Washington Mystics owner Sheila Johnson spoke out against Time magazine over the naming Caitlin Clark “Athlete of the Year” in an interview with CNN Sport on Friday, suggesting the publication should have awarded the award to the entire WNBA.
Johnson even suggested the decision to give Clark the honor would fuel feelings of ‘racism’ within the league.
“Why couldn’t they have put the WNBA on the cover and said, ‘The WNBA is the league of the year,’ because of all the talent we have,” Johnson said. “When you single out one player it creates hard feelings, so now you’re starting to hear stories about racism within the WNBA, and I don’t want to hear that.”
Johnson even went so far as to claim that Clark’s attention and coining the term “the Caitlin Clark effect,” which has been associated with the attention she has brought to the league, is due to race.
“It’s the media’s way of playing up race,” Johnson said. “I feel really bad because I’ve seen so many players of color who are just as talented, and they never got the recognition they should have.”
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Iowa guard Caitlin Clark, left, appears to pass the ball against Louisville guard Morgan Jones, center, and forward Olivia Cochran during the first half of an Elite 8 college basketball game of the NCAA Tournament, Sunday, March 26, 2023, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Stephen Brashear)
The owner was also concerned that Clark had signed a $28 million endorsement deal with Nike in April, the richest sponsorship deal for a women’s basketball player.
“They would like to get the same kind of recognition. It all started with the whole Nike sponsorship that Caitlin got,” Johnson said. “There are other players who say, ‘What about us?'”
Johnson is the vice chairman of Monumental Sports & Entertainment, which also owns the NBA’s Washington Wizards and the NHL’s Washington Capitals. Her Mystics directly capitalized on Clark’s popularity to generate historic ticket sales at the end of this year’s regular season.
The Mystics’ season finale against Clark’s Indiana Fever was moved from the Mystics’ home venue, the Entertainment and Sports Arena with only 4,200 seats, to the Wizards’ venue, the Capital One Arena, which has a maximum capacity of 20,356 for basketball games. As a result, the September 19 game between the Fever and Mystics was the most visited WNBA regular season game in history, with 20,711 fans in attendance.
The Las Vegas Aces made a similar move when they hosted the Fever at the larger T-Mobile Arena for a July 2 game instead of playing at the relatively smaller Michelob ULTRA Arena. 20,366 fans showed up for that match highest Attending one regular season game since 1999.
Yet Johnson chose to publicly belittle and undermine the attention Clark is receiving in the CNN interview. Johnson also suggested that the WNBA’s increase in popularity was also due to other WNBA rookies from the 2024 season, including Chicago Sky star Angel Reese.
Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark (22) and Connecticut Sun forward DeWanna Bonner (24) exchange words during the first half of Game 2 of a first-round WNBA basketball playoff series, Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2024, in Uncasville, Conn. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill)
“It’s taken the WNBA almost 28 years to get to the point where we are today, and this year something clicked with the WNBA. It’s because of the draft of the players that came in. It’s not just Caitlin Clark, it’s Reese.” Johnson said. “We have so much talent that is so unknown, and I don’t think we can just tie it to one player.”
Johnson’s Mystics actually played a game against Reese’s Sky at the Capital One Arena this year, on June 6. However, that match attracted only 10,000 spectators – less than half the number at the match that featured Clark at the end of the season.
Johnson, the first Black woman to own three professional sports teams, is just one of many figures in sports and the media who portray the race for Clark’s popularity in a negative light.
WNBA MVP A’ja Wilson has said that the fact that Clark was white was a “big thing” when it came to the rookie’s popularity
In May, The View host Sunny Hostins said during an episode of that show that Clark’s popularity was partly due to “white privilege.”
Journalist Jemele Hill insisted it was “naive” to say that Clark’s race as a white woman and sexuality as a straight woman played no role in her popularity in the WNBA, where the vast majority of players are black and many are lesbian. an interview with the Los Angeles Times in May. Hill also emphasized that Clark’s popularity with these attributes is “problematic.”
Former FS1 and ESPN anchor Skip Bayless, one of Clark’s toughest critics early in her WNBA career, admitted he pretended not to be impressed by her skills out of “guilt” and didn’t want to budge. racial division. He even went so far as to suggest that Clark had become a “right-wing symbol” due to the fact that she is a white player who excels in the game of basketball.
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June 30, 2024; Phoenix, Ariz.: Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark (22) is fouled by Phoenix Mercury guard Sug Sutton (1) during the fourth quarter at Footprint Center. (Republic of Michael Chow-Arizona)
Clark has been forced to answer questions about her race and alleged racism from her fans several times since joining the WNBA this year, including in the Time magazine profile that criticized Johnson.
“I want to say I’ve earned everything, but as a white person I have privilege,” Clark told Time. “A lot of the players in the league that have been really good have been Black players. This league is kind of built on them.”
Johnson said she does not believe Clark had to make this statement, but that she “applauds” the phenomenon for doing so.
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