Sage Steele: WNBA mishandling generational talent Caitlin Clark
Host of ‘The Sage Steele Show’ Sage Steele asserts the WNBA is mishandling generational talent Caitlin Clark. Steele critiques the league’s consistently poor officiating, which has led to numerous uncalled fouls against Clark and other players this season. She stresses that this continued neglect risks losing the WNBA’s growing fanbase.
ESPN writer Howard Bryant wants you to believe the hostility toward Caitlin Clark in the WNBA has nothing to do with race and everything to do with her sticking her tongue out on the court.
Bryant presented his argument during an appearance on “The Right Time With Bomani Jones” podcast.
“I argue that this is not a racial question,” Bryant responded to a question about whether players are targeting Clark. “I think people don’t like her. … It’s almost like a bit of hocus-pocus, right? She’s a popular player but not a particularly likable player because of her on-court behavior, right? Like, how are you gonna go out there and make a whole bunch of threes and stick your tongue out and get up in people’s faces and then cry about every trip down court?
He continued: “You’re either in it, or you’re not in it, right? I mean, can you have it both ways? Can you look and scream at the ref, ‘That’s a foul,’ every time you have the ball? Right? And then when you make a shot, (you’re) mean-mugging in somebody’s face and not handle it. Are you tough or are you not tough? Which one is it?”
There you have it. According to Bryant, players are driving their fists into Clark’s throat and poking her in the eyes because she complains to the officials.
Caitlin Clark attacks the rim as the Indiana Fever take on the Las Vegas Aces in a marquee WNBA matchup. (David Becker/NBAE via Getty Images)
Bryant’s defense of the players targeting Clark is obviously not valid. As OutKick explained earlier this week, the media has ingrained in many players the idea that Clark’s popularity is primarily the product of her being a straight White woman in a league that is roughly 70% Black or LGBTQ+. There are many, many examples of this. Naturally, that narrative has led many of the league’s self-styled victims to resent her.
But there’s more to it.
The league’s race bullies have shown they will embrace certain White players — such as Cameron Brink and Paige Bueckers — because they have used their platforms to speak the language of the racial and sexual activism expected of them. Just last week, Bueckers called for more WNBA teams to hire Black women as head coaches.
Clark doesn’t do that. She mostly sticks to basketball, creating the perception among critics that her silence somehow enables her supposedly racist fans, a point WNBA player DiJonai Carrington tried to make last season.
“Silence is privilege,” Carrington said about Clark’s focus on basketball rather than the purported social issues surrounding the league.
It’s all transparent, though contradictory to the preferred narrative.
David Ortiz talks with Howard Bryant in the dugout before the Boston Red Sox play the Oakland Athletics at the Oakland Coliseum in Oakland, Calif. The Red Sox defeated the Athletics 11-2. (Michael Zagaris/Oakland Athletics)
Then again, we can’t expect honest analysis from someone like Howard Bryant. Two years ago, he published a column on ESPN.com on the Fourth of July titled “Baseball, Barbecue and Losing Freedom This Fourth of July.” In it, he urged Americans not to celebrate their freedoms because of Jan. 6.
Per Bryant:
“YOU WATCH TV, even though you swore to not pay attention to the Jan. 6 congressional hearings. It was not a decision made from the perch of elegant privilege, of too rich to care, but from a full dissidence — a weariness of the gaslighting and false equivalencies, the whataboutisms, the goalposts moving that have defined the past several years. The spectacle of all-white juries acquitting proud, admittedly guilty white killers of Black people largely predated your birth, and thus for the past 18 months you’ve held on to a truth: The events of Jan. 6, where Americans stormed the most symbolically important legislative building in the free world — and a sitting president reportedly enraged he was not taken to the Capitol to join them — are the most unforgivable betrayals of the American ideal in your lifetime.”
SOPHIE CUNNINGHAM IS THE OPPOSITE OF MOST WNBA PLAYERS. AND THAT’S WHY SHE IS A MEGASTAR
Why a column like that ever appeared on a sports website remains an open question.
Speaking of self-described victims of racism, Bryant has portrayed himself as one for nearly a decade. In 2011, he was arrested on charges of allegedly assaulting his wife in front of their 6-year-old son. According to MassLive, Bryant was also charged with assaulting a police officer after officers arrived and allegedly observed him choking his wife in public.
Afterward, his defense blamed — you guessed it — racism.
“If Howard Bryant was Caucasian and was on the streets having exactly the same conversation with his wife — nobody would have even noticed,” his lawyer, Buz Eisenberg, told the Boston Herald.
“Race still plays a part in our society and we intend to contest these allegations completely,” Eisenberg added. “The 6-year-old had to witness his father being thrown on a hood of a car and being abused.”
State Police spokesman David Procopio rejected that explanation, saying the arrest had nothing to do with race.
“Howard Bryant was arrested, first and foremost, because evidence indicates he physically assaulted a woman,” Procopio said. “He had additional charges filed against him because he was combative with arresting officers.”
Put simply, being arrested after allegedly assaulting your spouse and then fighting with police is not evidence of racism.
But that’s who Howard Bryant is. Bomani Jones wouldn’t have him on his podcast if he were any different.
Caitlin Clark of the Indiana Fever is introduced before the game against the Golden State Valkyries at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, Ind., on July 15, 2026. (A.J. Mast/NBAE via Getty Images)
So it’s no surprise to see Bryant rush to defend the Black women who are so clearly targeting Caitlin Clark by claiming Clark deserves the vitriol because she sticks her tongue out and complains about calls.
By the way, that sounds a bit like a player by the name of Michael Jordan. Jordan routinely taunted opponents by, well, sticking out his tongue, trash-talking relentlessly, screaming at officials, and celebrating in defenders’ faces.
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Howard Bryant has written extensively about Jordan over the years. Curiously, Bryant never argued that Jordan deserved to be punched in the throat because of it.
Why is that?
