Caitlin Clark …. Seriously

[YGIFS 19,450]

The Laettner/Shaq thing was always curious to me.  Reggie Miller simply wasn't good enough to be on the final 12 because they wanted to have one amateur on the squad as a nod to the college history of the Olympic teams.  But probably should have been Shaq.  You take away that college spot, then yeah-Reggie likely gets the nod.  But they had enough good shooters.  People can bitch and moan all they want about I. Thomas all they want, if he plays---Jordan doesn't.  The team still wins Gold, but they lose the prestige and marketing of having the greatest NBA player if Jordan doesn't go onto the roster.  Jordan says if Thomas plays, I don't.  Plain and simple.  Wasn't that tough of a call.

Now to draw a comparison to what's going on with this Women's Olympic squad.  Think of Larry Bird.  He's by far the oldest player on the team, obviously an NBA legend at the point.  But he's got back problems, doesn't play that much in the build-up to the games, nor the games themselves.  But they wanted him on there because he was a talented and proven veteran who had "earned it."  Same shit happening with this Women's team.  Field the best 12, great.  We get it.  But you simply make more money for the team for 2028 by putting marketable faces on the squad as well.  Was anybody buying Larry Bird merch in 1993?  No.  

[immamac 42,857]

Watching this game now. She sucks all the air off the court if she made more of her shots and her teammates didn’t brick wide open shit. 

Holy fuck that’s flagrant as fuck too on angel reese. 

[LTtxfan 49,196]

4 minutes ago, immamac said:

Holy fuck that’s flagrant as fuck too on angel reese. 

Reese upset about her foul call on Caitlin just now... hilarious  😂 😂😂😂

[Underdog 28,684]

Harrison for the Sky is a fine looking woman. 

[LTtxfan 49,196]

Finally... great traveling call against Chicago

[immamac 42,857]

Another thing after watching a full quarter of this horrendous product is that Caitlin Clark is playing a completely different pace of game than the rest of these girls. Her team actually can’t keep up, but neither can the other team. I think it’s why she’s turning the ball over so much and why she’s so “exciting” 

She’s literally everywhere on the court it’s kind of bonkers. 

[immamac 42,857]

Also, she has a commanding presence which is kinda weird to watch. 

[Message Board User 12,395]

17 minutes ago, immamac said:

Watching this game now. She sucks all the air off the court if she made more of her shots and her teammates didn’t brick wide open shit. 

Holy fuck that’s flagrant as fuck too on angel reese. 

Pancho's favorite player is a fucking clown.

 

[Pam Cummings 9,644]

8 minutes ago, immamac said:

Another thing after watching a full quarter of this horrendous product is that Caitlin Clark is playing a completely different pace of game than the rest of these girls. Her team actually can’t keep up, but neither can the other team. I think it’s why she’s turning the ball over so much and why she’s so “exciting” 

She’s literally everywhere on the court it’s kind of bonkers. 

Some of her turnovers are just her making an unthinkable pass to a teammate who was not expecting it.

[BurntOrange&White 39,934]

5 hours ago, aggie08 said:

Honestly, Shaq being left off for Laettner is a pretty good parallel. They had one spot for someone coming out of college, so it made perfect sense to give it to one of the most accomplished, popular (infamous?) college players of all-time, despite Shaq obviously being better at basketball.

Also, I'm not sure Larry Bird was one of the 12 best Celtics by 1992. And Magic had just retired, so he technically wasn't even an NBA player at the time. But it was important that they were both on the roster as NBA and basketball ambassadors. Isaiah and Reggie wouldn't have had the same impact.

I've come around to how irrational and short-sighted leaving her off the team is. 

Larry, Magic, and Laettner were all chosen because of their name and popularity. Birds back was fucked up and he was a shell of himself and you note that Magic was retired and came out of retirement for it, and your obvious Laettner reasoning. 
 

 

[BurntOrange&White 39,934]

Stephen A is spitting straight 📠 about this situation. 

[immamac 42,857]

Yeah I’ve seen enough. I think Clark could be a finesse bench player in d league. She couldn’t hang as a starter or as a major contributor but she’s on a different level than these girls. It’s like she’s playing a different sport. She dribbles/moves like a college men’s PG. I would actually be interested in seeing her play a much much faster paced game. 

[Braff Zacklin 13,584]

Just now, immamac said:

I think Clark could be a finesse bench player in d league.

 

[immamac 42,857]

Are you watching this game? 

[LTtxfan 49,196]

11 minutes ago, Message Board User said:

Pancho's favorite player is a fucking clown.

 

Fuk...  should have been a flagrant 2 since there was a wind-up

[Pancho 44,825]

10 minutes ago, Message Board User said:

Pancho's favorite player is a fucking clown.

 

You consciously chose to put my name here for some reason, and that’s some weak and pussy ass behavior.

Not once on this website have I proclaimed angel reese to be my favorite player and you know that. 

[LTtxfan 49,196]

Caitlin has to get stronger with the ball driving, and it would be great to see her develop a post up game when smaller guards are used to defend her. 

Most players can always get better on defense too including Caitlin.  Still more game for her to develop... 

[LTtxfan 49,196]

GREAT PASS!!!

[YGIFS 19,450]

17 minutes ago, Braff Zacklin said:

 

I never realized how much Ron White looks like a villain in "Game of Thrones" 

[d2o 1,602]

1 hour ago, LTtxfan said:

Fuk...  should have been a flagrant 2 since there was a wind-up

Yeah thats not a flagrant 2 anywhere.   She was clearly going for the ball and got her in the head.  No intent.   Flagrant 1 and everyone moves on.

Edited June 16 by d2o

[d2o 1,602]

1 hour ago, immamac said:

Yeah I’ve seen enough. I think Clark could be a finesse bench player in d league. She couldn’t hang as a starter or as a major contributor but she’s on a different level than these girls. It’s like she’s playing a different sport. She dribbles/moves like a college men’s PG. I would actually be interested in seeing her play a much much faster paced game. 

You clearly dont watch much basketball.  Men's or women's.  

[d2o 1,602]

1 hour ago, LTtxfan said:

GREAT PASS!!!

She can definitely play and sees the game a step or two ahead like all of the greats.  

[immamac 42,857]

18 minutes ago, d2o said:

You clearly dont watch much basketball.  Men's or women's.  

I watch enough to know what I'm seeing. 

[Patrick Bateman 3,916]

3 hours ago, Sawbonz said:

Leattner instead of Shaq is definitely the best parallel assuming another college player is going rather than her. I don’t know if that’s the case or not because I haven’t followed. 
 

If you need every roster spot to ensure you win the gold you take the 12 that give you the best shot. Clearly that wasn’t the case with the Dream Team. I honestly don’t know about this years Olympic women’s bb fields. 

Laettner earned his spot.  He was coming off back to back championships championships and swept every major award that year for best player in college basketball.  Shaq was certainly the best potential in teh draft and with his size and quickness, easily the best prospect, but a lot of times big potential doesn't refine until they get to the pros.  He was 19-20 years old and he was a beast but his teams never really did much in the tourney.  They only won 1 conference championship and were just eliminated in the tourney by and Indiana team who didn't have a guy over 6'9".  In retrospect it's easy to bag on Laettner because he was a dick on the court and Shaq went on to become an all-time great.  I think most folks would say Shaq was going to have the best pro career too, but in college, it wasn't controversial to say Christian was the best player in college, just like Clark was.  And there was one college spot because that is what was negotiated between USA basketball in the NCAA, not because anyone thought Laettner was the 12th best player in the USA.  They had to pick one.

Edited June 16 by Patrick Bateman

[Derka 6,223]

WAAAAAAAHHHHHHH! WAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!

 

“ima be able to look back in 20 years and say it wasn’t caitlin clark who killed everyone’s interest in this sport, it was me. and y’all need to know that.”

[closetohumping 17,442]

Alicia Boston went off!!

[LTtxfan 49,196]

19 minutes ago, definitely not derka said:

WAAAAAAAHHHHHH!

 

“ima be able to look back in 20 years and say it wasn’t caitlin clark who killed everyone’s interest in this sport, it was me. and y’all need to know that.”

 

CRYBABY REESE... 😫😫😫 

 

Edited June 16 by LTtxfan

[LTtxfan 49,196]

1 hour ago, d2o said:

Yeah thats not a flagrant 2 anywhere.   She was clearly going for the ball and got her in the head.  No intent.   Flagrant 1 and everyone moves on.

It's on the border, but would have gone a long way to discourage that type of foul. 

She wound up and went violently across the head -- there was an opportunity to call a flagrant2 

[ChickenSandwich 9,838]

25 minutes ago, definitely not derka said:

!

 

 

A: I was just playing hard trying to make a play for my team. It is unfortunate I hit Clark in the head, and I understand the rule regardless of intent. Im happy she is ok and that’s not why we lost today. 
 

Ladies need to watch Bull Durham on the flight home. 

[BurntOrange&White 39,934]

Can’t wait for defense of Reese to pop up in this thread. 

[Derka 6,223]

24 minutes ago, BurntOrange&White said:

Can’t wait for defense of Reese to pop up in this thread. 

i just saw a whole ass thread on twitter full of people blaming CC for the hook foul. they even praised chendall weaver’s sister in the play for “making sure CC didn’t fall down” lol. these people are completely delusional.

[Ghost of Shag 2,610]

Clark needs to stuff brass knuckles in her shorts. This shit is getting ridiculous.

[Derka 6,223]

 

[YGIFS 19,450]

I readily admit, I don't never followed the WNBA and never will.  The worst player in that league would beat me 1:1, 9 times outta 10.  

They finally get the spotlight shone on them and they are doing absolutely every single thing they can to fuck it up.  

Clark is in a precarious position because she could go play overseas and not deal with this women-holding-back-women thing and make more of a salary.  But her endorsement potential would drop a lot if she's not in the WNBA/NBA/U.S. limelight to push product to American girls.  

This really is one of the more insane things in sports I've seen in my lifetime.  I mean, I get ribbing the new, flashy rookie with some trash talk and making her earn her stripes.  But this is just literally gutting the checkbooks of most franchises.  And for what?  Because she's handled herself gracefully and brought attention to your sport without being an asshole about it?  Talk about stepping on your own dick.  

[LTtxfan 49,196]

Wrong thread

Edited June 16 by LTtxfan

[UpperWestside 6,167]

Angel Reese just needs microphones not placed anywhere near her for a couple of years. Team imposed time away from social media would be beneficial to both the league and herself. You committed a flagrant. Own it and just move on. The person you hit took it in stride. Let the ridiculous jealousy of another player, a player far superior to you in every facet of the game, go.

[closetohumping 17,442]

1 hour ago, BurntOrange&White said:

Can’t wait for defense of Reese to pop up in this thread. 

We don’t see everything or know everything.  Maybe Clark is a jerk teammate? Racist?  Bully?  Could be a lot going on behind scenes

[BurntOrange&White 39,934]

Dude is spittin….

 

[Kermit 3,156]

12 minutes ago, closetohumping said:

We don’t see everything or know everything.  Maybe Clark is a jerk teammate? Racist?  Bully?  Could be a lot going on behind scenes

What? Man, if any of that were the case, it’s leaking. 

[immamac 42,857]

37 minutes ago, closetohumping said:

We don’t see everything or know everything.  Maybe Clark is a jerk teammate? Racist?  Bully?  Could be a lot going on behind scenes

Dude, we see and hear everything. You think if CC was running around calling girls nappy headed hoes we wouldn't know about it in less than 30 seconds? 

Plug in your fucking brain. 

[Herpa Derpa 6,126]

whoosh

Edited June 16 by Herpa Derpa

[BurntOrange&White 39,934]

I feel like she's starting to adjust her game now....she's being more aggressive and more physical.

[The Dog 44,058]

Angel Reese might be a bit tone deaf.

[Carl Spackler 3,483]

9 minutes ago, The Dog said:

Angel Reese might be a bit tone deaf.

Or stupid.

Or both.

[LTtxfan 49,196]

WNBA kinda like WWE Women's Wrestling??

Chicago Sky rookie Angel Reese recently told reporters she will "take the villain role" if it helps grow women's basketball, and she is dressing the part for Sunday's game against Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever.

As Justin Tasch of the New York Post noted, Reese will wear custom-painted Reeboks with a Joker design for the highly anticipated contest:

"I let Marvin do whatever," Reese said of the shoes that were painted by Marvin Baroota, per Tasch. "He drops the shoes on me at 10 o'clock the day before we leave. He brings the shoes to me and I'm just like, 'All right, I'll wear these.'"

She isn't the only one with head-turning shoes paying homage to a famous villain in Sunday's game.

Clark broke out the Kobe Grinches for the contest:

 

 

[LTtxfan 49,196]

Caitlin:  "It's just a part of basketball," she told reporters. "It is what it is. Just trying to make a play on the ball and get the block. It happens."

 

Reese offered a similar take on the situation.

"It was a basketball play. I can't control the refs. They affected the game obviously a lot today," she told reporters. "I'm always going for the ball. Y'all are going to play that clip 20 times before Monday."

 

Upgrading the call to a flagrant 1 was clearly the right call. Reese may have been making a natural basketball play, but she made clear contact with Clark's head in the process. 

 

[Deej 76,800]

If Clark's teammates were worth a shit, they'd go 80s NBA enforcer on Reese. 

[Sawbonz 27,565]

Seems like one of her teammates needs to play enforcer next time this happens 

[LTtxfan 49,196]

Editorial...

As a serious basketball fan, I regret to report that all this mean girl stuff following Caitlin Clark’s professional debut has persuaded me to return to my longstanding policy of total indifference to the WNBA.

Maybe I’ll be back, maybe not. It depends.

I’d like it to be about basketball, not gender politics, not race and certainly not electoral politics. I get enough of those things everywhere else, thank you. Like most relatively normal sports fans, I tune in to ballgames partly to get away from all of it.

As a major follower of the NBA playoffs, it’s occurred to me that one of the best things about the emergence of European stars like Nikola Jokic and Luka Doncic in the league is that people don’t talk about race the way they used to. Nobody can blame a Slovenian player like Doncic for America’s racial divide nor a Serb like Jokic — although his own country has known its share of ethnic hatred.

I hear Doncic giving interviews in confident, idiomatic English — his fourth language — and I wonder if maybe the 25-year-old hard-court magician isn’t an intellectual genius, too. He certainly plays like one.

But even Doncic couldn’t have led the Dallas Mavericks to the NBA Finals without his teammate Kyrie Irving, a Jersey Black guy with a history of espousing truly mad opinions. (He’s flirted with flat Earth theory, to choose a merely silly one.)

But who cares? The dude’s a wizard with a basketball and plays the role of elder statesman on the Mavericks. He’s not running for office. Play ball!

Which is pretty much my opinion of Caitlin Clark, the most remarkable female shooter and passer I’ve ever seen — although there are a lot of players I’ve never seen. After witnessing her moving with the strength and assurance of Steph Curry early last season, I watched every Iowa women’s game I could find on TV.

One aspect of Clark’s game that’s been overlooked is what a terrific teammate she is. It’s not every high-scoring point guard — Clark broke the all-time NCAA scoring record during her four years at Iowa — who’s beloved by everybody on her team. Or so it appeared. The Hawkeyes played like a team of friends. Partly that’s because with Clark doing the handle, the ball went where it needed to go pretty much every time.

Credit, too, Coach Lisa Bluder.

So why diminish Clark’s accomplishments by referring to her, as one New Yorker profile did, as “a white woman from a red state”? Or as Washington Post columnist Candace Buckner did as a “white knight galloping in to save the Dark Continent known as the WNBA”? (She was being sarcastic.)

Red state/blue state, let’s call the whole thing off. Media-enhanced political tribalism is bad enough without having it invade every corner of American life. It’s undeniably true that Clark’s surprising celebrity is partly due to what I call “Taylor Swift syndrome:" the newly awakened zeal of young American women for female role models.

So far, I’d have to say that Clark is handling it awfully well, her newfound fame. She didn’t run to reporters for a good cry when she was left off the U.S. Olympic team; she said she could use the rest and looks forward to the 2028 games.

Laid low by a nasty cheap shot delivered by Chicago guard Chennedy Carter, Clark simply got back up, dusted herself off and got back in the game.

In a men’s game, such a foul might have triggered a bench-clearing brawl. (We had a couple of those in high school.) In the NBA, veteran Washington Post columnist Sally Jenkins pointed out, players get ejected, fined and suspended for that stuff. Clark limited herself to anodyne comments about basketball being a highly competitive and emotional sport.

Seeing the big picture, tennis great Martina Navratilova tweeted, “The players in the WNBA need to realize that Caitlyn Clark is helping all of them. Now and in the long run, Caitlyn is the tide that will raise all boats!” NBA motor-mouth Charles Barkley said pretty much the same thing — 100% correct, both of them.

[LTtxfan 49,196]

 

Edited June 17 by LTtxfan