Women’s basketball legend Cheryl Miller has had enough of perceived Caitlin Clark slander. The Hall of Famer tore into “big dummies” who criticize the Indiana Fever’s three-point-shooting sensation.
“I felt for her. I know what it’s like to be hated,” Miller said on last week’s “All the Smoke” podcast. “I know what it’s like to be a Black woman and to be hated because of my color. I can’t imagine this young lady, I don’t want to use hate, but despise.”
Miller’s on-court stardom predated the WNBA. The USC product won two national championships in college in the 1980s, earning three Naismith Player of the Year awards in the process.
The WNBA surged in popularity last season, thanks in large part to Clark. The league set records for attendance and TV viewership while several teams had to move to larger arenas to accommodate Clark’s legions of fans.
But Clark, like generations of female athletes before her, still received criticism.
Fans and media members have latched onto an on-court rivalry between Clark, who is White, and Chicago Sky star Angel Reese, who is Black.
“She brought some on herself, a little bit, because she’s cocky for a good reason,” Miller said of Clark. “But to watch the dynamics and the media, they had their narrative. And I was pleased and proud to see the narrative wasn’t the truth. And Angel [Reese] and her got along so well.”
Even those within the league have voiced concerns about perceived racism around Clark. Some say the Fever’s star gets more attention because she is White. Others said she receives more intense scrutiny as a White player in a predominantly-Black sport.
“It’s just the structure of the way media plays out race,” Washington Mystics co-owner Sheila Johnson told CNN last year after Clark was honored on the cover of TIME Magazine. “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.”
Several WNBA players criticized league Commissioner Cathy Engelbert after she publicly alluded to the racial dynamic on CNBC last year.
“It is a little of that [Larry] Bird-Magic [Johnson] moment,” Engelbert said. “Those two rookies came in from a big college rivalry, one White, one Black. And so we have that moment with these two. But the one thing I know about sports: you need rivalry.”
Clark, Reese and the rest of the WNBA are set to open the 2025 season on May 16.
• Liam Griffin can be reached at lgriffin@washingtontimes.com.
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