[Indianapolis, IN]- Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark was named Time Magazine’s Athlete of the Year.
The dedication came with a full day experience for Time’s reporter Sean Gregory, from meeting Clark for breakfast to her offseason workout program.
Gregory joined the Wake Up Call with KB and Andy on Wednesday. He shared his thoughts to Clark’s comments on the controversies involving her in the past year.
“She’s not controversial,” Gregory said, “All the controversies that were around; like the Chennedy Carter foul, the Greg Doyle stuff, the Olympic snub, she didn’t perpetrate the controversy. She said, ‘I feel like the most controversial person in America. I tell my friends that, but I’m not, it’s confusing.’ And I thought that was very interesting because that’s how from the outside how I thought it would feel.”
The controversies mentioned were hard fouls committed by Chicago Sky’s Chennedy Carter, Greg Doyel’s comments at her introductory press conference, being left off the 2024 US Olympic Women’s team, and racial, misogynistic comments by followers made on social media.
During the season, Athletic Writer James Boyd asked Clark about the racial issues. Clark initially stated the racial comments by followers were not something she could control and was focusing on basketball. When asked directly about her name being used for racism and misogyny, Clark went into more of her thoughts on the issue.
“I think it’s disappointing,” Clark said on June 13th, “Everybody in our league, in our world deserves the same amount of respect. The women in our league deserve the same amount of respect.”
With the 2025 Indiana Fever being a little over five months away, the question was brought up if these controversies would make their way to a second season.
“It might tamp down a bit,” Gregory said, “I think what precipitated a lot of it was there were other WNBA players that spoke about it. Particularly Aja Wilson had some kind of candid comments of how she felt about how Caitlin Clark’s race helped her in the marketing sense. Not that Caitlin Clark has not earned everything on the court, and off the court too, there was a sense she was getting more attention perhaps, from Aja Wilson’s perspective, because she was white.”
Hear the Full conversation with Sean Gregory:
Caitlin Clark Addresses Controversies From Her Rookie Season With Time Magazine was originally published on 1075thefan.com