Caitlin Clark was not happy with the officiating during Wednesday’s 88-75 loss against the Golden State Valkyries, particularly regarding a no-call in the second quarter after contact at the rim left her briefly limping.
“That hurts,” she told reporters, saying she was kneed in the quad on the play in question. “The ref can’t miss that. And then I have to play with a contusion in my leg the rest of the game. It’s ridiculous.”
How Clark is officiated—and the physicality of the WNBA in general—has been a hot-button topic yet again this season, which further boiled to the surface after Alyssa Thomas put her fist in Clark’s throat a few weeks ago and was subsequently suspended.
On Wednesday night, however, the contact on Clark seemed fairly innocuous, and her explosive reaction toward the referee very easily could have led to a technical foul.
Clark deals with plenty of physical treatment on the court, so it’s possible that some of those frustrations boiled to the surface this time. It has certainly sparked debate about the physicality of the league, and while some of that has come from bad actors with an entirely different axe to grind, former WNBA players have offered interesting perspectives on how the league is officiated.
“There’s a celebration to being like, ‘I’m bigger than you,'” retired point guard Layshia Clarendon, who seemed generally in favor of a more physical league, said on her No Offseason podcast (h/t Cassandra Negley of Yahoo Sports). “And I don’t want that to be shied away from because we’re women and it’s a women’s league. Being big and being stronger is a part of competitive advantage. It’s a big girls’ league.”
But not all former players feel the same.
“Trust me, my back wishes I had had a little more of that,” Elena Delle Donne said of modern officiating that prioritizes more freedom of movement for players. “It’s more fun to watch, and there are such skilled players out there. We want to see them do what they can do. We don’t want to just see them get beat up.”
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