The Indiana Fever scratched superstar guard Caitlin Clark less than two hours before the team’s game on Wednesday night against the Portland Fire. The official announcement cited a back injury.
It all seemed simple enough. Clark certainly isn’t the first athlete to miss a game with an injury and isn’t the first to be a late scratch. The problem came when the media asked head coach Stephanie White about Clark’s injury status.
CAITLIN CLARK SCRATCHED FROM INDIANA FEVER LINEUP AT THE LAST MINUTE BECAUSE OF INJURY
“She’s healthy and we’re not managing anything,” White said pregame, while also adding that Clark woke up stiff and sore and attributed the absence to a long-term plan. That caused many fans to do a double take. If she’s healthy, why isn’t she playing? And, if she wasn’t healthy, why wasn’t she on the injury report prior to being ruled out for the game?
After the game, White added: “Not everybody that doesn’t practice or gets a pro day is on the injury report. That happens all the time. And she wasn’t listed on the injury report earlier because we expected her to play.”
That should clear it all up, huh? No, no it did not. Conspiracy theories started flying on social media about Clark’s absence. Some suggested the team benched Clark to punish her for a sideline argument with an assistant coach in the team’s previous game.
Some suggested Clark being named Grand Marshal for the Indianapolis 500 angered the team and they wanted to make a point. Others said White simply doesn’t like Clark and the attention she receives.
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Still others suggested that the league is hiding that Clark is dealing with an injury that will never heal properly. And the theories didn’t just revolve around Clark. Some said the league and the team knew she wouldn’t play Wednesday night, but waited as long as possible to announce it to keep attendance and TV ratings from dropping. That didn’t work, by the way.
The main issue here is transparency. The Fever and White don’t appear to have been transparent about Clark’s status and that leads people to fill in the blanks themselves.
Right now, those blanks aren’t good for the WNBA, the Fever or White.
