THE WNBA, TRASHING ITS VALUE PROPOSITION.

Free Press contributor Joe Nocera offers a provocative proposition.  "Women’s basketball has never seen such a talent. Players—and owners—who refuse to acknowledge that reality are practicing their own form of racism."  The talent is Iowa graduate Caitlin Clark, who has been dragged into the culture wars whether she wants to be or not.

In its 27-year existence, the WNBA has languished in relative obscurity, with most basketball fans viewing it as inferior to the men’s game. A WNBA playoff game almost never drew as many as 1 million viewers before Caitlin Clark arrived, while a typical NBA playoff game had more than 10 million viewers. Salary caps for entire WNBA teams was $1.4 million—not much more than the $1.1 million minimum salary for a single player in the NBA.

So you would think the league and its players would be overjoyed to have one of their own on the cover of Time.

But as was the case for most of her first season as a pro, nothing is simple when it comes to Caitlin Clark and the WNBA. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that there’s nothing simple when it comes to Caitlin Clark and the subject of race.

You see, Clark, 22, is not just the first women’s basketball player to grace the cover of Time, she’s the first white women’s basketball player to make the cover. And despite everything her presence has meant to the league—the increased TV ratings, the standing room–only crowds at every arena the Indiana Fever played, the infusion of excitement around the league—there has always been an undercurrent of resentment among many of the league’s black players. (A little more than 63 percent of the league is black.)

In the weird world of identity politics, though, political purity trumps any value proposition.

A’ja Wilson of the Las Vegas Aces, and the league’s MVP, said it straight out to Time—Clark’s race was a “huge” reason for her popularity. “It doesn’t matter what we all do as black women, we’re still going to be swept underneath the rug,” Wilson said. “That’s why it boils my blood when people say it’s not about race because it is.” More than once during the season, Clark was blindsided by a black opponent for no obvious reason except, well, the obvious reason.

Soon after the Time magazine cover was on the newsstands, Sheila Johnson, the black owner of the Washington Mystics, echoed Wilson, telling CNN that the only reason Clark was getting the acclaim was because she was white.

“I feel really bad because I’ve seen so many players of color that are equally as talented and they never got the recognition that they should have.” Wilson added, “Why couldn’t they have put the whole WNBA on the cover and say ‘The WNBA is the league of the year?’ ”

A commenter on X quickly pointed out that 31 percent of the Mystics attendance for the entire season came from the two games they played against Clark’s Indiana Fever. Indeed, the Mystics last game against the Fever drew close to 21,000 fans—an all-time record for the WNBA. Several games had to be moved to larger arenas to accommodate all the people who wanted to attend.

Good grief. Mr Nocera notes that sometimes it might be best to let the kids play, and leave the culture studies to the obscurity of the Antioch College common room.

I’ve been watching women’s basketball since the mid-1990s, and I can say with confidence that I’ve never seen any woman play basketball the way Caitlin Clark does. She is a truly transcendent talent, who can shoot practically from half-court—her shooting is what initially dazzled fans—and who throws some of the most gorgeous passes you’ll ever see. To my mind, she’s the female Larry Bird. Why does she fill up arenas? Because she’s fantastically fun to watch. Her presence in the WNBA is lifting all boats.

To put it bluntly, black players—or black owners—who refuse to acknowledge that reality are practicing their own form of racism.

Yes, it took a while for her Indiana team-mates to figure out some of those passes, occasionally of the Brett Favre improvisational type.  In the Time interview, she offered comments that might have been a potted version of what comes out of the Antioch common room, and got lit up accordingly.  That was an unforced error, but perhaps, that's a reiteration, let the kids play.

Caitlin Clark is a 22-year-old woman from West Des Moines, Iowa, who is one year out of college and finds herself, unwittingly and unwillingly, the center of ongoing controversies over race. She knows how to win on the court. But in the culture war—caught between black resentment and white scorn—she doesn’t stand a chance.

I started watching the WNBA when my then-favorite player, Diana Taurasi, joined in 2004. So I know what I see when I watch Caitlin Clark: not an avatar of the culture wars but simply a preternaturally gifted basketball player who happens to be white. As for her “privilege,” well, what would you expect from a young college graduate? Let’s let her grow up a little. She didn’t ask to be part of any culture war; all she wants to do is play basketball. Give her a little grace.

Twenty years on, Diana Taurasi is still playing. You might have to have a Ph.D. in semiotics to determine whether she, by virtue of her birth in Argentina to Italian emigrant parents, qualifies as a woman of color.  Let her play too.