Dearest Caitlin:
Welcome back to it. Season 2. Hope you’re ready. Seems like it. Your offseason regimen has you built and prepared for it. It would be nice if basketball was all you had to look forward to dealing with.
But with you being the universally proclaimed “biggest draw in all of basketball” — the WNBA’s 48% jump in overall attendance can’t be denied — there’s unfortunately something beyond basketball to conquer. I’m sorry, confront and (wo)maneuver. The dreams and nightmares of a basketball life.
It’s the privilege vs. performance piece. Last season was just the tip. This season, the whole iceberg. Slim chances you’ll be able to avoid it. Things centered in race in this land of the chosen and emboldened free seem to never disappear. Especially when they are unwarranted and unwanted.
As you found out last season, all the good will, adjusting to the narrative and amazing play were damn-near drowned out by the toxicity of not you the basketball player but you the emissary. You became a symbol of something you never asked for or campaigned to be. You tried to wave the white flag, only to find out your face was on it. Representing something much larger than self. And, with the WNBA having its most successful season in history, all eyes on you.
“The great white hope is here!” I know, I know. While I’m sure you subliminally heard it often last season, you, more than anything (and anyone), unnecessarily felt it with every step (and step back) you took. And all you did was come here to hoop.
It ain’t fair, we know. But in this particular American sport, this comes with the territory. (Some will call it a lane. To me, it’s much bigger than that.) In a sport that has been desperately looking for its Tom Brady for more than 50 years, you came along at the perfect time and were the perfect storm. Everything the game needed, everything the W needed, everything the U.S. needed. They’d been waiting for you.
At a time when a white American male is going to be taken at No. 1 in the NBA Draft for the first time since Kent Benson in 1977, following the WNBA’s selection of a white American prodigy at No. 1 in consecutive years, the movement has arrived. Unfortunately for you, the country is going to make you the reason and the benefactor. Question is, as Season 2 begins, how are you going to handle ramp-up?
Can you outplay the stigma? Because the stigma — let’s get this out of the way — is unfair. Not to society, not to us, but to the one who found herself in the center of it. You are the departure. Or were supposed to be. Born to be. Sent to be. It’s a lot to put on your 23-year-old, now-muscled-up shoulders. But the crown is always heavy for those whom the higher powers deem have the strength to carry. For those they choose.
Jemele Hill and Kendrick Perkins putting you out front in the MVP conversation for the season. Hill going so far as to say, no tongue-in-cheek, not BS, “Not only is Caitlin Clark my pick for MVP this year, but I think [the Fever are] going to make a deep run, if not make it to the Finals.” Meanwhile, off the court, Hill’s past comments (and those of many others) about the “role” that race has played in your ascent will continue to follow you — especially if you do win the MVP.
You can’t win for losing. You caught the race-over-everything stray. Now, how you gonna move? This season will be the test. I just wanted to make sure someone told you — or reminded, not sure — that for “Caitlin from Downtown,” life will no longer be just about basketball.
Generationally, there’s always been this dynamic in basketball. Oscar Robertson/Jerry West; “Pistol” Pete Maravich/Earl “The Pearl” Monroe; Duke/UNLV; Magic/Bird. Now it’s your turn. Angel Reese, A’ja Wilson and JuJu Watkins riding shotgun. The separate but unequal part is going to be more of a problem for you than for them. You, fully knowing the power you now yield, may want to remain just a part of the conversation, not THEE conversation. Which your “parishioners” won’t allow. This season, the cheers will get louder, the boos less. The court of public opinion more DOGE than Supreme.
Now, Caitlin, the hard part begins. Intro 2.0. Of you navigating your way through these often irrational and unforgiving racist waters we call America. Hoping your game on the court will be enough to make the outside noise disappear. It’s the crest of cruelty of sports in which you now sit. Unfortunately, the throne is yours for the moment. Winning this battle may prove to be harder than winning a championship. They say misery loves accompaniment. Well, hopefully the professional additions of Paige Beuckers and Cooper Flagg will lessen some of the lifting placed on you.
It’s an old playbook run by those who invented the game. Caitlin, your mission, if you choose to accept, is to stay true to everything you delivered yourself to be thus far, dismantle both the playbook and mentality and play “the game” instead of allowing “the game” to play you. Mission impossible, I know. But if anyone can do it, you can. Good luck, sis.