The huge rise in fame of women’s basketball and the extra attention it gets from the media has led to more people who don’t know what they’re talking about.
I thought this kind of statement would be about one of the regular suspects, like Skip Bayless, Colin Cowherd, or maybe Stephen A. Smith. We all know that talking heads on TV can make some pretty crazy and untrue claims, even though they are good at their jobs and good at getting people’s attention.
There was no way I thought it would come from one of the best women’s basketball players ever.
So, Sheryl Swoopes, the former three-time WNBA Most Valuable Player, recently went on the show of former NBA All-Star Gilbert Arenas. Of course, women’s basketball came up.
Read More: 2024 WNBA Draft Lottery: Viewing Guide, Schedule, Participating Teams, and Top Pick Odds
Some of what Swoopes said about Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark, two of the best players today, made news because she thinks they will do well in the WNBA.
There are a lot of things she says here that I agree with. It’s impossible to find a better basketball league for women than the WNBA. People who are still against it should get jobs, because there are some really great players there. In any sport, the jump from the (kind of) beginner levels to the pros is huge, since every player in the league is a pro.
Swoopes’s point about Clark may not be something we all agree on, but the main point that the WNBA is tougher competition is 100% true. That thing Swoopes said is not the issue. The issue is the false information that was spread about Clark in the show to make the Iowa point guard look bad.
Read More: Sabrina Ionescu wins the WNBA 3-point battle by setting a record with 37 points.
In the podcast, Swoopes talks about how Clark is getting close to breaking Kelsey Plum’s record for most points scored in NCAA women’s basketball history. However, she gets a lot of things wrong.
“I believe that if you want to break a record, you have to do it in the same amount of time that the player who set the record did it.” Okay, then. “If Kelsey Plum set that record in four years, then Caitlin should have broken it in four years,” Swoope said. “But because there’s a COVID year and then another year, do you understand?” She has an extra year to beat that record. Is it really a broken record?”
Read More: The New York Liberty beat the Las Vegas Aces in Game 3 to stay alive in the WNBA Finals.
Ms. Swoopes, don’t worry. I’ll give you the answer since you didn’t know it and didn’t stop to do a quick Google search before you went off on a tangent. Caitlin Clark is only 22 years old and in her fourth year at Iowa. This is the same four years that Kelsey Plum had when she set the record.
It’s not annoying that people hate Caitlin Clark. People are angry at the great players because they make them feel bad. There are people who still hate LeBron James from when he was in high school.
No, what’s wrong is that hate is never stopped. It’s based on lies and false facts. They have run out of things to say badly about someone, so they made up new ones.
I guess you have to make up your own straws to hold on to when you don’t like a player as good as Caitlin Clark.
Twitter didn’t like it and made sure Swoopes and others knew that this story is completely false.
