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00:03 >> And DRS, a lot of focus in the WNBA as well.
00:07 A lot of social media conversation and conjecture on Saturday surrounding
00:12 Kaitlyn Clark, of course, who has been a member of notoriety and
00:17 a ton of focal attention paid on her since her days at Iowa.
00:22 And the momentum from the NCAA Women's Tournament carrying over into
00:27 the early portion of the WNBA on Saturday,
00:30 the Fever at Home hosting the Chicago Sky.
00:32 A tightly contested game where Indiana emerged victorious by one,
00:37 71-70 winning outright as a short home underdog for
00:42 the Fever's first home win of this WNBA season.
00:45 The first home victory for Kaitlyn Clark in her WNBA career.
00:49 But the story really was the end of the third quarter and
00:52 a hard cheap shot foul by Kennedy Corder of Chicago on Kaitlyn Clark when
00:57 the ball was dead under the basketball hoop following a made bucket.
01:03 Kennedy Corder came out of nowhere, just ran through Kaitlyn Clark,
01:06 fell to the ground, and a way ball foul was called.
01:09 On Sunday afternoon, it was upgraded by the WNBA League office to a flagrant one.
01:16 Again, a lot of conjecture following this cheap shot by Corder on Clark on Saturday.
01:22 >> Here's what I wanna bring it back to.
01:24 We just talked about ice hockey.
01:25 And if we go back to the late 70s and early 80s,
01:28 a player by the name of Wayne Gretzky entered the NHL playing with Edmonton.
01:32 And early on, it was thought out, you know what?
01:35 We have a certain good following here, but we want a national following.
01:38 We wanna create an infrastructure where everybody's going to get paid.
01:41 We're gonna ride the backs of Wayne Gretzky.
01:43 And you know who understood the game plan?
01:45 The rest of the NHL, not the front offices, the players themselves.
01:49 Which is why nobody took shots at Liberty Gretzky with how good he was.
01:53 Nobody wanted to drop the gloves with Wayne Gretzky.
01:55 Because you know what every player in that league understood?
01:58 If this guy flourishes here, we're all gonna make more money.
02:01 The league is going to expand, it's going to be massive.
02:03 And if you remember, and based on bad timing, the Edmonton Oilers were forced
02:06 to trade Wayne Gretzky cuz their owner got into some financial troubles.
02:10 But having said that, he sent Wayne Gretzky, the brightest star in hockey,
02:14 to Los Angeles, and the boom happened for the NHL.
02:17 The reason I'm bringing this up is, maybe it's unfair to say the best player to
02:20 ever lace him up here in hockey was Wayne Gretzky and say it's Caitlin Clark.
02:24 But it's apparent, you're getting chartered flights.
02:26 Your ratings are through the roof.
02:27 Why?
02:28 Not because of the people that are already in the league who did have something to
02:31 do with it, but your newfound interest with new fans here on Caitlin Clark.
02:35 I'm not saying, Ben, you gotta let her shoot wide open three point shots to get
02:38 a triple double every single night.
02:40 But there's one thing about being competitive, and
02:42 then it's being competitive stupid here.
02:44 Let's just say Caitlin Clark gets injured, right, and
02:47 is out for the rest of the year.
02:48 I guarantee you, ratings will drop by probably 50% in the WNBA.
02:52 Fair or not fair, that's the truth here at this point.
02:54 So when I see these shots, I'm a competitive person.
02:57 Trust me, if I'm in that spot, I'm like, yeah, I'm gonna give this girl all the guff
03:01 that she can actually handle at this point to see if she's ready for it.
03:03 But from a business standpoint, it's so dumb to be doing this for the WNBA players.
03:08 >> Listen, Caitlin Clark in her emergence into the WNBA in that transition period
03:14 has been historical as she was during her days in college hoops.
03:18 We'll talk about that in just a moment.
03:21 And there has been a lot of conjecture, not by Caitlin Clark herself,
03:25 who has become a figurehead for a lot of people to advance their own personal
03:29 agendas, many of them far outside of actually just playing basketball,
03:34 which I'm sure if you ask Caitlin, is all she is focused on doing at this point.
03:40 People have used her as a figurehead for a lot of what they wanna do.
03:45 And a lot of that has been a conversation around the W and
03:48 how you should be grateful, how you should be thanking and bowing down to Caitlin
03:52 Clark, and I can understand from the WNBA player perspective, frankly saying,
03:57 we were here grinding our tails off long before Caitlin Clark even was the expected
04:03 number one pick, there is the reality of the situation.
04:06 There has never been this much attention paid to women's basketball from all
04:11 the momentum in college hoops now to the W, capitalizing on a moment and
04:15 carrying over that momentum from 2009 on.
04:19 The WNBA did not have a single game that reached at least a million viewers
04:24 in the first two and a half weeks of this WNBA season.
04:27 They have had five, they have had multiple.
04:30 That is because of Caitlin Clark and just the betterment of the sport in total.
04:36 But again, a lot of that narrative is not brought on by Caitlin Clark herself.
04:41 She is not a selfish individual.
04:43 She does not flagrantly speak of her ability.
04:46 She is gracious in a moment where every eyeball is on her.
04:51 If somebody wants to fight Caitlin Clark, fight us.
04:55 Fight other talking heads that discuss this at length.
04:58 Caitlin Clark herself has not been the embodiment of this idea.
05:02 The old W meant nothing versus the new emerging star that is Caitlin Clark.
05:08 And so that's why Kennedy Carter is fake tough,
05:11 because she was asked about her actions and
05:13 what went into that play at the end of the third quarter.
05:17 And in the post game press conference said, I ain't answering no Caitlin Clark
05:20 questions, then took the threads, not even Instagram, not even TikTok,
05:25 not even Twitter to reply to a post about Kennedy Carter and said this.
05:30 Beside three point shooting, what does she bring to the table, man?
05:34 Here's what she brings to the table in her first 10 WNBA career games.
05:39 Caitlin Clark is one of two players in the history of the league alongside
05:43 Sabrina Nescu to have at least 150 points, 50 assists, and 50 rebounds.
05:49 She is one of two players ever in the history of the WNBA to do that.
05:53 The stats speak for themselves, and Caitlin does not speak for herself.
05:58 Her play does, and it's historically significant once again,
06:02 like it was in college basketball.
06:04 >> Exactly, well said, and also, it'd be like if somebody came to the grid as
06:08 the world's greatest broadcaster, came here, and I was like, you know what?
06:11 I'm jealous of this guy here.
06:12 And they go, you know what, Donnie?
06:13 This guy's bringing such good ratings in,
06:15 we're gonna triple the pay of everybody here at the network.
06:18 And I go, you know what?
06:18 Let me get a private investigator on this guy.
06:20 Let's think of some old tweets and get him canned out of here, so
06:22 I can go back to my old Sally just to have this guy out of here.
06:25 I mean, come on now.
06:26 Everybody is eating in the WNBA right now, and it's like, you know what?
06:30 I'm so jealous of this person.
06:32 Stop the madness, raise your level of game gear, and
06:34 make that money and love life, come on.
06:36 It's not hard.
06:36 >> I don't think WNBA players need to be grateful.
06:39 I don't think they need to express their gratitude to Caitlin Cork.
06:43 They are playing basketball.
06:44 And they are competitors.
06:46 Play basketball, don't take cheap shots.
06:49 We'll talk about it more up next.
06:50 It was one of the biggest sports stories of the weekend,
06:53 probably the largest in terms of social media attention paid to it
06:57 on Saturday afternoon.
06:59 Again, the upgraded now flagrant one dished out by Kennedy Carter,
07:03 a cheap shot on Caitlin Cork during Saturday's game between the Fever and
07:08 the Sky.
07:09 And we continue the conversation here on this Monday on the early line.
07:13 My main point, DRS, I will finish with this.
07:16 Our producer Joe Frizzo and myself were discussing via text
07:20 on Saturday afternoon into the evening hours.
07:23 Because some of the conjecture around Caitlin Cork, not brought on by Caitlin
07:28 Cork, either her play or what she has said, has become frankly outrageous.
07:33 At the end of the day, we are using the WNBA as a vehicle,
07:37 as a foundation to spout out whatever nonsense and spin whatever narratives we
07:42 want.
07:43 We don't really do that in a ton of other sports,
07:46 in large part based on play on the actual floor.
07:50 Yes, certain individuals carry more notoriety for what they do maybe off
07:54 the field.
07:55 But based on simple play, we do not use sport as a vehicle in often times
08:01 to spin whatever narrative we desire.
08:04 And Caitlin Cork is being used as a figurehead to spout off
08:09 agendas that have nothing to do with Caitlin Cork, the individual.
08:13 At a certain point, I hope we get back to discussing this sport as a sport.
08:19 Basketball and what play is like on the floor,
08:23 it is not being used with all the notoriety and attention that is put
08:28 on the W right now in its essence.
08:31 Yeah, no, and there is a lot of that going around.
08:33 And also, good for the WNBA who get to capitalize on this right away.
08:37 And I can't speak to that point enough where it's basically the women's college
08:41 basketball season ends.
08:42 And like a week and a half later, felt like we were playing basketball games
08:45 in the WNBA just to keep that momentum going.
08:47 And she's played well at times.
08:49 She's played bad at times.
08:50 But that's a rookie here trying to adjust.
08:52 Give her two or three years in this league where she gets up to the
08:54 physicality, up to the pace of the game.
08:56 And then we'll see exactly where that team takes off with.
08:58 But everybody's enjoying this right now in the moment.
09:00 And also, sometimes you say to yourself, all news sometimes isn't always bad news
09:06 when it comes to ratings here.
09:07 Because there's a reason why on a Monday we're saying, OK,
09:10 we don't have the NBA finals.
09:11 We probably would talk about three or four segments here of NFL.
09:14 Like, hey, where's that team total going for the Cincinnati Bengals if T.
09:17 Higgins doesn't play?
09:18 But we're spending multiple segments here talking about the WNBA,
09:21 and rightfully so, because these are the topics we like.
09:24 When things go viral, we're going to talk about it.
09:26 And it's not going viral.
09:27 Did you see Kaitlyn Clark drop 38 points last night?
09:29 No, the viral point is, did you see Kaitlyn Clark get knocked into the first
09:32 row here in a flagrant foul and have the other teams actively celebrating while
09:37 she's on the ground at this point?
09:38 It's wild to see.
09:39 And also, adding that fuel to the fire.
09:41 Sometimes you can get in front of the podium.
09:42 And Kaitlyn Clark does a great job of this, of diffusing the situation.
09:45 We're just talking about between the break.
09:47 You're losing the biggest game of your life, and you're getting taunted.
09:50 Only go to the podium and say, that team's really good.
09:52 She's a great player, and we talk a lot of trash out here.
09:55 It's just us being competitive.
09:56 Like, wow, that's taking the high road at this point.
09:58 Now, you saw the players from the Chicago Sky don't go to the podium
10:03 after the game here to answer questions when everybody wanted to answer.
10:06 And when you talk about diffusing the situation, all you have to do is go
10:09 to the podium and say, yeah, we were getting back and forth.
10:11 I caught an elbow a couple times down the court.
10:14 I didn't expect to really hit her all that hard.
10:15 Bumped her.
10:16 She fell down.
10:16 You know, it wasn't meant to be like that.
10:18 But when you don't go to the podium and you celebrate,
10:20 it's like, yeah, I meant to do that.
10:21 And frankly, I wish I would have knocked her into the first row
10:24 and out of the game at this point.
10:25 It just adds all that fuel to the fire.
10:27 But again, we're talking about it here.
10:28 So W for the WNBA.
10:31 Because ultimately, what Kaitlyn Clark has always expressed
10:35 is that she wants to focus on playing basketball and being a competitor.
10:40 When Kennedy Corder got to the podium following the game
10:42 and said, I'm not answering Kaitlyn Clark questions,
10:45 then it allows the speculation to build.
10:47 When Angel Reese did not show up for her post-game media availability
10:51 and was fined $1,000 by the W yesterday.
10:54 And Chicago, as an organization, fined 5K
10:57 because they did not uphold WNBA media policies.
11:01 It's not correct.
11:03 And they are disciplined and punished as so.
11:06 Kaitlyn Clark always is up there and wants to express for herself
11:10 what matters to her.
11:12 And that is playing basketball.
11:14 Yesterday was not Clark's best game.
11:16 Only three points.
11:17 It was not Indiana's best game.
11:19 They got beat in a big way by the Liberty in Brooklyn, 104-68.
11:23 It was the 11th game for Indiana in the first 19 days of this WNBA season.
11:29 Nobody else in the W has played more than nine games at this moment.
11:33 It was the second leg of a back-to-back for the Fever.
11:38 Nobody else has even played more than a single back-to-back.
11:41 Only four other WNBA teams have even played a back-to-back this year.
11:46 And six of the 11 games to start for Indiana
11:49 have come against teams like the Liberty, the Sun, and the Aces.
11:53 Those three teams only in the W last year that won 25-plus games.
11:58 And Connecticut is a perfect 8-0.
12:00 And they've played the Liberty, a WNBA finals team from a season ago,
12:03 three different times already to start off this year,
12:06 trying to capitalize on the momentum of Pitt and Clark
12:09 and her Indiana team against the best in the WNBA.
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