In July earlier this year, Caitlin Clark sat for a one-on-one interview with Malika Andrews. The Indiana Fever star is usually very diplomatic with her emotions, but amid all the controversy surrounding the league and her team, Andrews was able to get an honest admission from Clark. She didn’t want to step out of the locker room and face reporters who were ready with the most trending question on the internet.
Clark told Andrews that she didn’t want to be “fearful” about the surrounding conversations when she stepped out of the locker room. But Clark’s admission was quickly met with a tougher challenge when ESPN’s Monica McNutt instead demanded more accountability from Clark. Three months later, Fox News’ Shemeka Michelle has fired back at McNutt in the Fever star’s defense.
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“Caitlin Clark signed a contract to play basketball, not supervise the people watching it,” Michelle said in a video posted on her X. “Y’all act as if she has to be held accountable for every person tuning into the WNBA…Everything they say, everything they do, just because you have a platform doesn’t mean that everybody else’s behavior becomes your responsibility. “
Even teammate Kelsey Mitchell entered the conversation. She pushed back, arguing that grown adults should be held responsible for their own actions
“Yes, Caitlin has a platform, but she can’t be responsible for the behavior of all of these fans. Y’all want more fans and then want to load her also with more responsibility for the fans?”
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It’s been three years since Clark joined the WNBA. Since then, the league has experienced exponential growth, but it has also been plagued by controversies surrounding politics, race, and gender. Michelle clarified that Clark didn’t need to be accountable for fans’ “preferences” and “political affiliations.”
Just days before Andrews interviewed Clark, Sophie Cunningham had made headlines with her comments. In her viral interview with ESPN, alluding to transgender participation in sports, Clark’s teammate had said that “young girls” shouldn’t have to play against “biological men.” This sparked outrage from trans activists, and there were also protests outside the arenas during Indiana games.
“I thought the choice of the word of being ‘fearful’ in the conversation after the game was interesting, because oftentimes it seems, at least in the larger discourse — and not that this isn’t an emotional experience for Caitlin Clark, because I believe that it is — but it’s the folks that are accused of doing something outside of the parameters of competition that are actually the ones that are fearful when you look at their social media,” McNutt said the next day after the interview.
McNutt was addressing the alleged toxicity that players have reported about the Indiana Fever fans. During the exit interview, even Fever star Kelsey Mitchell said that she received hate messages in her DM. In her exit interview, Aliyah Boston also called out the Fever fanbase for calling her “everything under the earth.”
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“This is what I will say: Caitlin Clark is 24; she is a shining star in the galaxy of the WNBA, but I do think that as she continues to matriculate through this league, there’s room for a little bit more accountability and self-awareness in terms of her role in the larger sisterhood, if she sees it that way, in the WNBA,” McNutt added.
It would be unfair to Clark to say that she had always been silent about the mistreatment of her teammates. She called out fans using her name to spread hate and racism against Mitchell. In her rookie season, she had called out fans who used her name to push their agendas.
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