After Kristaps Porzingis Got Thrown Down, Doris Burke Joked It’d ‘Spark Debate For A Week’ If It Was Caitlin Clark

The Boston Celtics looked to close out the Dallas Mavericks on Monday night in Game 5 of the NBA Finals, and got a bit of an emotional boost, if nothing else, in the form of Kristaps Porzingis’ return to the court for the first time since Game 2 when he suffered a rare leg injury.

Porzingis’ return certainly injected some life to the TD Garden crowd, but the Mavs were also quick to try and test him, attacking him on most every possession as a defender. They also looked to bring physicality to him on the other end, with PJ Washington getting a bit too physical and picking up an early second quarter foul away from the ball by tossing Porzingis to the court.

It was deemed simply a common foul on review, and while the ESPN crew watched the replays, Doris Burke couldn’t help herself from making a joke about how if that were Caitlin Clark, the foul would “spark debate for a week.”

Burke is, of course, making light of how much overreaction there has been to every time Clark takes a hard foul, and how those moments become leading topics on the various sports debate shows — including ESPN’s. Most recently, Clark took a hard hit from Angel Reese on a very normal basketball play, as Reese went for a block on a layup by Clark and missed the ball, catching the No. 1 pick in the head. It was made a Flagrant 1 and everyone moved on on the court, but it became national news on a level that’s honestly outrageous. Places like CNN and Deadline Hollywood were covering it like breaking news, and some on social media were claiming it was assault and doing exactly what Clark asked them to stop doing, which is using her as a prop to push racist and misogynist agendas.

That all stands in stark contrast to how quickly we move on from something like Porzingis getting tossed to the floor jostling for post position in the NBA, and Burke earned some laughs from her colleagues by pointing that out.