied to their personal fallout is unclear, but Lieberman didn’t hold back in a recent appearance on South Beach Sessions with Dan Le Batard, where she aired it all out.

“I was very protective of Sheryl throughout her career,” Lieberman said. “[We] were very, very close. I took her to her first ESPYs in ’93 after (Texas Tech) won the National Championship. And I’m on the treadmill that morning, and she’s trending on all different stations, and it pops up, and I’m listening to it, and I’m like, ‘Wow.’ So, I picked up the phone and I called her. Now, she disputes this, but I did screenshot to let her know the call happened.

“And I said, ‘Hey, I’m calling as your friend, as your sister. She’s not 25 years old. She’s not a fifth-year senior. And she doesn’t take 40 shots a game.’ I said, ‘Your numbers are wrong.’ And she said to me, ‘Look, I can have my own opinion.’ I go, ‘Absolutely, you can have your own opinion, but get your numbers right. They’re going to fact-check you.’ And you can play it off. You can mea culpa. You can say, ‘I was wrong,’ and you’re the hero of the story.”

Instead, Swoopes dug in. What began as a fact-check from a longtime friend turned into something much more personal. Lieberman wasn’t looking for a fight, but suddenly, that’s exactly what she had on her hands.

“And we got into it. And I don’t want to get into it with anybody,” Lieberman continued. “But it became so much larger than life. I would do this for Angel Reese, who I love. I would do this for A’ja Wilson, who doesn’t need me. But our generation, we have to celebrate this generation.”

“The thing is: if we don’t stick up for this generation, who are we?” she added. “I mean, it’s happened forever in men’s sports. How do little kids today know who Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, or Hank Aaron are? Because people share the history… I stuck up for Sheryl Swoopes in ’93. It’s so important for us to understand this. There’s no place for jealousy in our sport when we’re trying to get to the next level.

“[Michael Jordan], when he came into the NBA in ’84, and the arenas — even though Magic and Bird were a great rivalry — they were still playing in half-empty arenas in some places. MJ was filling them up. Who were they putting on national TV? Michael Jordan. Who was changing the salary structure? Who was changing the endorsements for young athletes, expressively Black athletes? When Tiger Woods came to the PGA, the ratings went up. The attendance went up. The purses went up.

“Why would people get mad at the cash cow? There are 14-15 millionaires in the WNBA right now. Everybody’s getting a bite of the financial apple. It’s a great place to be. Let’s pull together for each other and not make this a racist thing, not pit each other against each other. You don’t have to like everybody… But in the name of being successful together, you do what you have to, especially when we’re moving the needle at a very crucial time for us.”

With women’s basketball finally breaking through, Lieberman doesn’t feel now is the time to be petty. Her frustration with Swoopes was more generational than it was personal. She was imploring what was a dear friend to stop tearing down the very players pushing the game forward, and to recognize that visibility and success for one player doesn’t mean regression for everyone else.

And in Lieberman’s eyes, the real opponent isn’t Caitlin Clark or even criticism; it’s the infighting that threatens to stall the sport’s momentum just as the spotlight is finally starting to burn brighter than it ever has.

“I just said the truth,” Lieberman said of her appearance on The Stephen A. Smith Show. “I said what I feel. ‘Nancy lied.’ Now you’re going to make me show a screenshot, which I don’t want to do? Please.”

Lieberman may have been calling as a friend, but in the end, she says she spoke up for the future of the game, even if it cost her part of its past.

About Sam Neumann

Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.