Basketball legend Cheryl Miller has said that Caitlin Clark is ‘despised’ by some ‘dummies’ in the WNBA community because of her race.
Clark, who won the Rookie of the Year Award last year, has been accused of benefitting from her ‘white privilege’ as she shot to national fame, earned several high-profile endorsement deals and ultimately helped WNBA viewership skyrocket.
Notably, Washington Mystics co-owner Sheila Johnson attributed Clark’s race to her winning TIME Magazine’s Athlete of the Year award, while ex-WNBA star Sheryl Swoopes – a frequent Clark critic – also questioned why she had won the award.
Clark herself told TIME that the WNBA was ‘built on’ black players, but Miller still believes the Indiana has been unfairly targeted due to her race
‘I’m gonna be honest, because it needs to be said. I can relate to that young lady and I felt for her,’ Miller, who is black, began on All the Smoke.
‘I know what it’s like to be hated. I know what it’s like to be a black woman and hated because of my color. I can’t imagine this young lady – I don’t wanna use ‘hate’ but despised…’
Caitlin Clark won the WNBA’s Rookie of the Year Award for the Indiana Fever last year
Miller is seen cheering on her alma mater USC during a game vs. UCLA on March 1
Miller said that Clark, who was ‘cocky for a good reason,’ had brought some of the criticism onto herself, but nonetheless criticized the ‘narrative’ that had formed against her.
‘But to watch the dynamics and the media, they had their narrative. And I was pleased and proud to see the narrative wasn’t the truth.’
Miller, a 1984 gold medalist and three-time player of the year for USC, also branded current and former players critical of Clark as ‘dummies.’
‘Is she getting hyped? Yes. But she was in the backyard. She was putting in the same time, sometimes maybe more than you were,’ she said of her peers. ‘I can’t fault her for what she was given.’
Regarding the league’s current crop of players, Miller added, ‘you’re getting paid now. Everybody now has an opportunity to pull up their chair and have a seat.
‘I’m just glad that these young ladies who are at the upper, upper tier of players, I hope and pray that they have a solid foundation, and that they know, guys, who they are. Because you know how vicious it is out there.’
Speaking to CNN last year, Johnson suggested that the entire league should have been recognized by TIME, rather than just Clark.
Clark was awarded TIME Magazine’s Athlete of the Year award, which some disagreed with
‘It’s just the structure of the way media plays out race. I feel really bad because I’ve seen so many players of color that are equally as talented and they never got the recognition that they should have, and I think right now, it is time for that to happen,’ she said.
‘You read TIME Magazine, where Caitlin Clark was named athlete of the year, why couldn’t they have put the whole WNBA on that cover and said, ‘The WNBA is the league of the year,’ because of all the talent that we have.
‘When you just keep singling out one player, it creates hard feelings and now you’re starting to hear stories of racism within the WNBA, and I don’t want to hear that. We have got to operate and become stronger as a league and respect everyone that’s playing and respect their talents.’
Writer and commentator Jemele Hill also told the LA Times that ‘we would all be very naive if we didn’t say race and her sexuality played a role in her popularity.’
Clark was named an All-Star in her first season and finished the year with 19.2 points and 8.4 assists per game – breaking the league’s single-season assist record.
