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The Index Finger

Last night in Indianapolis, a man stood up and pointed at A’ja Wilson. It was late in Game 2 of a first-round playoff series at Gainbridge Fieldhouse, and Indiana was protecting a lead it would keep, 99-89. Wilson, the Las Vegas Aces’ four-time MVP, had just drawn a foul on Sophie Cunningham and was walking back up the floor. The man rose from the baseline seats, stepped toward her, and pointed, yelling. She told him one thing, twice. “You don’t point at me, you don’t point at me.” She went toward him, pointing back, and they were face-to-face before her teammates arrived to pull her away. The whole Aces bench emptied behind her, team security included, and Cheyenne Parker-Tyus pointed the man out for security. The referees gave Wilson a technical foul. Security walked the man and a woman out of the baseline seats to loud boos, then brought them back a few minutes later to applause. The Fever released a statement that night. A comment had been reported. Security found no violation of the Fan Code of Conduct, the fan was not removed, and the team considered the matter closed.

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Caitlin Clark: Open Season on the Golden Goose

Caitlin Clark gave the WNBA the audience it spent thirty years failing to find. On the night of June 24 it gave her a fist to the throat and a step over her body, and the officials paid to watch the floor saw nothing. Here is the case for her leaving. Begin with the tape, because the tape is where excuses go to die. Phoenix led Indiana late in the first half at Gainbridge Fieldhouse, a building that exists in its current sold-out form for one reason, and that reason was lying on the hardwood. Caitlin Clark had driven the lane, absorbed contact from Lexi Held, and gone down onto her side. The ball came loose. Held, DeWanna Bonner, and Alyssa Thomas dove after it and landed in a pile on top of her. Then Thomas, with Clark pinned beneath her, drove a closed fist into Clark’s throat, pushed herself upright, and stepped over the body of the best thing to happen to women’s basketball in forty years. One account of the scramble puts Thomas’s knee into Clark’s groin on the way down. Three referees stood within a few yards of all of it and called nothing.

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Wnba: We Got Next? — Get Some English First!

As I watched the NBA semi-finals play out, I was amused, and then horrified at the commercials for the new Wnba or – in other words – The WOMEN’S National Basketball Association. Allow me a moment to vent my view before I get to the meaty core of the horror: In the spirit of the LPGA and Women’s Tennis, basketball will now rock with segregated competition where “separate” does not yet mean or intend to be “equal.” What’s next? The Wnfl and Wmlb? C’mon! If the sexes are truly equal – then don’t segregate women into a lesser league because they “can’t compete” or aren’t allowed to play with the “big boys.” Isn’t it our responsibility as role models (and we all are in everything we do no matter what Charles Barkley tries to tell us) to show that the sexes can get along in life AND on the basketball court? I don’t buy it that women aren’t good enough to play in the “men’s league” and I don’t think they should be stuck in a lesser league of their own, either.

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