By Roger Grossman
News Now Warsaw
WARSAW — I, like many of you, love watching basketball.
I also love to watch women’s basketball. I have made a life of covering high school girls basketball and I have said consistently that if the station were to ever say “you can’t do both the boys and girls games—you have to
choose one or the other—I would choose the girls.” Remember that my life goal was to have a team to call my own to broadcast and that first team was the Lady Tigers.
I was not able to watch the women’s championship game between LSU and Iowa live, but I went back and watched it later. It was a testament to how far women’s basketball has come since now-LSU coach Kim Mulkey was a pig-tailed point guard in the first women’s championship game 40 years ago for Louisiana Tech.
The skill, the speed, the confidence are of the highest quality and deserves our collective respect.
But near the end of that championship game, LSU player Angel Reese did a very un-championship-like thing by mocking and taunting an opponent. She held up her hand in front of Iowa’s star player, Caitlin Clark, and pointed to her ring finger.
Her point: “I am about to get a ring and you are going to watch me get it.”
It was unsportsmanlike.
It was unacceptable.
It was unnecessary.
But it was also predictable.
Clark is trending toward becoming the greatest woman to ever play the game of basketball. She can make shots from anywhere on the offensive side of the time line, she’s as good at passing and dribbling the ball and setting up teammates as she is at shooting it (and enjoys all of it) and she is a relentless defender and rebounder.
She scored 40 or more points in consecutive tournament games, and no woman had ever done that before. She had a 40-plus point triple-double in a tournament game, and no woman had ever done that before.
She claimed all the major women’s college basketball awards this past season and is only a junior. She set women’s college basketball on fire the last two seasons, and a lot of people who hadn’t paid much attention to women’s basketball before have been paying attention because of her.
In the national semifinal upset of previously unbeaten South Carolina, Clark had been seen not running out to defend a post player shooting a shot from just outside the free throw line. In the process, Clark “threw her hand” at the shooter as if to say “nah, I’m willing to take my chances that she will miss and so I am going to stay here in the lane for the rebound.”
Clark has been known to do that kind of thing. It’s part of her unbridled behavior. It’s part of what makes her tick. In a way, I suppose, it’s part of what drives her to be as great as she is.
And if you have read my stuff for any length of time, you know that I am not a fan of the chest-thumping, from-the-gut screaming and evil glaring that goes on in sports. And if you know that, you know some of the things that Clark does make me uneasy.
But here is the difference between her and a lot of other people.
When Reese did what she did, Clark kept walking and took it. She surely didn’t like it. It definitely is something she won’t forget. But she knew what was happening and she said not one word about it.
Most players would have been so emotionally charged by losing and having it rubbed in their face that they would have lashed out with a punch or a shovel or a tirade.
Clark saw it and kept walking.
Asked about it a few days later, Clark was clear: Reese did nothing wrong and no one should say otherwise.
That should tell us that Caitlin Clark understands that what she does leaves her vulnerable to pushback by opponents and critics alike, and she is strong enough to take it because she’s strong enough to dish it out too—preemptively or in response.
And she backs up her words and actions with as high of a skill level as we have ever seen in women’s basketball.
Think about the Detroit Pistons of the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. They were happy to have you drive down the lane, because they would knock your block off and not worry about whether anyone saw them do it. Heck, they had a whole set of “rules” for when they played the Bulls and how they intended to beat Michael Jordan into submission.
But if any single one of those Piston players got the same thing done to them, or any one of their opponents decided to fight back, they ran like cowards or threw slappy hands at them like babies.
Caitlin Clark dishes it out and she takes it, and while I don’t always like her way of doing things I give her a lot of respect and credit for being consistent.
And most importantly, I cannot wait to watch her play again.
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Roger Grossman has been covering local sports in Kosciusko County for more than 30 years and is employed with News Now Warsaw. You can reach him at rgrossman@kensington.media.
