Why Everyone Is Suddenly Fighting About the WNBA

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**Michael Smerconish** (1:03)
And join Michael Smerconish right here in the middle.

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This is The Smerconish Podcast for Independent Minds.

**Michael Smerconish** (1:11)
My note in the Sunday newsletter began this way. I said, full disclosure, I haven't been paying attention to the WNBA.
Then Saturday, I watched that video of Dajani Carrington's foul on Sophie Cunningham. And down the rabbit hole, I went. The play looked blatant. Cunningham was out ahead of the pack on a breakaway when Carrington chased her down, swiped an arm across her face and neck, dropped her on her backside with no chance to break her fall. It was called a flagrant one, upgraded to a flagrant two on review. Carrington was ejected minutes later apparently from the locker room. She posted two words to threads, quote unquote, white privilege and tagged the fever. You probably saw the play. They showed it on a loop on Fox News over the weekend. And further along in my note, I said, here's what I can't answer. And I tried to walk through the chronology of some of the recent offenses, fouls, particularly when the players were black and white.
And I said this, here's what I can't answer. Is there actually a prevalence of hard fouls involving black and white players in this league, or do we simply notice only when the participants make the storyline available?
I then said, I suspect the latter. Basketball is a contact sport. Every collision now gets clip captioned and litigated online within the hour. And what I didn't write, but I could have written, is to say that I've always loved pro boxing. And the Tyson era spent so much time in Atlantic City and in Vegas watching those fights, there was nothing that would draw like a black and white fight. Jerry Cooney. I mean, Jerry Cooney fighting George Foreman.
Any white fighter that they could prop up to put with Mike Tyson, there's something about it that people love seeing that level of competition. But I'm out of my element here. And I said that as well in The Note. And went looking for the expert and found him in Howard Megdal, who literally wrote the book Becoming Caitlin Clark, Rare Gems, The Baseball, Talmud and numerous other books. He is the founder and editor of The Nine Sports in addition to that authorship. And he joins me now. Howard, thank you so much for being here. I appreciate your time.

**Howard Megdal** (3:44)
Michael, pleasure to be with you.

**Michael Smerconish** (3:46)
I did a poll question on this issue yesterday, and it had a vastly diminished number of votes in comparison to say, asking about democratic socialism the day prior, or today's poll question which asks about the war with Iran. So I think we're dealing with an audience, and I'm in that group that is just getting in the loop on the WNBA, on Caitlin Clark, on the participants, on Saturday, on the trans debate. So I'm hoping you're going to school us. Where would you like to begin in terms of understanding what happened in that game Saturday?

**Howard Megdal** (4:23)
Well, Michael, I appreciate it. And again, welcome. There are a lot of folks who are just tuning in now, and you're going to love the space that we're going to be in for the duration of this conversation, because it is very much the gray area in the middle. There are elements, and you are asking, to be clear, the right questions, but it is also worth noting how we arrive at the correct and the incorrect answers. I do want to start with the Dijonais Carrington Foul over the weekend. Let's kind of move out from there, right?

**Michael Smerconish** (4:54)
Yeah, perfect.

**Howard Megdal** (4:55)
So for those folks who have not necessarily been watching for an extended period of time, there is a desire to kind of assign particular motives that people bring to it when they watch in that moment. Dijonais Carrington is a player I have covered since college, is a hard-nosed defender. Dijonais Carrington has gone after players at times with hard fouls, just like the very best hard defenders across leagues, whether it is the WNBA, the NBA, you know, it is, as you said, a contact sport. And so you can actually spend a little time with Dijonais' career and find, oh, there are these other moments where she has had hard fouls against players who are both white and black. The difference, and it is a critical one that you pointed out, it only shows up on Fox News all weekend if it is a black player fouling a white player. And so that's where the distinction comes and where there is this artificial belief that race is driving a particular moment in the WNBA.