The Round Mound of Rebound has emphatically come to the defence of one of the WNBA’s budding — and most controversial — stars.
Outspoken Basketball Hall of Famer Charles Barkley believes the WNBA has thrown up an airball during rookie sensation Caitlin Clark’s first season of pro basketball, in part due to jealousy over the former college star’s abilities on the court.
“These ladies, and I am a WNBA fan, they cannot have f***ed this Caitlin Clark thing up any worse if they tried,” Barkley said on the Bill Simmons Podcast this week, according to the New York Post. “If you got people in a room, a bunch of dudes in a room, we couldn’t have came up with a master plan with what these women have done.
“This girl is incredible. What she did in college for women’s basketball, what she’s doing in the WNBA … The number of eyeballs she brought from the college to the pros and these women to have this petty jealousness, you say to yourself, ‘What is going on here?’”
Barkley didn’t directly point any fingers over the jealousy but Clark, the NCAA’s all-time leading scorer who now plays for the WNBA’s Indiana Fever, has been targeted with some hard fouls by league veterans. She also appears to have a developing feud with Chennedy Carter of the Chicago Sky, who is a teammate of another rookie of the year candidate, Angel Reese.
Clark had a slow start to her pro career but has been lighting it up lately, finishing with her second triple-double of the season in a win Wednesday over the Los Angeles Sparks. In 34 games with Indiana, 22-year-old Clark has averaged 18.9 points, 5.8 rebounds and 8.4 assists.
But Clark also is a polarizing figure on the court. Barkley, who was also a love-him-or-hate-him player during his storied NBA career, is clearly on her side.
“The stuff about her is petty and jealous,” Barkley said on the podcast. “The thing I love about her, she never says a word … She’s playing much faster, much faster. She was playing too slow the first half of the season. When I watched her play the last month I think she’s playing much faster because she’s learning to trust those girls more.
“There’s been so much negativity and a lot of it is just petty jealousness.”
Naturally, not everyone agrees with Sir Charles’ assessment.
“Seriously…. wtf are you talking about….,” Sparks forward Dearica Hamby wrote on X.
“Interested to know who are all the women that are hating on CC?” Jonquel Jones of the New York Liberty added. “I’m seeing a lot of coverage about it but I don’t see the hate? I’m also not a big comment reader so I might’ve missed it.”