Caitlin Clark, the number one pick in this year’s WNBA draft is billed as everything from “the greatest of all time” to a “trailblazer.” But is she really any of those things?
What if she’s just a very good, even great — and maybe even the greatest — female college basketball player and nothing more?
That’s not nothing — being the greatest female basketball player of all time — but it’s also not guaranteed, mostly because it’s impossible to measure. Before the NCAA, a woman named Pearl Moore was the highest scoring collegiate female player in history. In fact, she still is. It’s just that she played before the NCAA became the governing body of women’s basketball, so her records don’t count, for some reason.
In the lead up the Clark surpassing “Pistol” Pete Maravich for the NCAA all-time scoring record, the media hyped the record like their lives depended on it. Mentioned less often were a couple of facts that made the breaking of his record slightly less impressive.
One was the existence of Moore’s career. Another was the fact that Maravich was, thanks to the arcane rules of his day, forbidden from playing at all during his freshman year. That’s right — the NCAA did not allow freshman to play college basketball back then, which means that his career total was artificially a year low. Finally, the three-point shot did not exist during Maravich’s career, which undoubtedly cost him a lot of points. Clark, on the other hand, took full advantage of the three-point line — and impressively so.
I don’t mean to degrade Caitlin Clark’s accomplishments — I’m horrible at every aspect of the game, despite being 6-foot 5. But the idea that she’s the greatest ever, or even really close, is just hype, a media creation.
Our media today are very interested in narratives and firsts. The narrative is always from the left, and the firsts are anyone of any human configuration doing something of note — well, as long as they aren’t conservatives. (Did Kellyanne Conway get the credit she deserved for being the first woman to run a successful presidential campaign?) Curiously, news stories about crime deliberately omit the race of suspects, even if they’re still at large — so “be on the lookout for a human.” But when it comes to “the first” this or that to do something, books get written on the subject.
As a woman, Clark fit a specific media narrative. Her passing a man to set a new NCAA scoring record was all that was needed. (In this case, as a bonus, it is such a significant milestone that everyone was willing to stop feigning ignorance of biology for at least 15 minutes.)
Unfortunately, this is nothing new for the media. They are so eager to lionize anyone with a “first” that they can take even a fraudster like Elizabeth Holmes and make her a hero.
Of course, in contrast to Holmes, Clark has obviously accomplished something both impressive and real. She is an exceptional college basketball player and deserves attention. But no, she is not the greatest college basketball player of all time. If she were even one of the top 100 greatest playing today, she would have declared herself eligible for the NBA, not the WNBA.
A lot has been made about the salary differences between the two leagues, but the WNBA would not exist without the NBA subsidizing it. The NBA wouldn’t even notice if the WNBA vanished.
Maybe Clark will change that. But she won’t change the reality that there are differences between men and women in sport, and that those differences become more pronounced at higher levels of competition.
That’s not to say “different” is necessarily better or worse — sometimes it’s just different. That’s not only okay, but really, really good and important. The differences between men and women are real, and without them, none of us would exist.
So celebrate Clark’s accomplishment, but do it honestly. Don’t let the media hype her into something she is not, because she is impressive enough without the embellishment.
Derek Hunter is host of the Derek Hunter Podcast and a former staffer for the late Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.).