Caitlin Clark’s flopping isn’t just annoying – it’s becoming dangerous | Opinion

The fouls they claim occurred? The “contusion” she says she suffered? The technicals that aren’t deserved? Clark doesn’t suddenly become invisible when she’s involved in a physical play, so we can see what actually happened.

Which is that Clark is flopping. And her histrionics while doing so are putting other people in danger.

Now, before you start howling and going on about the eyeballs Clark has brought to the WNBA and women’s basketball, I am not a Clark hater. She can be an electrifying player – her player of the week honor is richly deserved after she went off for a combined 75 points in her last three games – and she’s been the gateway drug to women’s sports fandom for millions of people.

That, however, does not entitle her to a free pass.

Clark angry about supposed no-calls

Twice in the last two weeks, Clark has raged over non-calls and spun a narrative easily debunked by video of the actual game.

First, she tried to sell a foul on Chelsea Gray in the Indiana Fever’s July 12 game against the Las Vegas Aces. The two did have contact as Gray was driving to the basket, but it was minimal. No different from what’s seen dozens of times in every WNBA game.

NBA games, too, for that matter.

Yet Clark collapsed to the ground as if she’d been hit in the stomach with a battering ram, then yelled at the refs, demanding a foul. They reviewed it – and saw what everyone else had: There was no foul. Barely any contact.

Three days l

ater, against the Golden State Valkyries, Clark said she got kneed in the quad by Kiah Stokes as Clark drove to the basket. Clark was livid no foul was called, dropping an f-bomb as she yelled at the referee.

“I got kneed in the quad. That hurts,” Clark said after the game. "The ref can't miss that. Then I have to play with a contusion in my leg the rest of the game. That’s ridiculous. You can’t miss calls like that.”

Yet once again, replays clearly showed if there was contact, it was minimal.

So let’s call this what it is: Flopping.

Clark is hardly the only athlete to do it. We just finished a World Cup where players routinely acted as if they needed an emergency amputation only to pop right back up and continue playing. It’s been a staple of James Harden’s career. Was in Vlade Divać’s, too.

But just as Clark’s flops don’t occur behind closed doors, they don’t occur in a vacuum either.

Rants and histrionics put opponents at risk

It seems there is a white nationalist element to Clark’s fandom that is deeply, deeply problematic, made even more so because the WNBA is made up predominantly of Black women, many of them queer. When Clark claims fouls that don’t exist, when she goes on profanity-laced tirades at referees, those racists see her as a white woman in need of saving and take matters into their own hands.

Gray posted just one of the messages she got following the Fever game, in which a man called her a racial slur. After fans identified the man, he was fired by his employer, Hilton Grand Vacations.

“Enough is kind of enough,” Gray said on July 15. "These messages are not the first of its kind. There was other stuff too ... It was just time. I got fed up with it and I just decided to share it."

It shouldn’t need reminding this country has an awful history of Black people being harmed, even killed, in the name of “defending” white women. The WNBA's All-Star Game this weekend is in Chicago, Emmett Till's hometown, and a local art gallery is currently hosting an exhibit imagining his life if he hadn't been lynched. While it’s incumbent on the WNBA to do more to protect its players, there also should be an expectation on Clark to recognize the wider consequences of her actions.

The officiating in the WNBA needs to be better, no question, and no one is expecting Clark to be a punching bag. But the W is a physical league and always has been. Clark draws fouls not because players are jealous or are out to get her, but because her 3-point shot and passing ability means defenders have to pick her up from the baseline. Don’t, and she’ll make you pay.

(The same defensive principle applies to Sabrina Ionescu and Paige Bueckers, by the way, and will to JuJu Watkins and Hannah Hidalgo when they get in the league.)

Again, I’m not a Clark hater. She's great for the league and for women's sports.

She'll be even better when she cuts out the Oscar auditions.