RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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As the WNBA enters the FIBA World Cup break, Indiana Fever phenom Caitlin Clark is finally at full health and playing the best basketball of her young career after missing all but 13 games last season due to multiple soft-tissue injuries.
Clark’s last game before the pause in action saw her score 34 points and record 12 assists in a 111-91 dismantling of the Connecticut Sun. She’s averaging 22.5 points per game (3rd) and 8.4 assists per game (1st), and is the only player in the league in the top three in both. However, early in the season, before she was fully caught up to the speed of the league again, the outlook was a lot bleaker.
Clark was struggling on the floor and visibly frustrated, which led not only to outbursts with Indiana’s coaching staff and referees, but also to some people believing that the player who captivated the country in her days with the Iowa Hawkeyes wasn’t returning. As wrong as those people ended up being, unfortunately for some of them, they were equally loud. Here are, in no particular order, the three most embarassing takes on Caitlin Clark from this season.
Tyrone Johnson – “This is just Linsanity”
Philly radio host and current co-host of The Craig Carton Show , Tyrone Johnson, claimed all the way back in May that Clark’s days of dominating the floor were long behind her, and compared her to former NBA player Jeremy Lin, who had a weeks-long run at NBA stardom before ultimately fading back into relative obscurity.
“The Caitlin Clark thing is over because she’s not the best player in the WNBA,” Johnson said. “She’s not the best guard in the WNBA. She’s not even the best guard from her college class because that’s Paige Bueckers, who plays for Dallas, who beat them in the season opener. This could be a situation where… we look back on Caitlin Clark, and we’re not gonna look back on her like she’s Michael Jordan. She’s Jeremy Lin. This is just Linsanity.”
CAITLIN CLARK HAS TURNED INTO THE JEREMY LIN OF THE WNBA!
“She’s not the best guard in the WNBA! She’s Jeremy Lin! She decided to roll up with Morgan Wallen! This girl had the world by the balls!” — Tyrone Johnson @TyJohnsonNews #WNBA #CaitlinClark #Fever pic.twitter.com/79NpTsvdxr
— The Craig Carton Show (@CraigCartonShow) May 12, 2026
Johnson pointed to her frustrations with referees as being a part of her downfall.
“She’s gonna fumble this, and it’s because of two things,” Johnson said. “She decided to roll up with Morgan Wallen. Morgan Wallen says the N-word liberally. Says it more than I do, and I’m Black. And her [expletive] and moaning to the refs nonstop.
“But when we look back on this, we’ll go, this girl had the world by the balls. She had everybody loving her. People who hate women’s sports were tuning in just for her. And we look at Jeremy Lin and look at her, we’re going to find out that at the end of the day, it was the exact same thing.”
If “this is just Linsanity,” Jeremy Lin will be happy to hear he’s going to be a surefire first-ballot Hall of Famer.
Zena Keita – Benching Clark for Raven Johnson
Back in early June, when the Fever were on the outside of the playoff picture, looking in, Clark had a very public blowup on the bench with head coach Stephanie White. That blowup led media personality Zena Keita to suggest Clark needed to be benched to manage her “ego.”
“She has to cut her runway. She has to acknowledge where her runway ends and understand where she’s becoming bigger than the program and how that’s impacting her teammates and how it’s impacting her ability to impact her teammates,” The Athletic’s Annie Costabile said on No Offseason: The Athletic Women’s Basketball Show . “Because at what point are you, you know, does it become a question of who wants to come into this situation and know that part of their responsibility is going to be to wrangle Caitlin in, in that sense.
“Like you’re talking about Aliyah Boston, you’re talking about Kelsey Mitchell. Like, that’s where the question becomes, again, back to the hot take: she can’t allow herself to become bigger than the franchise to a point where she’s not buying into all the ways that she has to impact a franchise from a leadership standpoint, from the standpoint of improving defensively. Like, that’s where she has to, I think, take some accountability and understand that, yes, you, you make the franchise go as a franchise player, but your ego can’t become bigger than the franchise.”
It was then that Keita made her ridiculous suggestion.
“I don’t know if it’s going to be Caitlin doing it for Caitlin,” Keita said. “I think an external event has to happen. Raven Johnson starts, right?”
Johnson is now averaging 3.1 points per game and hasn’t played more than nine minutes since early July. Just a completely unserious take.
David Dennis Jr. – Can’t make a “compelling argument”
Due to some funky voting practices, Clark finished 11th among guards in All-Star voting from other players around the league. David Dennis Jr. used that as an opportunity to argue that she didn’t even have a case as a top-four guard in the league (she’s the best guard in the league).
“I don’t think that you can make a compelling argument that Caitlin Clark is a top 4 guard in the WNBA. Like, nobody can at this point,” Dennis said on First Take.
“I don’t think that you can make a compelling argument that Caitlin Clark is a top-four guard in the WNBA.” @DavidDTSS speaks on Caitlin Clark’s hype coming into the league pic.twitter.com/tayIgi6new
— First Take (@FirstTake) July 9, 2026
“That is why she was 11th. She got the 11th most votes for being in the top 4. So there’s really no controversy about that, because especially when you add in the fact that she is one of the most popular players in the WNBA, she’s going to make the All-Star team. That is not the argument here.
“I think what bothers me is when this is framed as some ...
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