Former President Barack Obama caught up with Caitlin Clark in Chicago this weekend as the third-year phenom prepared to partake in this year’s WNBA All-Star Game.
And he used the time to give her some meaningful advice.
“You’re great, you’re fantastic. Don’t let all this nonsense get you down. I always say one of the things that was luckiest for me was I didn’t get famous until I was like 45,” Obama told Clark at the Obama Presidential Center’s indoor basketball court on Friday. “So, I was an old man. You’re my daughters’ age; they haven’t had that much immersion in nonsense, so don’t lose that joy. The game’s, like, the game. And you’re a hooper.”
Clark has had a tumultuous season in which the kind of vicious personal fouls that marred her rookie season and even her abbreviated sophomore campaign have resurfaced.
The ensuing public debate over those fouls and the league’s handling, or lack of handling, of them has turned into a full-blown scandal, exemplified most recently by WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert needing to be pressured by NBA Commissioner Adam Silver to suspend Phoenix Mercury star DeWanna Bonner for viciously driving her fist into Clark’s neck while she was on the floor.
ESPN’s Malika Andrews interviewed Clark on Friday and asked her about her critics and the controversy that has yet again embroiled her.
“I think there’s just like a false characterization of who I am sometimes,” Clark said. “And I get it, like, as a reporter or as a blogger, like you can write an opinion piece and that’s your job and whatever. But at the same time, like you don’t know me. Like we’ve never had a conversation. I get people have a job to do. But at the same time, like don’t make accusations about my character and who I am when you don’t know me. I understand this is your job and this is your profession, and this is what you get to do. And basketball is my profession, what I get to do. And the reason I play it is when I step in between the lines, I love it. And that’s what’s so fun about it for me: I get to compete. This was always my dream. And nobody should ever try to take that away from me.”
While Obama’s message to Clark about not losing her joy is clearly positive and perhaps a needed encouragement. It may also help if the former president, or anyone for that matter, would tell the majority-Black WNBA players who routinely attack Clark to stop.
Or, to tell WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert to get a hold of her league or step aside for someone who will.
A message like that coming from someone like Obama, who likely holds considerable sway in WNBA locker rooms due to the political leanings of most of the players, could go a long way.