Clark's shoe deal says the quiet part out loud about women's hoops
Role of race in sport cannot be downplayed in her ascendancy, Kevin Blackistone says.
On the day before Caitlin Clark achieved her latest record, a US$28-million signature sneaker deal with Nike, the professional basketball union she is about to become part of released a statement on Instagram: “Endorsements are NOT WNBA salary.”
It was a reminder from the Women's National Basketball Players Association that we have entered a golden era for a woman playing basketball but not for women's professional basketball. Or women's U.S. college basketball, for that matter.
It is Clark — and Clark alone — who is all the rage.
For further proof, the Washington Mystics announced Tuesday that their June 7 home game against the Indiana Fever, which last week drafted Clark first overall, sold out — in three hours. And that came after the game was moved from the Mystics' 4,200-seat Entertainment and Sports Arena across the Anacostia to the Wizards' 20,356-seat Capital One Arena in the heart of downtown. The Mystics were the second WNBA team to move a home date with Clark's Fever to a larger venue. And all of this came after three NCAA tournament games Clark played in this season set viewership records for the sport.
Of course, unless you have been living the past year on Bouvet Island, you know the myriad reasons for the phenomenon that is Clark. She injected basketball's most recent revolution of the really deep three-point shot into the women's game. Her signature shot is called the “logo three” because she often shoots from the border of any half-court floor artwork. And she does so with such remarkable accuracy that she scaled the mountain of college scoring — almost to its peak, where a lower-division player, Pearl Moore, planted her flag almost a half-century ago. But a misogynist NCAA didn't acknowledge women's sports then, which left most of us unaware of Moore's achievements until Clark's accomplishments got fact-checked this season.
Clark's leap into the national mainstream truly launched with the 2023 NCAA title game. Before that, she wasn't selling out every arena or generating the record-breaking television viewership. But after the showdown with LSU star Angel Reese, Clark became a bankable star, which is not surprising given the history race has always played in sports in this country when it comes to popularity or villainy.
For there was Clark, an austere representative of midwestern Caucasian values. And there was Reese, from the Baltimore area, which gave us The Wire, as an exemplar of everything that is Black urban esthetics, living up to her adopted and trademarked nickname of “Bayou Barbie,” long ponytail flying and fashionable fake eyelashes flittering.
And with victory assured in the 2023 title game, Reese turned to Clark and gestured she was winning a championship ring and Clark was not. Clark was venerated for not responding; Reese was villainized. And the perception wasn't altered even after internet sleuths found Clark appearing to have made a similar gesture to an earlier opponent.
Only dereliction about the role of race in sport could lead anyone to downplay it in Clark's ascendancy, no matter her accomplishments. Indeed, the Great White Hope was born in the early 1900s as a title for any Caucasian man who stepped up to challenge Jack Johnson, the first Black boxer allowed to fight for the heavyweight championship, which he won. Jesse Owens was celebrated for refuting white supremacy, though America didn't accede to his evidencing. Baseball patted itself on the back for inviting Jackie Robinson to reintegrate its diamonds. Muhammad Ali was villainized for embracing Blackness. Someone tagged the 1988 Notre Dame-Miami football game as Catholics versus Convicts in reference to the former school's religious foundation and the latter's Black players, some of whom had been arrested. And before this year's Clark-Reese rematch, a column celebrating UCLA's wholesomeness in contrast to LSU's “dirtiness” was so beyond the pale that the Los Angeles Times apologized for it.
And if that wasn't the quiet part said out loud, maybe the shoe deal Clark was just awarded is. She received what is known of in the sports endorsement business as a signature shoe.
It is reserved for the best, for those who shine so bright that shoe hucksters believe they will attract the most customers.
It is an elite group even within the NBA, in which only about 25 of the fewer than 600 players who suit up each season have such rich deals. Their names are household and mostly mononymous. LeBron. KD. Giannis. Steph. Trae. And they all trace their legacy to, of course, Jordan, who remains the most supreme even if he wasn't the first.
The women's lineage isn't so long. And the current list isn't so deep. Clark joined just three other current players with signature shoes: Breanna Stewart, Elena Delle Donne and Sabrina Ionescu. In the WNBA, a league that is disproportionately predominated by Black women, the only players so highly lionized are Caucasian.
But good for Caitlin Clark. Hopefully, the rest of the league can hitch to her Air Clarks — or whatever they will be called — and fly.