Today’s newsletter consists of a few short rants and a grab bag of WNBA-related memes and links. It is the playoffs, after all. If you’re not already a paid subscriber, I hope you’ll consider upgrading.
hear me out: the Olivia Nuzzi ethics nightmare relates to sports media, too
Unless you’ve been offline in a way that I deeply envy, you have probably heard about the Olivia Nuzzi/Robert Kennedy, Jr. sexting scandal. Just in case you’re lucky enough to not know what I’m talking about, last week Oliver Darcy reported that Nuzzi’s bosses at New York magazine had approached her regarding a personal relationship she had developed with RFK, Jr. Nuzzi profiled the former presidential candidate earlier this year and was continuing to cover electoral politics, making a relationship with RFK a pretty clear conflict of interest.
At least, I thought it was a pretty clear violation of journalistic ethics that most, if not all, journalists would agree was wrong. Except, as details over at , many establishment journalists have bent over backwards to defend Nuzzi and circle the wagons in her defense.
“Who the fuck cares who [Olivia Nuzzi] is seeing in her private time?” asks political commentator Ben Tribbett. “The scandal here has nothing to do with who she dates or sends photos to,” Molloy explains. “I truly couldn’t care less. The scandal here is that she was doing all of this while presenting herself as a neutral observer of the presidential race.”
Over and over again we see people at legacy media outlets violating journalistic ethics or just being very bad at their jobs with little-to-no repercussions for it. As my friend and brilliant sports writer Sydney Bauer pointed out on X, those of us who are queer or trans or a person of color are seen as “biased” or having conflicts of interest simply for covering people in our own community, yet legacy journalists are out here doing whatever the fuck they want.
Which brings me back to sports journalism and the ongoing mess that is this season’s WNBA coverage. Instead of allowing longtime women’s sports writers to have access to the jobs or stories from the league(s) they’ve spent years covering, too many journalists who have never written about the WNBA or women’s basketball have parachuted in. The result is coverage that is not only devoid of the history, context, and culture of the league, but coverage that is actively harmful to the W and the players who are in it.
I wrote about this earlier in the season, arguing that the coverage of Caitlin Clark is rooted not only in racism, but in the homophobic tropes of the predatory lesbian and the queer villain. “Portraying Clark as the victim in her interactions with fellow players is an extension of this idea that a certain kind of woman should be safe to play and excel in women’s sports,” I wrote at Andscape. “It not only relies on the concept of white female victimhood but also of predatory lesbians.”
After the Connecticut Sun faced off against Clark’s Indiana Fever in Game 1 of the first round of the playoffs on Sunday, coverage took on a similarly upsetting tone. Christine Brennan of USA Today, a longtime gymnastics and figure skating journalist who only began covering women’s basketball this season, asked Sun guard DiJonai Carrington if she had intentionally given Clark a black eye (anyone who watched the game could see clearly it was unintentional and happened during a basketball play) and also suggested that Carrington and her teammates were laughing at Clark after the swipe (the players were very clearly doing a Carmelo Anthony three-point celebration, something that anyone reporting on basketball should be obligated to know). Brennan’s coverage has been problematic all season (something she blocked me for pointing out to her) but it goes beyond just her.
In a game that saw Alyssa Thomas record a triple double, Marina Mabrey break the WNBA playoff record for points off the bench, and the Sun winning by 24 points, coverage focused almost exclusively on one player—and one play.
Being ignorant of the culture and history of the WNBA should disqualify journalists from covering it—especially if they are unwilling to learn about the space they’re stepping into. The number of times I read WNBA coverage that seems like it was written by someone who, frankly, hates Black women is inexcusable—especially in a league that is over 80% Black.
“New fans, media, personalities, and voices to the [WNBA] space should… rise to the occasion and meet the standards of [coverage] where the bar is at,” writes Lyndsey D’Arcangelo at Awful Announcing. “Taking steps backward just because that’s been the status quo in men’s leagues isn’t how the WNBA operates. It shouldn’t be how any women’s sports league operates.”
My social media timelines over the past week have been full of righteous fury—mostly from marginalized or independent journalists who have been toiling away for years, doing incredible work that they are hardly ever recognized for. I am furious, too, but more than that I’m just tired.
Speaking of the problematic way that the media talks about Caitlin Clark in relationship to her Black teammates and opponents…
I am deeply uncomfortable with dynamic on the Indiana Fever in which the Black players are responsible for de-escalating the white women who can’t keep their tempers
Caitlin Clark is known for having an explosive temper, for sulking and/or arguing when calls don’t go her way, for talking trash, and for playing a little dirty. This is part of what makes her fun to watch and it’s why so many people have said that she reminds them of a young Diana Taurasi (it’s also emblematic of the fact that she has an Aries Mars in her birth chart, which I’ve written about here if you’d like to read more).
Towards the end of the season, Clark had gotten so many technical fouls that one more would see her suspended for a game. The Fever, who were trying to make a push to secure a playoff spot, couldn’t afford to lose their star rookie, even for one game. The “Caitlin Clark de-escalation committee” was born—Clark’s teammates, including Aliyah Boston, Kelsey Mitchell, and Erica Wheeler, circle the wagons to calm her down before she loses her temper and gets another tech. We can joke all we want about this unofficial “de-escalation committee” but the reality is not a joke at all.
What has essentially happened is that a team of Black women have become responsible for babysitting their white teammate, sometimes physically holding her back or grabbing her face and saying “no” to her repeatedly until she calms down. Imagine the optics if a Black player were acting out this way? Black women’s anger is policed in ways that white women’s is not; the “angry Black woman” is a common trope for a reason. Black women are more likely to be perceived as angry or characterized as aggressive when they are neither. Black women’s pain is seen as less real than white women’s.
In the WNBA, white players receive disproportionate amounts of the media coverage, sponsorship money, and public acclaim (Even before her first season began, Clark had record-breaking endorsements, including an eight-figure deal with Nike). Meanwhile, players like Boston (the number one overall pick in the 2023 draft), NaLyssa Smith (the second overall pick in the 2022 draft), and Mitchell (who has had four straight seasons of averaging 17 points or more per game and effective field-goal percentages above 50%, according to ) not only take a backseat to Clark when it comes to their talent and contributions being recognized, but they also have to put aside their own game to take care of their teammate’s temper tantrums.
“Caitlin Clark behaves and exists like a white teenage boy, including using the privileges that come with being one,” Roberta Rodrigues, the founder of the Brazilian WBB website Beta Basket, wrote on X. “It may be all giggles among the teammates for now, but getting your mostly black teammates to babysit you and finding it funny, especially when they start getting techs themselves as a result of your actions, has a really bad ring to it.”
But it’s not just Clark that the Black players have to reign in—during Sunday’s first round playoff game against the Sun, Wheeler can be seen pulling back Fever head coach Christie Sides, likely saving her from being ejected from the game (instead, she only received a technical foul).
Wheeler is a veteran player and a leader in the locker room and I don’t mean to imply that she isn’t capable of being somewhat of a peer to her coaches at times, but this should not be one of those times. The Fever are in their first playoff game since 2016. The majority of the roster has never played a single minute of WNBA playoff basketball until this week. The optics of your Black vet stepping in to de-escalate her white coach? They’re just not good, folks.
Clark’s teammates have had a good sense of humor about being tasked with helping her cool down in heated moments, but what other choice do they have? She is the only player most of the media has any interest in covering and Clark and Boston are franchise players that the Fever are going to build their young core around; they need to be able to figure out how to have a good working relationship because they’re going to be playing together for the foreseeable future.
“She is surely cool about being de-escalated, but had things to say about being fouled,” Rodrigues continued. “She sees players being destroyed in her name and doesn’t do anything about it.”
This is the same thing that has happened when Clark’s fans and the media have used her as an excuse for racism or homophobia, or to send threats to her colleagues—Clark hasn’t stood up for any of the other players or taken accountability for the ways her behavior or presence impacts players more marginalized than she is. It took a reporter asking her directly if she condoned the racism and homophobia being spewed in her name—after Carrington criticized her on X—for Clark to say anything that didn’t simply re-direct the conversation to basketball.
It’s just not cute and there’s not really any way around that.
Odds and ends and memes
Layshia Clarendon has announced their retirement from basketball. Clarendon was the WNBA’s first openly non-binary and openly trans player and had an impact that will reverberate both on and off the court for generations to come. I was granted their first post-top surgery interview back in 2021 and I consider the resulting feature story for Sports Illustrated to be one of the highlights of my career. “It just felt right,” Clarendon told ESPN’s Katie Barnes regarding their retirement. “I've done a lot of healing in my life the last five years. It was just the culmination of my mind, my body and my spirit telling me that it was time to move on. I just had a deep knowing in my intuition that now is the right time, and I had a really open heart and readiness to let go.”
The Los Angeles Sparks have agreed to part ways with head coach Curt Miller (the folks over at have some guesses as to who his replacement could be).
Katie Barnes profiled Chelsea Gray and it’s just as good as you think it is: “Vintage Gray sees things other players don't -- a cutting player, a gap, a teammate who looks covered but could be open with the right ball placement. She uses her body to manipulate defenses, emphasizing changes in speed and direction, shifting her eyes, and making subtle feints.”
Mom and Dad looked so hot for the first game of the playoffs:
These two continue to be very cute (and visible IYKYK)
Speaking of visible… is this what it looks like? What do you all think?
The Sun/Fever series is being called “the Honeymoon Series” because of the Sun’s DiJonai Carrington and the Fever’s NaLyssa Smith going up against each other (Carrington has been spotted with a ring, causing speculation that the two are engaged).
