a little far for me. Among the millions of people who "got involved" a small percentage were not there for basketball. That is of little surprise and all anybody has to do to find that to not be unique is to look at Tiger Woods, Jackie Robinson, Bill Russell etc. There were racists already there and there were people who weren't fans of the sport but took the opportunity to spew their garbage. So it's a multi-faceted thing.
But the reaction of people in the WNBA and outside of it to always lay this out as "Caitlin Clark Fans" is wrong and they are putting this on the back of a 22 year old young woman who never had a part in the horrible behavior. She's a remarkable young lady who always has positive things to say and has on multiple occasions stated that these people do not represent anything she is about and she feels nobody should be disrespected or be receiving hateful comments. But some people in the WNBA seem to feel Caitlin should "be responsible for" and "do something about" things she never had a part in or has any control over. But despite her statements rejecting those making hateful statements supposedly some in media and in the WNBA feel she should do more.
There is no aspect of group behavior involving millions of people that will not have some who came along in order to spew garbage. For the WNBA, players, media etc. to say the problem of racist vitriol in the WNBA is because of "Caitlin Clark Fans" is wrong. I can assure you that white players in the WNBA or any other sport can tell about the things directed at them as well that called out their race, ethnicity, religion etc. Horrible people are horrible people. If anybody doubts that this is nothing new then they should know that Sandy Koufax and the Dodgers certainly received hate mail when he declined to pitch Game 1 of the 1965 World Series because it took place on Yom Kippur. But Sandy didn't and never has made it a thing. He knew what those people were and he knew they weren't really baseball fans as much as they were just horrible people. I remember the veiled references by many at the time in the media and in baseball.
My rejection of all of this is the implication by so many that has followed Caitlin along even during her days in Iowa. Nobody had outrage over people calling her a "Great White Hope" or using race in implying her fans were mostly white. No outrage then. It apparently seemed impossible for people to believe that we could be fans of Caitlin because of the marvelous way she plays the game. Of course we didn't jump all over the ones who said such things. We knew what they really are. Everybody on all sides of this needs to knock it off and simply enjoy a phenomenal player at work.
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