I don't watch the WNBA. Ask me to name more than two WNBA teams, and maybe I could name a team or two. But you don't need to follow a sport closely to notice when something keeps happening to the same player, over and over, while the people in charge keep looking the other way. So what exactly is it going to take for the WNBA to actually protect its biggest star?
Seriously, that’s the only WNBA story that reaches people like me who don’t follow the league, aside from the occasional complaint about pay comparisons to NBA players.
Despite not giving a hoot, I know enough to know that Caitlin Clark is the WNBA's biggest draw. She's also been on the receiving end of a pattern obvious even to non-fans: hard physical contact from opposing players, foul calls that mysteriously vanish or get downgraded, and a media circus that always finds a way to drag race, sexuality, and, of course, politics into a basketball game.
It started almost immediately, but the latest one might be the worst yet.
On Wednesday, during a 111-109 Fever loss to the Phoenix Mercury, veteran forward Alyssa Thomas dove into a scramble, appeared to knee Clark in the groin, then drove a closed fist into Clark's throat as she went down and stepped over her to get back in the play. No foul. Not a whistle.
I've slowed down the video of Caitlin Clark getting punched in the throat, it's hard to watch.
— Matt Van Swol (@mattvanswol) June 25, 2026
...can you even IMAGINE the outrage if the races were reversed?
Seriously.
What do you think they would do if a White player PUNCHED THE NECK of a Black basketball player? pic.twitter.com/sS64EZv6V3
The incident went viral, which is why I even know about it.
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Fever head coach Stephanie White didn't hold back afterward, calling the non-call "egregious" and "utterly disrespectful."
"We have a generational talent and a WNBA superstar who had two cheap shots right there that weren't called," White told reporters. “[Clark] is not called the same way as everybody else is called. The fist in the throat is crazy. It's crazy. It's dangerous." Clark left the game in the third quarter with a back injury from the same contest. Fever president Kelly Krauskopf put out a statement demanding that player safety be made "paramount." The league office, a full day later, reclassified Thomas's hit as a "non-basketball act," slapped her with a Flagrant 2, and suspended her for one game.
From where I sit, that’s assault. And something tells me it’s only going to get worse. Everyone knows what’s going on; I’m not a fan, and I know. So, what can fans do? Here's an idea: stop supporting this league.
Obviously, that's not a heavy lift for most of you reading this, since I doubt many were tuning in anyway. Some of what's been done to Clark over a few seasons amounts to the kind of contact that would get someone arrested outside an arena. It keeps happening to a player who happens to be straight and white in a league where plenty of voices act as if the sport belongs exclusively to lesbians and minorities, and a straight white superstar pulling in record ratings and ticket sales is an inconvenience to be tolerated rather than protected.
I can't say I'm boycotting the WNBA, because you can't boycott something you never watched. But the league has become a tidy little microcosm of how the left actually feels about violence against white people: explain it away, downgrade it, suspend somebody for one game, and move on. It's the same instinct that turns a kid like Karmelo Anthony into a sympathetic figure to many on the left after he stabbed a white kid at a track meet. Once the victim's identity outweighs the act itself, the narrative decides the punishment.
Caitlin Clark keeps getting hit, and the WNBA keeps proving it isn't interested in stopping it. That's all the reason anyone needs to stop pretending this league deserves an audience.
