Video: Caitlin Clark's Suspension Reversed After Ref's Bizarre Technical Overturned - This as Allegations of Open Racism Flare in WNBA
The “W” in the WNBA is starting to stand for “What the …?”
The so-called sports league that’s more famous for its controversies than its competition notched another embarrassing moment over the weekend when Caitlin Clark, its best player and biggest celebrity, was hit with a ludicrous technical foul that would have meant a one-game suspension.
Upon further review, the league decided that apparently wasn’t warranted at all, but by then, the damage had been done — especially considering this was the same game that witnessed a veritable criminal assault on the WNBA’s second-most talked-about player.
The Clark “foul” occurred Saturday when the Indiana Fever point guard and the WNBA’s marquee name was bumped under the basket by a player for the opposing Chicago Sky. As Clark’s momentum took her out of bounds, she looked for a teammate to pass the ball to to keep the play alive.
With her eyes still directed to the court, rather than where she was going, Clark made contact with baseline official Genesis Perrymond, who immediately called a technical foul on Clark.
Check it out below:
This was the play during which Caitlin Clark received her 8th technical of the season, triggering a 1-game suspension unless it is rescinded:pic.twitter.com/k2uorN8mUR
— Underdog WNBA (@UnderdogWNBA) August 8, 2026
Clark was clearly stunned by the call. Fever coach Stephanie White also got a technical of her own for arguing with the official.
“My tech was for saying, ‘That’s bulls***,’” White said after the game, according to The Athletic, the New York Times-owned sports website. “Even though I heard the f-bomb the whole f***ing game. My tech was for saying ‘That’s bulls**.’ That’s a bad call.
“Incidental contact when you’re flying out of control. And I thought [Perrymond’s officiating crew] should’ve come up to her and talked her about that as well. … That s*** happens all the time in the game. Officials have to have some awareness in those moments, and it didn’t happen.”
It would have been Clark’s eighth technical foul of the season, The Athletic reported, which would have required a one-game suspension under league rules.
Within hours, the call was overturned.
But by then, it was clear — yet again — how badly the WNBA has trashed its own reputation as a respectable sports institution.
It might have only been a coincidence that the Clark “foul” involved a black official. It might have only been a coincidence that the incident occurred during the same game that Clark’s very white teammate Sophie Cunningham was viciously attacked by a black Chicago Sky player who was ejected from the game. And that the Sky player later took to the social media platform X to apparently blame her suspension on “white privilege.”
All of that might have been a coincidence. But there’s no denying that, taken together, the controversies feed the impression that the WNBA is a league roiling with racial and political resentment on the part of its mainly black players against white stars like Clark and Cunningham.
Since she entered the league in 2024 after a historic college basketball career, Clark has been the target of too many vicious attacks to even keep count of.
And instead of receiving support, or at least sympathy, from the establishment media, she has been effectively blamed for her own abuse.
Cunningham, to be fair, has fame based more on her outspoken stance on protecting women’s sports from transgender madness and her willingness to act as the Fever’s “enforcer” when it comes to protecting Clark than on her actual playing ability. (It also doesn’t hurt that most heterosexual men find her pretty easy on the eyes.)
But that only underscores the point that what’s happening to these two women has more to do with off-the-court issues than anything in-bounds.
(The fact that White — Cunningham’s own coach — has not only been unwilling to back her up on the transgender issue but was unable to even muster a condemnation of the Chicago Sky player who attacked Cunningham spoke volumes about just how badly the league is corrupted.)
The league’s reputation for anti-white racism — as well as an inherent leftist bias against straight women like Clark and Cunningham in a lesbian-dominated workforce — has essentially destroyed it as a focal point of sports for sports’ sake.
In other sports, violence is a byproduct — an ever-present danger that makes the contest all the more compelling, such as crashes in auto racing or falls in horse racing. It can also be a harmless distraction that might actually be enjoyed by fans — fighting among hockey players, for instance.
But in today’s distaff professional basketball league, controversy has become the product– with basketball as an afterthought. It’s more WWE than WNBA.
There are no doubt millions of committed WNBA fans who enjoy the game. However, there are tens of millions more Americans whose scant knowledge of the league is driven basically by disgust over double standards of race and sexual orientation that mirror far too accurately the kind of reign leftists have imposed on academia, the establishment media, politics in Democratic-run states, and, with the exception of X owner Elon Musk, the Big Tech establishment.
In July, as ESPN reported, 11 Republicans in Congress wrote to WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert demanding an explanation for Clark’s treatment at the hands of her fellow WNBA players — and the league’s apparent toleration of racially charged abuse.
“Clark has been hip checked, poked in the eye and struck in the throat during games,” the members of the Republican Study Committe wrote to Engelbert. “… Recently, a player even appeared to endorse violence against Clark in a social media post, further fueling concerns about the culture surrounding these incidents. In addition, concerning media reports suggest that many of these attacks against Caitlin Clark may be racially motivated.” (Emphasis added.)
In response, according to the Fox News-owned sports site Outkick, Englebert gave generic statements about the league protecting all of its players, but failed to address the questions about Clark directly.
In an interview July 29, Texas Rep. August Pfluger, chairman of the Republican Study Committee, told Outkick he was not impressed
“Saying you apply your rules ‘consistently across all games and for all players’ is an assertion, not evidence, and it’s the league’s burden to show that, not ours to assume it,” Pfluger said.
“Until the WNBA is willing to engage with the specifics of our information requests instead of simply restating their own policies back to us, our concerns remain unaddressed. We will continue to press for real answers and keep every option on the table until players are actually getting the protection the league claims they already provide.”
Pfluger isn’t alone in being skeptical of the WNBA at this point. Any American with access to social media can see, on an almost daily basis, physical attacks on Clark or Cunningham that go beyond the bounds of basketball.
Americans who are interested enough can read pretty much anywhere how the WNBA is engaged in a double standard of policing offenses.
And every moment of this makes the WNBA look less like an actual sports league and more like a dramatic backdrop for woke excesses at their worst.
At this rate, the W could stand for many things, but “whites” and “welcome” won’t do.
How about: their own “Worst Enemy?”
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