CLARK DESERVES THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE AS MORE VERBAL THUNDER STRIKES
She continues to show strength and poise as WNBA players and commenters hit hard, including DiJonai Carrington, who wants her to engage against “racism, bigotry, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia ..."
Never mind the U.S. Olympic team. Caitlin Clark might become a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize. She continues to remain poised and strong when society cracks around her, such as a social-media comment denigrating her, courtesy of Connecticut Sun guard DiJonai Carrington.
Clark is trying to play basketball and win games for the Indiana Fever, who are 4-10. Carrington, rudely, wants her to engage in racial confrontations, a remark that came as she openly mocked Clark’s reaction to a foul call during a game. This is yet another WNBA player trying to goad the rookie into a harsh outbreak because, oh, I don’t know, she makes more than $30 million a year in endorsements.
“Dawg. How one can not be bothered by their name being used to justify racism, bigotry, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia & the intersectionalities of them all is nuts,” Carrington wrote. “We all see the (s—). We all have a platform. We all have a voice & they all hold weight. Silence is a luxury.”
Silence is a luxury? For Clark, who is 22, silence is peace and quiet. Rather than respond to Carrington’s R+B+M+X+H+I+N, she is asking to be left alone, not that it will be possible in a money-driven league that wants the verbal flame-throwing.
“People should not be using my name to push those agendas. It's disappointing. It's not acceptable," Clark said when a reporter asked about the words. “… Treating every single woman in this league with the same amount of respect, I think, it's just a basic human thing that everybody should do.”
Wisely, she does not monitor what is said about her online. The fury went haywire after she was left off the Olympic team last weekend. NBC wanted her for powerhouse ratings and some of us said Diana Taurasi shouldn’t be making her sixth appearance at 42, while Brittney Griner might be planning a way to smuggle cannabis oil cartridges for the Paris trip. Clark would have been one of 12. She didn’t make the cut, prompting NBA commissioner Adam Silver — who is dealing weekly with NBC as the network finishes a new media-rights deal — to say, “It would have been nice to see her on the floor.”
Clark said she isn’t concerned about reactions, including roughhouse play against her by league veterans. “It’s not something I can control,” she said. “I don't put too much thought and time into thinking about things like that, and to be honest, I don't see a lot of it. Basketball is my job. Everything on the outside, I can't control that, so I'm not going to spend time thinking about that.”
That drew a rebuke from Carrington, as did this Clark comment about not making the Olympic team: “That's just not where my focus is. That's not what I think about on a day-to-day basis. I think about my team. I think about ways I can get better. It’s basketball at the end of the day. There's no grudges, nothing like that. It's a sport, it's competitive. It's not going to be nice all the time; that's not what basketball is. And I think that people that play at the highest level understand that.”
Carrington wants to see Clark grow angry and fire back. That will not be happening. The on-court tactics against her will be mean and cruel, but she’s worried about improving the Fever’s record and her 15.6 points per game.
“Some of the women in this league were my biggest idols and role models growing up, helping me want to achieve this moment right here that I get to play in every single night,” Clark said. “Just be a kind person and treat them how you would want to be treated. I think that's very simple.”
Simplicity doesn’t describe today’s world. Maybe it does for a young woman from West Des Moines who played at Iowa and lives with her boyfriend in Indianapolis. Caitlin Clark wants to make her life and our lives fun. Forget it. But she might think about an award that honors “the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations.” The Nobel Peace Prize isn’t held in France next month.
But think about Oslo.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.