Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Debates If Caitlin Clark Is The "Face Of The WNBA"

Caitlin Clark’s roller coaster of a season has seen the Indiana Fever star take a fist to her neck courtesy of Alyssa Thomas, her case pleaded by Republicans, and now at the feet of an NBA legend.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has taken to his Substack to weigh in on the Caitlin Clark drama and was frankly shocked when he saw the congressional letter referencing her as “the face of your league” and calling for her to receive better protection.

“My first reaction to this letter was to check the calendar and make sure it wasn’t April Fools’ Day,” he begins.

The hype behind Clark coming out of Iowa reached a feverish pitch, and while her talent warranted the praise, Abdul-Jabbar thinks it was disrespectful to position her above this generation’s greats who’ve already proved themselves. 

“Don’t get me wrong: Clark is a very good, possibly even a great, player,” he wrote. “But calling any one player the face of the league, absent the sort of on-court and cross-platform dominance of a Michael Jordan or a LeBron James, is an insult to an awful lot of great players.”

He pointed to generational talents like A’ja Wilson, who just racked up her third WNBA championship and fourth MVP award, as well as Unrivaled founders Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier.

Abdul-Jabbar urges Congress to focus more on the ongoing abuse that WNBA players face online rather than on a single incident.

“I don’t know what lesson anyone is going to take away from this incident, but if I were the instructor, the one I’d want to teach is to the people in Congress and the commissioner’s office: take the constant, deliberate, and premeditated online abuse of players as seriously as you take the occasional incidents that occur on the court in the heat of the moment,” Abdul-Jabbar wrote.

He also added that “Congress should worry less about manufacturing outrage over one hard foul and more about the racist abuse aimed at WNBA players after the game.”

Read the rest of the Los Angeles Lakers legend’s latest Substack post here, and see how social media is reacting below.