I’m writing this with a belly full of Ruffles so forgive me for the hangover. I want to spend a little bit of time talking about Caitlin Clark. She’s America’s media darling. She’s the greatest to ever play the sport, breaking scoring records that haven’t been touched since–wait… 2013?! That is a bit odd. It turns out that…wait… Okay. This scoring record business is a bit confusing now. Dyaisha Fair ended with 3403 points in 2024–this year as she fell short of the tournament. That puts her 427 behind Clark. To be fair (PUN!) she did it in 5 whereas Clark only has played 4. Plum played 4 years of guard at Washington and scored 3527–the previous record. She played 4 more games than Clark’s (running?) total of 3830. Of course none of the broke Pistol Pete’s three year LSU total of 3,664 until Clark did it… in 4.
So why all the hype about Clark when we barely heard about Plum (a WNBA all-star) back in the day? Well, I think it comes down to cultural race and the stories we want to be able to tell. Clark is a white girl in a sport that is culturally black. She is constantly presented as a contrast to players like Angel Reese, whose mostly black and indigenous team is seen by many as rowdy and, un lady like. Hype begets hype and as her story and icon-image grows she is getting offers of 10M to play intramural 3 on 3 hoops with dudes. Articles are out there about how she played boys AAU and won ‘ships–or a ‘ship. Sure, it happened. However, let’s be real about this: Juju Watkins is on a pace to outscore Clark and she is only an 18 yr old freshman. So, why aren’t we hearing about her as much? Well, I think it comes down to cultural race and the stories we want to be able to tell.