Narrative fiction

Sometimes I think life is a made-for-TV movie that takes more liberties with the truth than a Mel Gibson historical epic. I especially think this when I watch Caitlin Clark play basketball.

No, not because I think her game's a big ol' fake. That's quite real, and it's translated way better to the pro level than some people who profess to know basketball thought it would. 

It's because of this whole "hate" narrative. 

I'm starting to think that's as phony as Mel somehow being a plantation owner in South Carolina in the 1770s whose black workforce was free and not enslaved. Or mostly as phony.

Didja see what happened in Phoenix yesterday?

Sure you did. The Indiana Fever beat the Sun, 88-82, and Clark put up 15 points, 12 assists and nine rebounds. One more rebound and she'd have become the first rookie in WNBA history to record a triple double.

Know what else happened?

One of her alleged haters, 42-year-old Diana Taurasi, hugged her before the game. And had some very kind words for her afterward.

"It's amazing what Caitlin's been able to do in her career so far," Taurasi said in a piece by Michael Voepel of ESPN. "The one thing that I really love about her, she loves the game. You can tell she's put the work in ... It's been a lot of pressure, a lot of things thrown at her, and she keeps showing up and keeps getting better every single game."

This from one of Caitlin's alleged haters, jealous of all the attention she's gotten because she was the league's top draw before she even stepped on the floor. 

This from someone tagged as a bitter old fossil because she said "Reality is coming" when Clark was setting all those scoring records at Iowa a few months back.

Well ...

According to Voepel, Taurasi's been saying that, or something very like it, about every hotshot rookie who's come down the pike in the last 20 years. Which makes me think a lot of the hate/resentment/jealousy narrative we've been sold is a load of snake oil.  

This is not to say the narrative's completely false; I'm sure there is a fair amount of resentment of Clark in some quarters. But I also suspect a lot of air is being pumped into the "hater" storyline by people with their own agendas -- some of them monetary, and some of them not so.

The whole Clark/Angel Reese rivalry thing, for instance, is surely monetary and therefore largely beneficial to both the two players and the WNBA. Nothing creates exposure better than personal enmity or perceived personal enmity; look how the Bird-Magic rivalry was largely responsible for saving the listless NBA in the early 1980s. Jealous of one another's success, they made Celtics-Lakers appointment viewing for most of a decade.

Clark and Reese, same deal. How much jealousy and resentment has do with their budding rivalry (and how much of it is pure eyewash) is immaterial. What matters is there's enough meat on that bone to sell it to a public that's always hungry for conflict.

Me?

I suspect Reese and Clark don't despise one another nearly as much as it appears. I suspect it's as amplified as the poor-white-girl-getting-picked-on-by-the-haters narrative being pushed by those who love to pretend white people get a raw deal these days.

Yes, it's true Clark's getting knocked around a lot out there. But it's also true rooks routinely get knocked around; it's all part of the initiation process. And if she's indeed being targeted, her alleged tormentors aren't doing very good job of it.

I say this because she's only the fifth most-fouled player in the WNBA so far this season. If she were truly as picked on as some people say, wouldn't she be No. 1?

Something to think about.