Caitlin Clark garners support as she refuses to publicly back Sophie Cunningham, ‘coward cheap shot’

Caitlin Clark is always at the thick of anything that happens in the WNBA, even when she’s not actively involved.

That’s arguably one of the prices to pay when you’re considered one of the faces of the WNBA.

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But with her Indiana Fever teammate Sophie Cunningham having been so vocal in recent weeks about her controversial stance on transgender athletes’ involvement in women and girls’ sport, it has become impossible for Clark not to be associated with it.

When Clark was asked about how she and the rest of her Fever teammates are navigating those conversations outside of basketball after the Fever’s 108-100 loss to the Minnesota Lynx on Sunday night, the 24-year-old refused to publicly back her teammate, and instead deflected the question.

“I think for us, it’s not really a discussion we have in our locker room,” Clark said. “I think it’s for leagues and governing bodies to work with their athletes to find solutions.

“Our focus is on basketball. That’s what we talk about and how we can get wins and obviously we didn’t do that tonight. So we need to find an area to improve in that way.”

Those media-trained comments drew some harsh criticism, including from former FOX News and NBC veteran Megyn Kelly.

“Caitlin Clark was directly asked to speak on it, and she was cowardly. She refused to do it,” she said in her podcast ‘The Megyn Kelly Show‘ on August 3.

“It is one thing to inject politics into your sport where they don’t belong, like Colin Kaepernick kneeling in the middle of professional football games. It’s quite another when little girls are getting the s*** kicked out of them in their sport.

“And you are the most famous woman in women’s basketball, and you’re directly asked as the issue rears its head in your sport, and you punt on it. You won’t say anything. You’d rather let the 12-year-olds handle it.”

Clark would be critcized regardless of what stance she holds

At the end of the day, though, Clark’s job isn’t to be a politician, but to be a basketball player.

She shouldn’t have to either publicly defend or condemn the actions of her teammates, or others in the WNBA for that matter.

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Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy also directly fired back at Kelly.

“Absolute moron/idiot to call Caitlin a coward for this answer,” he said.

“1st of all you don’t even know how she feels on this issue and more importantly she doesn’t owe it to you or anybody else to be your political talking point. She just wants to play ball.

“Total coward cheap shot to call her a coward for not being your puppet.”

Political analyst Will Cain and sports reporter Kayce Smith also share those views, and jumped to Clark’s defense.

“Caitlin Clark is under no obligation to talk about anything outside of playing basketball,” Smith said on The Will Cain Show on Monday. “And she has been saying that over and over. She sticks to basketball because she’s gonna be thrown in those narratives either way.

“So calling her a coward for what she’s done her entire career, even though she’s only 24, she sticks with basketball, and she says ‘criticize my basketball, but you don’t know me, so don’t put words in my mouth.”

Cain added, “I don’t require any athlete to speak on politics, and many times we’ve asked uneducated athletes not to speak on politics.

“If they so choose, then we will judge them by the words that they choose to use on politics. But it doesn’t mean that anyone, including Caitlin Clark, has to speak on politics.”

Smith later delved more into Clark’s choice not to engage in talk outside of the scope of basketball, comparing her approach to that of teammate Cunningham’s.

“She [Clark] can do nothing but play basketball and still get thrown into these conversations, whereas Sophie Cunningham doesn’t care,” she said. “She’s like, ‘I’m going to talk about this because I believe in that.'”