Sue Bird Spoke Out About People Using Caitlin Clark As ‘A Pawn’ To Push Racism

Caitlin Clark’s rookie year in the WNBA came to an end last week, as the Connecticut Sun eliminated the Indiana Fever from the first round of the postseason. It was a highly productive year for Clark on the floor, as she ended up being named the league’s Rookie of the Year along with being an All-Star in her first year.

The discourse around Clark, unfortunately, got pretty nasty at times, with things coming to a head when they were eliminated against the Sun. Clark has called it “unacceptable” to use her name to push negative agendas and tried to shut down controversies when they’ve popped up, but issues have persisted among a certain subset of fans. After the Fever’s Game 2 loss, Sun star Alyssa Thomas spoke out about the “unacceptable” way that Connecticut players were treated by fans, saying “in my 11-year career, I’ve never experienced the racial comments from the Indiana Fever fanbase.”

In the most recent episode of “A Touch More,” WNBA legend Sue Bird and her partner, Megan Rapinoe, discussed Clark, with Bird opting not to simply tiptoe around the issue of racism and speaking clearly on it and how Clark has been “used as a pawn” in her eyes by those looking to push racist narratives.

“Can we just call a spade a spade? Racism has been impacting the WNBA well before this year,” Bird said. “This is not a new thing. In that way, I do think Caitlin’s being used as a pawn. Caitlin didn’t bring racism to the WNBA, this has been happening, and that, I think, is what’s been such a shock for all of us, that other people are surprised by this. We’ve been trying to tell you.”

Bird then spoke about how W players during her time in the league had to confront this, and while it would take the focus and attention away from basketball, there was something inspiring that came from being able to use their platform to stand for something good.

“And once again, for so long, as a player I would almost joke, I’d be like ‘I would have loved to have shut up and dribble,’” Bird said. “In so many ways, I would have loved to have been valued as a basketball player. I would have loved to have been spoken about just for my play. I think everybody in the league can say that.

“But nobody ever let us do that,” Bird continued. “So what happened? We started to build a backbone, a little bit of an identity. We understood that in order to push our league forward, we were going to have to combat these things. And then you know what else we learned? It feels good to stand up for yourself, it feels even better to stand up for others. We started to learn that people were learning from us, and able to follow us in a different way. And who were we following? Black women.”

You can watch the full episode of “A Touch More” right here.

[h/t Awful Announcing]