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Time magazine has seriously rattled cages with its annual selection of honors for 2024, and one WNBA owner isn’t down with the pick of superstar rookie Caitlin Clark as the publication’s “Athlete of the Year,” whining that it could lead to racism.

On Friday, Washington Mystics owner Sheila Johnson went on CNN to protest Clark’s recognition as the face of a league filled with surly black lesbians that few cared about until the college wunderkind arrived on the scene, drawing national attention to the WNBA and packing venues when her Indiana Fever was the visiting team.

“Why couldn’t they have put the WNBA on that cover and say, ‘The WNBA is the league of the year,’ because of all the talent that we have,” Johnson said during an appearance on CNN Sport.

“When you single out one player, it creates hard feelings, so now you’re starting to hear stories of racism within the WNBA, and I don’t want to hear that,” she claimed.

She also said that the attention paid to the league’s newest superstar and the term “the Caitlin Clark effect,” which has been used to describe the surge in attention paid to the WNBA, is rooted in race.

“It’s the way media plays out race,” she said. “I feel really bad, because I’ve seen so many players of color that are equally as talented, and they never got the recognition they should have.”

Johnson’s grousing comes despite the financial boon that came from Clark’s September visit to Capital One Arena, drawing 20,711 fans in what was a WNBA attendance record for a single game, according to The Washington Post. A June visit by Clark and the Fever also packed the building to the rafters, with 20,333 fannies in the seats.

Johnson also suggested that there was bitterness among WNBA players after Clark inked a $28 million endorsement deal with athletic shoe and apparel colossus Nike, the biggest ever for a women’s hoops player.

“They would like to get the same kind of recognition. It all started with the whole Nike sponsorship that Caitlin got,” she said. “There are other players saying, ‘What about us?’”

It’s possible that some of the jealousy and resentment has spilled out onto the hardwood where Clark has repeatedly been roughed up by the WNBA’s black players.

(Video: YouTube)

Clark has been panned for what some see as bending the knee to the bullying black hoopsters when she said that her success could be at least partially attributed to her “white privilege” in the Time profile.

“I want to say I’ve earned every single thing, but as a white person, there is privilege,” Clark said. “A lot of those players in the league that have been really good have been black players. This league has kind of been built on them.”

“It has taken the WNBA almost 28 to get to the point where we are now, and this year something clicked with the WNBA, and it’s because of the draft of the players that came in, it’s not just Caitlin Clark, it’s Reese,” Johnson added of Clark’s fellow rookie and NCAA rival Angel Reese. “We have so much talent out there that’s so unrecognized, and I don’t think we can just pin it on one player.”

“It took 5 minutes for Caitlin Clark to find out that no matter how much groveling she does, the woke mob of WNBA people who hate her will never be satisfied. She is their only draw and their business instinct is to minimize and destroy her. Insane,” CNN’s Scott Jennings said in a post to X, sharing a clip of Johnson’s remarks.

Chris Donaldson
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