Why is the WNBA determined to destroy Caitlin Clark?

Women's basketball's bizarre antagonism toward Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark stooped to a comical level Tuesday night in another embarrassing episode that shamed the officials, opponents and the WNBA itself. It literally was like a Three Stooges routine — starting with an eye-poke and followed by a chest-bump and a belly-bump that knocked Clark to the floor. What next, a pie fight?

It was bad enough that officials did not eject Jacy Sheldon or Marina Mabrey of the Connecticut Sun for dead-ball flagrant fouls. But somehow Clark was given a technical foul for ... hitting Sheldon's hand with here eyes? It didn't make sense.

But then again, nothing about women's basketball's treatment of Clark makes any sense. The WNBA, still a niche sports league in the U.S. nearly 30 years after its founding, finally has a golden goose that draws the mainstream sports fans it needs for a chance to break into the mainstream, and instead of embracing it, the league, and its players seemed determined to kill it.

The jealousy of the WNBA's players, and the racial component of a white player being the popular golden goose of a league that is nearly three-quarters African-American — in an unconscionable era of racial divide in the U.S. — is at the root of the Clark issue. And from commissioner Cathy Englebert on down, the WNBA's leadership has been woefully incapable of managing a golden opportunity for the league. Even if players weren't ready for this, the league should have prepared them for it, and that's where the culpability mostly lies.

Where's John McDonough when you need him? The former Blackhawks marketing-whiz president is unhirable with the stain of his primary role in the Brad Aldrich affair, but the WNBA could use him, stain and all — that's how poorly the league and the sport has managed the Caitlin Clark situation.

Nobody's asking the WNBA or its players to cater to Clark because she's their meal ticket. They don't have to like her, but they owe it to themselves and the WNBA to respect her standing as the biggest drawing card in the history of the sport — and do whatever they can to ride that wave to the benefit of the entire WNBA. But instead of embracing her popularity, the league's players seem determined to undercut it, even to their own detriment.

What a turn off. And a critical misplay, because the WNBA needs Caitlin Clark more than the NBA needed Michael Jordan or the PGA Tour needed Tiger Woods. The WNBA seems to think it's the 1984 NBA or the 1994 PGA Tour, when in reality it's the 2025 WNBA, which lost a reported $40 million in 2024. Jordan and Woods took their sport to the mountaintop. Clark is just trying to get the WNBA to base camp. The sooner the WNBA realizes that, the better.