Caitlin Clark SAVED the WNBA. On Saturday, She Watched Her Peers Destroy the All-Star Game | Ep 1205

**Jason Whitlock** (0:00)
Let me paint you a picture of the WNBA All-Star Game.
One pink wig, one blown layup. That's the headline, that's the takeaway. That's what this league handed to every casual fan who tuned in for the first time on the biggest stage they get all year.
One woman dragged this entire league into relevance, Caitlin Clark. The ratings, the sold out buildings, the money they're all swimming in. That's her. And this weekend, everybody she carried decided to set the house on fire. Unbeweavable. This was not a bad game. This was a statement, a mission statement about what the WNBA thinks of its own product, its own audience and the country writing the checks.
Unbeweavably bad.
Let's start with the names. The two all-star teams were called Team Spoon and Team Coop, named after Teresa Weatherspoon and Cynthia Cooper, who the WNBA wants you to believe are legends.
Stop. There are no WNBA legends before Caitlin Clark. The WNBA is like the Bible. There is before Caitlin and there is after Caitlin, BC and AC. That's the whole timeline before Caitlin. The WNBA was the tree that fell in the woods with no witnesses. Nobody heard it, nobody saw it, nobody cared. Teresa Weatherspoon and Cynthia Cooper played in the land of the lost. They are dinosaurs and some people, some very smart people, don't even believe in dinosaurs. So the WNBA named their all-star teams after dinosaurs that nobody's ever seen and were shocked when nobody treated it like a big deal.
Were Team Fart and Team Poop already taken? Fire everybody! Where's Don Draper? Where's Peggy Olsen? The WNBA needed mad men. What they got was bad bees. Bad name, bad game, bad attitude. That was the WNBA all-star weekend exactly. It was the NWA Freaknik. Now the original NWA was straight out of Compton. This NWA straight out of the beauty supply store. The National WIG Association descended on Chicago for a three-day alternative lifestyle party for tall women with disposable income and synthetic hair. And it was hosted, grand marshaled if you will, by the Stud Buds. You heard me, Stud Buds. Courtney Williams and Letitia Heidemann, the Stud Buds. That is what they call themselves publicly, on purpose. These two women were so committed to the vibe of All-Star Weekend that an ESPN reporter felt compelled to document, in writing, that mid-game during a timeout, Courtney Williams walked to center court and performed what the reporter called a well-rehearsed dance break before casually jogging back to play.
Well-rehearsed? That means she practiced that. At some point this week, Courtney Williams skipped a workout to rehearse her timeout dance, and Kathy Engelbert never said a word. No wonder she's getting fired. The whole weekend was a no-pride parade. Not that kind of pride. I mean, no pride in basketball parade. Kid-friendly, all ages welcome, come as you are, bring your best wig, and they came.
In wigs. Angel Reese, the WNBA's would-be box office star, showed up to the league's biggest showcase of the year, dressed for a bachelorette party. Full Barbie costume, pink wig. The only thing missing was a sash that said, not the bride, not to be outdone, the league's best player, A'ja Wilson, four-time MVP. Apparently, drove directly from the beauty supply store to the United Center because whatever was on top of A'ja Wilson's head Saturday night, that was not a wig. That was the mane of Secretariat. Somewhere, Secretariat is in horsey heaven, filing a police report about the six-foot-four woman who snatched his wig.
Un-be-weavable.
Luke, what happened?
Which brings me to a movie, 1992
Tom Hanks, Gina Davis, Madonna, a league of their own. It's all about the All American Girls professional baseball league. Women playing baseball while the men were off fighting World War II. The whole soul of the movie is women fighting to be taken seriously as competitors. They wore skirts, they had chaperones. The owner wanted them to smile pretty for the crowd. And what did those women do? They competed harder than anyone thought possible. They made you forget the skirts. They made you forget everything except the game. The WNBA has completely inverted that movie. They have the arena, they have ABC in primetime, they have the new CBA money, they have the NBA backing every check.
And they are voluntarily making themselves into exactly what those 1943 women in skirts refused to be, a fashion show. Here's what makes this an unforgivable blown opportunity. The NFL Pro Bowl, a total farce. Nobody watches it. Players jog around in flag football gear, afraid to break a nail. The MLB All-Star Game, fans have been begging for competition for 20 years. And the NBA All-Star Game, don't even get me started. 180 points aside, nobody guards anybody. It's a layup line in matching uniforms. Every major men's All-Star Game has been destroyed by a total absence of competitive integrity. Sports fans hate them. The WNBA had a golden opening, a real, genuine, wide open door to walk through and say, hey, we're different. We compete. We respect the fans. We have more integrity, more competitive fire, more pride in our product than men do.