The debate over Caitlin Clark’s place in the WNBA isn’t fading. It’s getting sharper.
This week, the league’s All-Star voting results revealed that Clark — a starter for the third straight year and the second-leading fan vote-getter behind Paige Bueckers — finished 11th among guards in voting by actual WNBA players. That means seven other guards got more love from their peers. The league didn’t release the full list, but the top seven were Bueckers, Rhyne Howard, Olivia Miles, Sonia Citron, Marina Mabrey, Allisha Gray, and Clark’s own teammate Kelsey Mitchell.
The disparity exploded into a full national conversation. Candace Parker, the retired legend and current analyst, had already called out the players on her podcast, suggesting they needed to “look themselves in the mirror” and maybe see a therapist about “what childhood issues you have.” Hard to say she was subtle about it.
But ESPN’s David Dennis Jr. took the opposite position on First Take, and he didn’t sugarcoat it either.
“I don’t think that you can make a compelling argument that Caitlin Clark is a top-four guard in the WNBA,” Dennis said. “Nobody can at this point. That is why she got the 11th-most votes.”
Dennis pushed back on the framing that the players are simply jealous or insecure. He argued it’s something older and more predictable: a rookie — or in Clark’s case, a young star with nuclear hype — showing up to a league where veterans have sweated years to build something, and being told she’s already the second coming.
“Caitlin Clark is experiencing pretty much what happens anytime a young player comes into the league with a lot of hype, especially the hype that she is receiving that says all of these players, the whole league, basically, should be thankful that she’s there and she’s going to be the best player that you’ve ever seen,” Dennis said. “Whenever this happens, in any league, in any sport, in any gender, there is backlash to that. Because there are players who are there, who are saying, ‘We built this. Show me what you got.’ And they target that player.”
So is it disrespect or just the natural order of competition? Clark is still a starter. She’s still the face of the Fever alongside Aliyah Boston, who got the most player votes in the entire midseason selection. But the gap between fan love and player respect is real, and it’s not going away.
Parker isn’t buying Dennis’s reasoning. She sees something else — resentment dressed up as merit. And given how heated this already is in Year 3 of Clark’s career, it’s only going to get louder.
Leave a Comment