Follow Caitlin Clark’s lead, ignore the nonsense said about her from the fringes

Caitlin Clark seems able to handle everything that has come with the crush of being a national celebrity, but are the rest of us?

Over the weekend, the Iowa women’s basketball star totaled 38 points and 12 assists in the Hawkeyes’ 93-85 win. Which was televised on Fox in prime-time for one reason and one reason only: Clark’s participation.

But as the weekend grew older, more and more Iowans — media, fans, and the program’s communications arm — were steamed at comments about Clark made by basketball Hall of Famer Sheryl Swoopes on a podcast hosted by former NBA star Gilbert Arenas.

“Kelsey Plum set that record in four years. Well, Caitlin should have broke that record in four years,” Swoopes said. “But because there was a COVID year and another year — you know what I mean? She’s already had an extra year to break that record, so is it truly a broken record?”

All of which, of course, was nonsense. Clark will break the record in less than four full seasons, possibly two games from now and almost surely within the next three.

Swoopes has been hammered for her uninformed remarks. It became a feeding frenzy on social media.

The 3-time WNBA Player of the Year/3-time Olympic gold medal-winner’s remarks aren’t defensible because they aren’t based in fact. Facts should still matter as much now as ever, though they don’t for some sad and strange reasons. But is what was said by Swoopes or anyone else who takes verbal swipes at Clark worth the outrage?

This moment in time with Clark is not normal. We’ve seen pro athletes with Clark’s level of popularity and beyond. People wear LeBron James and Lionel Messi jerseys in most countries on Earth. We have not seen this for a college athlete.

“Moment in time” are the operative words. Nothing could have made the nation care about a women’s basketball player in Swoopes’ era the way it is fascinated by Clark today. Nor was there a player then with her mind-blowing shooting and passing skills.

And with the dawn of NIL, you have a 22-year-old female from Iowa as a pitch person for the largest property, casualty, and auto insurance provider in the country. With Reggie Miller as a mere supporting actor in one of her commercials!

Iowa women’s basketball has never been close to sold out for a season before this one. The sellout crowd of 17,950 at Maryland Saturday was par for this season’s course. Photos that circulated of the swarm of fans in the Hawkeyes’ team hotel waiting to see Clark and her teammates leave to get on the bus to the arena were almost jarring.

If all this isn’t Jordanesque as in the Michael Jordan Chicago Bulls of the 1990s, it’s way closer than anything that’s ever happened in Iowa. Or women’s basketball. Or college basketball. Or perhaps college sports.

The way Clark has gotten all the suffocating attention and still played her game has been amazing. Scoring 32.4 points per game and leading the NCAA in assists for the nation’s No. 2 team is hard enough to comprehend.

But with Clark’s level of fame in 2024 comes outside scrutiny and stupidity, and you can’t fact-check or shout down all of it. When Clark collided with an Ohio State fan during the court storm in Columbus last month following Iowa’s overtime loss to the Buckeyes, many poor, deluded online souls declared that Clark did it intentionally.

She ran into the fan and flopped, you know. And pretended to be hurt. Because her team lost. To get attention. And sympathy.

People actually said that in public forums. Just like people have actually said the Super Bowl will be rigged in favor of the Kansas City Chiefs, with Taylor Swift the central figure in a meticulously planned political plot.

This Clark story is too good and too fun to be marred by any lunacy from the fringes. The remainder of Iowa’s season will fly by all too fast. Watching Clark and the Hawkeyes play the way they’ve played should be savored, not picked apart.

So far, Clark has handled falsehoods about her by ignoring them and not giving them oxygen. The rest of us should do the same.

Comments: (319) 398-8440; mike.hlas@thegazette.com