WNBA DRAMA with Katie Herzog & Ethan Strauss - Blocked and Reported

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[00:01]
A
We are going to be talking today about the wnba. Lots going on, particularly in Seattle. But let's do some introductions first. So most people are going to know who you are. You were. This is your. You've been on the show twice, and now this live. So not an episode, but you've been on the show twice. So some people know who you are also from your own career in life, I suppose, too. And at the first time you were on the show, this was. I think it was in 2020. And you were. You had. You had been a sports reporter at the Athletic. And what was the team you follow? The la. Wait, the la. Clippers? Pacers?
[00:35]
B
Golden State. The Golden State Warriors.
[00:37]
A
Warriors. Warriors. Where do they live? What is the Golden State?
[00:42]
B
It's a strange name, isn't it? They're in the Bay Area.
[00:45]
A
They.
[00:46]
B
They used to be in Oakland, but they were grossed out by that and they left and they went to.
[00:51]
A
Racist. They're too racist for.
[00:53]
B
Okay, yeah, that's what they said. That was their explanation.
[00:56]
A
Yeah. So you left. Sorry. Pouring my tea here. So at the time, you had been this. You'd been this beat reporter covering the basketball team. Seems probably like a dream job for every athletic. Well, are you athletic? I heard you were pretty good. Like a surprisingly good basketball player.
[01:15]
B
Yeah, I'm more athletic than I look, but that's a little bit like how Duke is called the Harvard of the South. I. I'm not sure how to rank that relatively.
[01:28]
A
Yeah. Yeah. But it seems like it probably would have been a dream job and you left to go be a substacker. My dream job. Not everyone's. So. So for people who missed that episode or who are for less familiar with your work, what was going on in sports journalism that made you decide to go independent?
[01:48]
B
Wow. Well, you had an influence on it, actually. So I don't know if you want credit or blame for such an eventuality. That's really up to you. But I was watching people just find niches that never existed previously. And I was a fan of what you and Jesse were doing. And I didn't know you, but I knew Jesse. So I actually, for my launch post, ran a couple articles by him and went over it with him and was looking to him as a little bit of a. Of a guide to this sort of quasi independence. And it was during the pandemic and I was just really worn down. I was burnt out on just covering basketball. Eventually you reach a certain age, and as much as I love sports and I love basketball, it's okay. Somebody wins Somebody loses, you become like a sportsball, anti sports, Reddit kind of person. Eventually, if you do it enough for work.
[02:48]
A
I imagine it's extremely difficult, like even just when you're writing every day about every. Like I find myself when I was writing for the stranger, like repeating, there's only so many ways to say the same thing. Yeah, I imagine with basketball that's really difficult to find new ways to say the ball went in the. In the hole.
[03:08]
B
There was one day I read somebody saying he claimed 20 points and 14 rebounds and I went, ooh, a new way to say a thing. Okay, I'm gonna take that one. That's a new way to do it. But I actually got. I'll just say I got good at an art form that doesn't exist anymore. So I eventually pivoted to doing new stuff and I had a three year contract when I left to join Substack. But what I used to be good at was writing this thing called a gamer where you would just sprint after the game was over and before midnight, get in a story that they put up there on ESPN and, and maybe be 700 words to a thousand words, which I think became good training for what I'm doing now. But now there's no demand for that kind of thing. We are, as the Atlantic was telling everybody, more of a post literate society and people are getting their sports coverage a different way. But before that, it was almost like I was performing a duty for the fans and I can speed run however I became, whatever this is, if I'm a grifter, heterodox, shitlord, fascist, I don't even know, fascist, whatever you want to throw out there. But things got pretty crazy during the pandemic, maybe you recall, and it felt, you know what it was, you know what part of it was? Because I've, I've gotten this kind of pushback from people. My old profession are angry at me.
[04:41]
A
They.
[04:41]
B
One of the talking points I heard was that I got so mad when the NBA players were in their bubble concluding their playoffs that they needed to do to fulfill their contract. And because it was the days of Floyd and everything else, they had jerseys with social justice memory, social justice messages on the back of the jerseys like, yeah, how many more would score on education reform? And I've heard, well, you got so mad over stuff like that.
[05:12]
A
Was education. Was education reform one of those. Did they did somebody.
[05:17]
B
It was, that was the, that was the winking conservative coded one, the guy with education reform. I'm not even kidding. That's where you find the Fox News likes. Yeah, the white guy with the Fox News likes. But yeah. And yeah, it wasn't that I was mad. It was. It was just to conclude it real quick. It was that this was hilarious. And it was killing me that our entire industry could not admit how funny this was. Yeah, that was something that propelled me to quit.
[05:46]
A
That's. That's very similar to what propelled me on sort of the trans journey, which was just that I lived in this community where so many people who had like a year before been like proud man haters were transitioning to men and that nobody else was saying, like, guys, this is weird. And also funny, but weird. It was just the. It was very much the like emperor is. Is butt naked elements of it that I found fascinating and also hilarious and also troubling. Okay, so it's. Sorry, go ahead.
[06:20]
B
No, I think I had a similar. It wasn't exactly the same, but I had a similar experience to you with the Stranger where I was at a prestige outlet and I wrote a little bit about how the audience had fallen away for the NBA. Their ratings crashed when they did this thing. And I, I had to. It was like an act of congress for me to get the article through and write it. And I could tell the day it went up that a lot of my peers and colleagues, the slack channels, were not happy with what I said. But the subscriptions for that article came rolling in and the emails and I went, oh, okay. Maybe by larping as a reasonable person, I can potentially feed myself independently. So what?
[07:09]
A
Yeah, has that. So was there a. Was this a correlation causation thing? I mean, after the sort of slogans on the jersey era ended, did numbers come back? How's the NBA doing now?
[07:22]
B
I think the NBA is doing very well now. I think they just had a great season. It's been underplayed that they got scared off by the politics and the drop off and became more apolitical. Leagues that code less. They became more apolitical than leagues that code less politically because they're kind of this archetypal pinata for a portion of the right. It's the NBA. It's the decadent black guy league. It's LeBron James lecturing Donald Trump. And so if there's any sort of story that fits certain parameters, they really focus on it. Meanwhile, there's almost like this hicklib dynamic. It reminds me of Talladega Knights. Have you seen that movie?
[08:06]
A
I haven't. I'm familiar with. With the genre.
[08:10]
B
Well, it's that dynamic where the executives are the villains, the sort of whatever the NAs are, the Jews. Actually, I think Molly Shannon might have been one of them and some, some guy who used to be one of the co stars in Ally McBeal, but I can't, I can't remember. The point is, the point is that it's this dynamic where the executives running certain sports are vaguely embarrassed about the fan base and will do more to counter signal. Whereas the NBA, after going heavy into it and becoming branded as this archetypal woke league, actually got a little bit scared and went in the other direction and tried to do as little of that as possible. And I think as just a pure business proposition that appears to have gone well for them of late.
[08:58]
A
So they haven't swung from woke to anti woke. You're not seeing Make America Great again on the jerseys, which would also do something for business. I don't know if it'd be good, good or bad. They've landed in a neutral place.
[09:13]
B
Yeah, in an odd place. The owner of the New York Knicks is very MAGA and has traditionally been despised, James Dolan. And they lost for a while. So that's also why people were angry at him. But he almost thrives off a certain kind of negative energy, it seems. And for the first Knicks home game in the finals, he invited Trump up to his suite. So Trump was there in Madison Square Garden for that game. Then they, even though they won the finals, eventually they lost that game. So there's talk of a Trump curse. But that was a little bit spicy, that was a little bit controversial. There were media people who were flipping out about it. But I think it got great viewership, the whole series did. But that one especially, it kind of generated a little bit of heat that that Trump was there, the red man in the blue zone. It gave the NBA a little something. So that's just one detail. I think the NBA is an interesting case because majority of their fans, if they do vote, vote Democrat. When I was at ESPN, 40% of the Avid fans were black. Those were our demographics and our secret focus groups. But you have a lot of conservative fans, theoretically. You've got teams in Salt Lake City, Oklahoma City. Of those who vote, maybe one in three were conservative before whatever the psychotic break of 2020 was. And yeah, that's not a majority, but one out of three is a lot. If you're a baseball player who gets a hit one out of three times, you're an excellent baseball player. So I think they lost something. They've been sort of gaining Something. And the WNBA now is more the locus of the culture war and the conversational heat. And the great thing about the WNBA is they weren't popular before. So. So this isn't killing them or undermining them. It's actually highlighting them. And it's now part of the value proposition. So I'm not trying to get to the eventual conversation. This is your podcast, but I'm just free associated.
[11:18]
A
Good segue. Good segue. Okay, so, yes, we're going to talk about women's sports today. Let's talk about Caitlin Clark and Sophie Cunningham and the very messy culture war battle that unfolded earlier this week in Seattle when the Storm played the Indiana Fever, where Clark and Cunningham both play. But let's start with Caitlin Clark. So just more broadly, what is going on with her?
[11:44]
B
So it dates back to when she burst onto the scene at Iowa, just kind of out of the pandemic, post pandemic star personality where her playing style was exciting and nobody had ever seen anything like it. It looked a little bit more like Steph Curry in the NBA, but in the a women's basketball setting.
[12:06]
A
And her threes. Right. Like what? Like what? Like when I watched. I've watched a few games when she was in a few of the college games in the finals, and I thought, as I always think when I watch women's basketball, that who. It seemed like she was dominating around the perimeter. But to me, and she also seemed like she was doing that thing where she, like messy, where she walks a lot. Like, I didn't see a lot of running. To me, I was like, as a, as a non basketball fan, I didn't come in and say, this is incredible. I came in and thought, okay, she's putting up a lot of points, but this is like, not a fantastic viewing experience. So explain what is so good about her.
[12:52]
B
I like that you were a casual fan in. You were a contrarian casual fan of Caitlin Clark. I think that's glorious. Yeah, she shot a lot.
[13:04]
A
I think she sucks on D. I'm just gonna say it. She sucks on D. She does.
[13:08]
B
You're right. That is. That's a jack. That's true. You're not wrong about that. But people don't care about that. They like threes shot from very far away. And she also had a flare. She's an amazing passer. And her team wasn't very good because Iowa isn't this big program. And then they would go up against LSU and. And it became this racially coded, almost like a boxing match where everybody's excited because you've got the white boxer and the black boxer and LSU is a very black team, although they're coached by a MAGA coded white lady who has a tremendous amount of personality and I think is a lot of fun. But so they had that going and then they had Caitlin Clark and Clark was the underdog. And it really.
[13:56]
A
It's always good when whitey underdog.
[13:59]
B
Yeah, it gives a lot of. It just gives the whole situation a little something.
[14:03]
A
Yeah.
[14:04]
B
And then Angel Reese was one of the best players on LSU and clearly palpably seemed to despise Caitlin Clark. And when LSU beat Iowa in the championship in the waning moments as the clock ticked down and the game was over, for all intents and purposes, we was mocking her, yelling at her, doing her celebration back to her, and it just seemed rather unhinged. And I think a reasonable person would assess it as this is not great sportsmanship and it's kind of going past even like the fun. Kobe Bryant stepping over Alan stepping over Tyron Lou. No. Is Allen Iverson stepping over Tyron Lou? Sorry, I'm getting my wires crossed there. But something that happens like showing somebody up. This is really. But the media at that point had this kind of front lash protectiveness. So you would have these more independent voices who are pro Clark and didn't have a tremendous white guilt about it, like Dave Portnoy of Barstool saying that Angel Reese, what she's doing is disgusting. But then you had gatekeeping media people telling you that what you're doing might be an expression of some sort of deep seated bigotry as opposed to just a merely reasonable. Yeah, Angel Reese is going a little far here and letting the resentments out in the open a little too much. So that set the stage for the whole NBA thing that would follow later.
[15:29]
A
I mean, did they both go into the NBA at the same time?
[15:34]
B
The wnba? Yes, they did. Yes. And Reese is not as good as Caitlin Clark is. And that's been an awkward part.
[15:42]
A
Who does she play for?
[15:45]
B
She used to play for the Chicago sky, now she plays for Atlanta. So she's already on her second team. She's more of kind of a. A rugged rebounder. A clip of her just went viral from the WNBA All Star Game where she's dribbling, frankly, like a six year old. So she's a player with some utility. But you have to wonder, is she in this All Star Game because of this weird racialized rivalry? Because she's not that good. But some would disagree with me that's just my take on the matter in the.
[16:17]
A
What was the. Okay, so Iowa. Did they, Iowa never actually won the national championship. Right. Under Caitlin Clark.
[16:23]
B
They came, they came close. They did not, they did not win it. I'm trying to remember if they got to the final twice. But they, yeah, they, they came close, but ultimately they didn't get it done.
[16:35]
A
Okay. All right. So Caitlin Clark goes to the NBA. How good is. Sorry, wnba. How good is.
[16:43]
B
I'm just trying to make sure that I didn't hallucinate that Angel Reese was in the WNBA All Star Game. Yes. It appears she was selected as a reserve for the game. I didn't make that up. So how good. That's been a matter of some controversy and some debate. She entered into the league. There are all these warnings about how she wouldn't handle the physicality of it well all time. She's six foot one, which for an NBA player is very small, but for a WNBA player is a reasonable height. It might, maybe it's analogous to like being 6, 5 in the NBA. I'd have to look that up. I'd have to do a Steve Saylor deep dive on.
[17:21]
A
I want to see an analysis on palm size, too.
[17:24]
B
Yeah, we need to go, we need, we need to go through it all. So she entered into the scene. It was kind of up and down and I think that she was really good and was arguably top 15 player as a rookie. But then the next season got hurt so much and the numbers were bad and now we're in our third season here and I, I wrote about this. I thought that there would be. Let me tell you a little something about writing every day as I do, and how you just get feedback on what people really want. Yeah, I thought this was an excellent piece of research by myself, if I do say so myself. And I thought it would just. Oh, I would just rake in subscriptions about how Adam Silver, who runs the NBA and the WNBA is a subsidiary, is frustrated with the shit show the WNBA is and has subtly, sneakily adjust the refereeing to make it less physical. And now Caitlin Clark is getting all kinds of calls and she's throwing thriving. And her free throws per 100 possessions have gone up 63%. And now she's having an excellent season. Very quiet, not a lot of reaction.
[18:35]
A
Sports.
[18:36]
B
Well, let's, let's, let's hold up. Not quite. Not quite.
[18:39]
A
Okay.
[18:40]
B
The next day I write about this trans sports gunfight at the OK Corral going on in Seattle. Talk about these crazy woke WNBA people. Boom. Engagement Subscriptions. So I think it's a testament to how the primary product of the WNBA right now is not the actual product. It's this. It's this drama. It creates the drama. They are the content. Queens, baseball. More people watch baseball. That's true. More people watch the World Series baseball, sports talk. So much less. So right now, so much less represented than WNBA national talk. WNBA is. And the crazy thing, Katie, is they did it all accidentally.
[19:28]
A
Yeah, it's. It's.
[19:30]
B
Nobody wanted this and they hate it.
[19:31]
A
It's women. Women. You know, drama follows. Are there ever controversies in baseball?
[19:40]
B
What kinds? Well, yeah, there are controversies in baseball, Shohei.
[19:43]
A
Okay. Interesting ones.
[19:45]
B
The biggest star was accused of gambling. Some gambling scandal. He said it was his translator. People argue about it. So no stuff happens in other sports, but nothing like what happens in the WNBA happens in other sports. The wnba. Well, I'll just make one quick point about has the women in drama component, but also it has the component of. It was never supposed to be a real business. It was supposed to be an ngo. It was not supposed to make money. And all of a sudden, after Caitlin Clark emerges, millions of people are watching. So crazy things just happen because the people involved were never actually supposed to be running a real thing, in my opinion.
[20:28]
A
Right, okay. So it's supposed to. They're supposed to be doing it for the love of the game, and now there's actually people watching. Okay. So, yeah. Caitlin Clark, again, I don't watch basketball. Caitlin Clark, it seems from what I see online, from what I. The ambient noise, it seems as though she's getting her ass beat on a regular basis or was last season. Is that, Is that accurate?
[20:51]
B
That is accurate. It's accurate. That's the meme. I do think that there is a bit of a MAGA or MAGA associated intense focus on that. And it can. It can become a bit of selection bias where if there's a lot of engagement heat whenever Caitlin Clark gets knocked over and there's no call that goes viral, and then people get an impression that this is what happens. Whereas I watch a lot of Fever games and I'll go like, man, Caitlyn's getting some calls. I'll often. And I want her to do well. I, I root for her. I. I enjoy it, but I think she's actually been getting a lot of referee deference. But the common trope. And even some Republican senators were making inquiries about it. I'm trying to remember the specifics of that, like, let's protect Caitlin Clark, which. Okay, now I'M just. I'm sorry I talk so much sometimes, but you're helping me download a lot of thoughts I don't get to express elsewhere because you ask different questions. And I do think that on the right they've got a little bit of Ralph Wiggum disease. Do you. Did you remember Ralph Wiggum from the Simpsons? Yeah. Where Lisa Simpson gives him a valentine kind of in a perfunctory, sympathetic way. And then he can. He's convinced that she's in love with me and pursues it and hangs tight. I think that on the right, they. They've got so few celebrity adherents.
[22:20]
A
Right.
[22:21]
B
And all the more so in athletics that if there's anybody who just isn't kicking them in the face, it becomes protect them at all costs.
[22:30]
A
The Sydney thing, although with her she
[22:34]
B
might be a little bit, you know, she might be sending the valentine back.
[22:38]
A
Well, she hasn't. She's never said anything political at all. I don't think she just. She looked. She's got big titties, she's blonde and she comes from a family that is from Texas or whatever.
[22:49]
B
Yeah, I. I don't know. But there is that dynamic where we are going to draft you into being our champion. And I think that's happened with Clark, who if anything, has signaled more politics in the other direction. And I think she liked the Taylor Swift post on voting for Kamala. But just by not overtly becoming a big old lib, I think that they still. And it's also just, well, the people we hate. If the woke people have some issue with her, if the black lesbians, for lack of a better term are hitting her, then she's our girl. I think that's part of the dynamic.
[23:25]
A
How much do you think this is about race?
[23:30]
B
Depends on what the this is because
[23:32]
A
I'm talking about the. The conservative embrace of Caitlin Clark. Despite the fact that she appears to have made no overt towards like she has. She has. She has parroted some. I. I can't even remember the specific.
[23:46]
B
I have white privilege.
[23:47]
A
Yeah.
[23:48]
B
She's bent the knee. She's bent the knee in these ways.
[23:50]
A
Yes.
[23:51]
B
I think it's partially.
[23:52]
A
She'd be wearing the BLM jersey if they were doing BLM jerseys.
[23:55]
B
I. I would assume so. But then her counterpoint, Paige Beckers is a player who's arguably as good or better white blonde. I love when people say conventionally attractive. Like whatever that's supposed to mean. Conventionally attractive. But Paige Beckers is obviously a lesbian. And I'll just say it. I don't have a better way to say it. And I grew up in the 90s and a wigger. Katie, I gotta look.
[24:22]
A
This lesbian Paige Beckers, you know, she's not. I expected you. I expected her to have tiny braids, little cornrows, and I'm not seeing it. I'm gonna have to listen.
[24:35]
B
It's how she talks.
[24:36]
A
I appreciate you using the w slur on this show though. This is a free speech podcast.
[24:41]
B
I, I miss when it was more part of our culture.
[24:43]
A
I do too. Bring back the wigger. Can we, can we bring it back? I think you should be bringing it back.
[24:50]
B
I tried. I talked about this odd, paradoxical dynamic that I called the MAGA wigger, where the more an athlete, a white athlete seemed like a wigger, a male athlete, the more likely they were to be a Trump supporter. And that was very curious. And it throws people culture, man.
[25:11]
A
It's weird. We get Jesse, Jesse on this. What would be, what would a Jewish wig? A jigger.
[25:19]
B
I mean, many of them exist. A Beastie Boy. I mean, they, they're out there. They were out there. No, but we had a cultural moment of, of the wigger. We did. Can't hardly wait. The 90s, for instance. We, and that killed it in a way. Like once we knew it was an object of fun and we got all neurotic about it, then we got away from it. So. But anyway, Paige Becker, she grew up somewhere in the Midwest someplace with.
[25:44]
A
Wait, sorry.
[25:45]
B
Surrounded by.
[25:46]
A
Stuck on this. Is the wigger racist or anti racist?
[26:00]
B
I think a lot of demands are put on them. They, they've got more of an anti racism responsibility given. Yeah, what they're, given what they're doing, given what they're channeling. But yeah, I, I, there's a lot there. I wrote about it. I wrote a whole article on Jackson Dart, the quarterback of the New York Giants, doing a MAGA rally and people flipping out because he's a white guy who talks kind of black. And I found that to be a rich and intriguing subject. But. Yeah, but in the wnba, they don't vote maga. They talk that way, generally speaking. And so she codes as very blue. And the right has no interest in Paige Beckers, doesn't like her, doesn't. They don't care. And they love Caitlin Clark. And it is what it is.
[26:44]
A
Oh, got it. Okay. All right. So this brings us to her co worker colleague, Sophie Cunningham, who I had never heard of until two weeks ago. Tell us. And I learned about her thanks to your newsletter. Tell us about Sophie Cunningham.
[27:06]
B
Wow. Sophie Cunningham. Talk about conventionally attractive Sophie Cunningham. Sophie Cunningham is an NBA role player, WNBA role player. I keep doing that. WNBA role player, veteran. I think she's seven seasons in the league and I was actually hearing about her before she got famous because these teams, they play under the umbrella of the NBA team. So I know people who are the Phoenix Suns, they were talking in the gross way dudes talk, going, dude, there's this player on the, on the Phoenix Mercury, bro, she's such a smoke show, dude, Like Sophie Cunningham, bro. That sort of things. That's when I first heard about her. And she comes to the Fever. And one day, one game, Caitlin Clark got smacked up and Cunningham ran down and just effectively physically assaulted the player who did it, who happened to be white. But it was a moment that changed everything. There's an excellent ESPN profile on Cunningham from a week or two ago that actually identified this as this is what changed everything. And it was a little bit like Game of Thrones where one of the characters says, I will be your champion. I will fight for you. And then the audience gets a charge out of that. It felt like to Caitlin Clark supporters, she's getting beat up, this league hates her, they resent her palpably, and finally somebody steps up to defend her. And lo and behold, this, this hockey goon enforcer happens to be a blonde, lanky, model looking woman. Boom, instant celebrity. Yeah, she's got more Instagram followers now than the aforementioned Paige Beckers, despite coming off the bench. And she's actually quite a good player. She's just not a star player. She's one of the best shooters in the league. I'm not going to bore the people listening by talking about her true shooting percentage. But she's not, she's not a star. But I think, as ESPN put it, she's not a star, but she's a lead. She's a leading woman and people can't get enough. And she's become MAGA coded. And what took it to a whole new level, Katie, as you might know about, there was a similar kind of game, similar interaction. Caitlin Clark got her throat grabbed, it wasn't called later became like a flagrant foul, but, or upgraded to a flagrant foul. And in the game, in some interaction, Sophie Cunningham points at a black lady. I forget which player she pointed at. I, I, I try to remember, there was two involved. I should, I should know that. But she pointed, she was told not to point in the retelling. Or don't you point that finger at me because there are arguing. She pointed finger, and then she just kind of did this and let it dangle and then gave it a little bit of, like, a flick flourish.
[29:59]
A
Oh, wow.

Summary7 min read

Blocked and Reported: “WNBA DRAMA with Katie Herzog & Ethan Strauss”

A Rich and Detailed Episode Summary
July 31, 2026

Overview

In this episode, Katie Herzog is joined by sports journalist and Substack writer Ethan Strauss to dissect the latest culture-war and viral controversies erupting around the WNBA—especially following the now-infamous Indiana Fever versus Seattle Storm matchup involving Caitlin Clark and Sophie Cunningham. Together, Herzog and Strauss dive into the intersection of sports, politics, race, gender, and media framing, revealing how the league became a new locus of internet drama and ideological battles. The conversation maintains Blocked and Reported’s trademark blend of irreverence, wit, and incisive critique.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Ethan Strauss’s Journalism Journey

[00:00–05:46]

Strauss recounts his professional transition from The Athletic covering the Golden State Warriors to launching an independent Substack, inspired partly by watching Herzog and Singal’s success.
Burnout and the changing media landscape compelled Strauss to leave mainstream sports journalism (“I was just really worn down. ... Eventually you reach a certain age, and as much as I love sports and I love basketball, it's okay. Somebody wins Somebody loses, you become like a sportsball, anti sports, Reddit kind of person.” —B, 01:48).
Pandemic era “craziness” and the widespread adoption of social justice slogans/nameplates in professional basketball further soured his view of the industry’s lack of self-awareness:
Notable Quote:

“It was just to conclude it real quick. It was that this was hilarious. And it was killing me that our entire industry could not admit how funny this was. Yeah, that was something that propelled me to quit.” —B, 05:12

The NBA’s Political Pendulum

[05:46–11:17]

Strauss describes how the NBA became a cultural and political lightning rod, notably during the 2020 “bubble” season, with social justice messaging on jerseys.
He details how the NBA lost viewers due to overt activism, only to recover by dialing back its political messaging (“I think the NBA is doing very well now. ... They became more apolitical than leagues that code less politically because they're kind of this archetypal pinata for a portion of the right.” —B, 07:22).
The complexity of the NBA’s fanbase is discussed—predominantly Democratic-leaning, but with significant conservative representation, especially in certain cities/teams.
Unexpected political moments, like Trump attending a Knicks playoff game, are highlighted as adding to the league’s “drama” and ratings.

Women’s Sports & Caitlin Clark’s Meteoric Rise

[11:17–16:44]

Transition to WNBA drama, focusing primarily on Caitlin Clark:
- Clark’s stardom at Iowa, with a playing style compared to Steph Curry.
- Racial and cultural subtext became intertwined with her popularity—Clark was often positioned in the media and among fans as an “underdog white girl” vs. Black-dominated teams (“It's always good when whitey underdog.” —A, 13:56).
- The now-infamous rivalry with Angel Reese of LSU, culminating in heated finals and public spectacles of showboating (“...the media at that point had this kind of front lash protectiveness. ... you had gatekeeping media people telling you that what you're doing might be an expression of some sort of deep seated bigotry as opposed to just a merely reasonable. Yeah, Angel Reese is going a little far here...” —B, 15:28).

Clark and Reese in the WNBA

[16:44–20:27]

Both Clark and Reese entered the WNBA at the same time, but with differing trajectories and skill sets (“Reese is not as good as Caitlin Clark is. And that's been an awkward part.” —B, 15:33).
Discussion of sport-specific nuances—Clark’s talent, shooting ability, and recent improvement thanks to adapted WNBA refereeing designed (according to Strauss) to allow stars like Clark to thrive (“Now Caitlin Clark is getting all kinds of calls and she's throwing thriving.” —B, 17:23).

The WNBA as Culture-War Content Machine

[18:34–20:27]

The drama surrounding the WNBA is described as its “primary product”—media spectacle is now more central than the sports action itself.
Herzog and Strauss joke about the league’s supposed “feminine” drama but agree the league was never expected to become a real, profitable business, so “crazy things just happen.”
Notable Quote:

“The primary product of the WNBA right now is not the actual product. It's this. It's this drama. ... And the crazy thing, Katie, is they did it all accidentally.” —B, 19:28

Caitlin Clark’s “Beaten Up” Meme and Conservative Embrace

[20:27–24:22]

The “Caitlin Clark gets fouled up, media meltdown, conservative angst” dynamic is explored:
- While viral clips focus on Clark being physically targeted, Strauss insists she also receives “referee deference.”
- Conservatives have latched onto her as a symbol, despite Clark herself signaling progressive politics at times. This is compared to the “Ralph Wiggum disease”—the right latches onto “anybody who just isn't kicking them in the face.”
Notable Quotes:

“On the right they've got a little bit of Ralph Wiggum disease... if there's anybody who just isn't kicking them in the face, it becomes protect them at all costs.” —B, 22:20
“...if the woke people have some issue with her, if the black lesbians, for lack of a better term are hitting her, then she's our girl. I think that's part of the dynamic.” —B, 22:49

Race, Media, and Identity

[23:25–26:44]

Herzog and Strauss delve into the degree to which race factors into Clark's reception and the conservative embrace of her, even as she occasionally voices “woke” talking points (“I have white privilege. She's bent the knee.” —A & B, ~23:47).
Juxtaposition between Clark and other white, talented players like Paige Bueckers is discussed; Bueckers, who “codes as very blue” and “obviously a lesbian,” gets little attention from the right.
Conversation veers into a riff on the concept of “the wigger” and who codes as what in women's basketball—a segment laced with off-color humor and pop culture references.
- Notable moment:
  
  “I tried. I talked about this odd, paradoxical dynamic that I called the MAGA wigger, where the more an athlete, a white athlete seemed like a wigger, a male athlete, the more likely they were to be a Trump supporter. And that was very curious. And it throws people culture, man.” —B, 24:49

Sophie Cunningham: The Viral “Enforcer”

[26:44–29:59]

Sophie Cunningham emerges as an unexpected viral star after physically defending Caitlin Clark in-game:
- Introduced as “conventionally attractive” and discussed in “gross locker-room” style by NBA-adjacent dudes.
- Her aggressive play and public defense of Clark create an instant culture-war icon—”a little bit like Game of Thrones where one of the characters says, I will be your champion.”
- Her image as a “blonde, lanky, model-looking woman” who stands up against perceived anti-Clark hostility instantly earns her huge social media followings (even over more accomplished players like Bueckers).
- Memorable Moment: Cunningham famously points her finger at a Black opponent during a post-foul confrontation, giving it a dramatic “flick flourish”—a moment already becoming meme material.

Notable Quotes & Timestamped Highlights

On writer burnout and media self-seriousness:
“I was just really worn down. ... Eventually you reach a certain age, and as much as I love sports and I love basketball, it's okay. Somebody wins Somebody loses...” —B, 01:48
On the humorlessness of sports media:
“It was killing me that our entire industry could not admit how funny this was.” —B, 05:12
On the WNBA’s transformation into content:
“The primary product of the WNBA right now is not the actual product. It's this. It's this drama. ... And the crazy thing, Katie, is they did it all accidentally.” —B, 19:28
On race and conservative fandom:
“On the right they've got a little bit of Ralph Wiggum disease... if there's anybody who just isn't kicking them in the face, it becomes protect them at all costs.” —B, 22:20
On “MAGA wigger” phenomenon:
“...where the more an athlete, a white athlete seemed like a wigger, a male athlete, the more likely they were to be a Trump supporter. And that was very curious.” —B, 24:49
On Sophie Cunningham’s rise:
“It felt like to Caitlin Clark supporters, she's getting beat up, this league hates her, they resent her palpably, and finally somebody steps up to defend her. And lo and behold, this, this hockey goon enforcer happens to be a blonde, lanky, model looking woman. Boom, instant celebrity.” —B, 28:05

Timestamps for Important Segments

00:00–05:46: Strauss’s transition to Substack, sports journalism burnout, pandemic absurdities.
05:46–11:17: The NBA’s political journey, fanbase complexity, culture war context.
11:17–16:44: Caitlin Clark’s meteoric rise, college rivalry with Angel Reese.
16:44–20:27: Clark and Reese in the WNBA, “star treatment,” league business.
18:34–20:27: WNBA drama as a new product, how controversy fuels attention.
20:27–24:22: Caitlin Clark “being targeted” meme, right-wing embrace, Ralph Wiggum analogy.
23:25–26:44: Race, identity, and conservative fan psychology versus “lib coding.”
26:44–29:59: Sophie Cunningham’s viral enforcer moment and sudden stardom.

Memorable Moments and Episode Tone

Herzog and Strauss crack wise about “drama follows women,” wiggers, and sports media’s inability to laugh at itself—preserving Blocked and Reported’s signature irreverence.
Strange bedfellows abound: white “underdogs,” lesbian-coded stars, and culture warriors of all stripes make the WNBA a complex and endlessly meme-able battleground.
Cunningham’s “finger flourish” becomes an instant legend—“her Game of Thrones moment” per Strauss.

Conclusion

This episode provides a sharp, humorous, and highly relevant snapshot of how women’s sports—most notably the WNBA—became enmeshed in America’s culture war. Through incisive banter and deep insider context, Herzog and Strauss suggest the league’s newfound mainstream relevance is paradoxically built not on the game, but the surrounding drama: gender, race, fandom, and the ever-churning internet spectacle. Even if you’ve never seen a WNBA game, you’ll come away with a clearer sense of why everyone (for better or worse) is suddenly talking about it.

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Transcript89 lines

[00:01]
A
We are going to be talking today about the wnba. Lots going on, particularly in Seattle. But let's do some introductions first. So most people are going to know who you are. You were. This is your. You've been on the show twice, and now this live. So not an episode, but you've been on the show twice. So some people know who you are also from your own career in life, I suppose, too. And at the first time you were on the show, this was. I think it was in 2020. And you were. You had. You had been a sports reporter at the Athletic. And what was the team you follow? The la. Wait, the la. Clippers? Pacers?
[00:35]
B
Golden State. The Golden State Warriors.
[00:37]
A
Warriors. Warriors. Where do they live? What is the Golden State?
[00:42]
B
It's a strange name, isn't it? They're in the Bay Area.
[00:45]
A
They.
[00:46]
B
They used to be in Oakland, but they were grossed out by that and they left and they went to.
[00:51]
A
Racist. They're too racist for.
[00:53]
B
Okay, yeah, that's what they said. That was their explanation.
[00:56]
A
Yeah. So you left. Sorry. Pouring my tea here. So at the time, you had been this. You'd been this beat reporter covering the basketball team. Seems probably like a dream job for every athletic. Well, are you athletic? I heard you were pretty good. Like a surprisingly good basketball player.
[01:15]
B
Yeah, I'm more athletic than I look, but that's a little bit like how Duke is called the Harvard of the South. I. I'm not sure how to rank that relatively.
[01:28]
A
Yeah. Yeah. But it seems like it probably would have been a dream job and you left to go be a substacker. My dream job. Not everyone's. So. So for people who missed that episode or who are for less familiar with your work, what was going on in sports journalism that made you decide to go independent?
[01:48]
B
Wow. Well, you had an influence on it, actually. So I don't know if you want credit or blame for such an eventuality. That's really up to you. But I was watching people just find niches that never existed previously. And I was a fan of what you and Jesse were doing. And I didn't know you, but I knew Jesse. So I actually, for my launch post, ran a couple articles by him and went over it with him and was looking to him as a little bit of a. Of a guide to this sort of quasi independence. And it was during the pandemic and I was just really worn down. I was burnt out on just covering basketball. Eventually you reach a certain age, and as much as I love sports and I love basketball, it's okay. Somebody wins Somebody loses, you become like a sportsball, anti sports, Reddit kind of person. Eventually, if you do it enough for work.
[02:48]
A
I imagine it's extremely difficult, like even just when you're writing every day about every. Like I find myself when I was writing for the stranger, like repeating, there's only so many ways to say the same thing. Yeah, I imagine with basketball that's really difficult to find new ways to say the ball went in the. In the hole.
[03:08]
B
There was one day I read somebody saying he claimed 20 points and 14 rebounds and I went, ooh, a new way to say a thing. Okay, I'm gonna take that one. That's a new way to do it. But I actually got. I'll just say I got good at an art form that doesn't exist anymore. So I eventually pivoted to doing new stuff and I had a three year contract when I left to join Substack. But what I used to be good at was writing this thing called a gamer where you would just sprint after the game was over and before midnight, get in a story that they put up there on ESPN and, and maybe be 700 words to a thousand words, which I think became good training for what I'm doing now. But now there's no demand for that kind of thing. We are, as the Atlantic was telling everybody, more of a post literate society and people are getting their sports coverage a different way. But before that, it was almost like I was performing a duty for the fans and I can speed run however I became, whatever this is, if I'm a grifter, heterodox, shitlord, fascist, I don't even know, fascist, whatever you want to throw out there. But things got pretty crazy during the pandemic, maybe you recall, and it felt, you know what it was, you know what part of it was? Because I've, I've gotten this kind of pushback from people. My old profession are angry at me.
[04:41]
A
They.
[04:41]
B
One of the talking points I heard was that I got so mad when the NBA players were in their bubble concluding their playoffs that they needed to do to fulfill their contract. And because it was the days of Floyd and everything else, they had jerseys with social justice memory, social justice messages on the back of the jerseys like, yeah, how many more would score on education reform? And I've heard, well, you got so mad over stuff like that.
[05:12]
A
Was education. Was education reform one of those. Did they did somebody.
[05:17]
B
It was, that was the, that was the winking conservative coded one, the guy with education reform. I'm not even kidding. That's where you find the Fox News likes. Yeah, the white guy with the Fox News likes. But yeah. And yeah, it wasn't that I was mad. It was. It was just to conclude it real quick. It was that this was hilarious. And it was killing me that our entire industry could not admit how funny this was. Yeah, that was something that propelled me to quit.
[05:46]
A
That's. That's very similar to what propelled me on sort of the trans journey, which was just that I lived in this community where so many people who had like a year before been like proud man haters were transitioning to men and that nobody else was saying, like, guys, this is weird. And also funny, but weird. It was just the. It was very much the like emperor is. Is butt naked elements of it that I found fascinating and also hilarious and also troubling. Okay, so it's. Sorry, go ahead.
[06:20]
B
No, I think I had a similar. It wasn't exactly the same, but I had a similar experience to you with the Stranger where I was at a prestige outlet and I wrote a little bit about how the audience had fallen away for the NBA. Their ratings crashed when they did this thing. And I, I had to. It was like an act of congress for me to get the article through and write it. And I could tell the day it went up that a lot of my peers and colleagues, the slack channels, were not happy with what I said. But the subscriptions for that article came rolling in and the emails and I went, oh, okay. Maybe by larping as a reasonable person, I can potentially feed myself independently. So what?
[07:09]
A
Yeah, has that. So was there a. Was this a correlation causation thing? I mean, after the sort of slogans on the jersey era ended, did numbers come back? How's the NBA doing now?
[07:22]
B
I think the NBA is doing very well now. I think they just had a great season. It's been underplayed that they got scared off by the politics and the drop off and became more apolitical. Leagues that code less. They became more apolitical than leagues that code less politically because they're kind of this archetypal pinata for a portion of the right. It's the NBA. It's the decadent black guy league. It's LeBron James lecturing Donald Trump. And so if there's any sort of story that fits certain parameters, they really focus on it. Meanwhile, there's almost like this hicklib dynamic. It reminds me of Talladega Knights. Have you seen that movie?
[08:06]
A
I haven't. I'm familiar with. With the genre.
[08:10]
B
Well, it's that dynamic where the executives are the villains, the sort of whatever the NAs are, the Jews. Actually, I think Molly Shannon might have been one of them and some, some guy who used to be one of the co stars in Ally McBeal, but I can't, I can't remember. The point is, the point is that it's this dynamic where the executives running certain sports are vaguely embarrassed about the fan base and will do more to counter signal. Whereas the NBA, after going heavy into it and becoming branded as this archetypal woke league, actually got a little bit scared and went in the other direction and tried to do as little of that as possible. And I think as just a pure business proposition that appears to have gone well for them of late.
[08:58]
A
So they haven't swung from woke to anti woke. You're not seeing Make America Great again on the jerseys, which would also do something for business. I don't know if it'd be good, good or bad. They've landed in a neutral place.
[09:13]
B
Yeah, in an odd place. The owner of the New York Knicks is very MAGA and has traditionally been despised, James Dolan. And they lost for a while. So that's also why people were angry at him. But he almost thrives off a certain kind of negative energy, it seems. And for the first Knicks home game in the finals, he invited Trump up to his suite. So Trump was there in Madison Square Garden for that game. Then they, even though they won the finals, eventually they lost that game. So there's talk of a Trump curse. But that was a little bit spicy, that was a little bit controversial. There were media people who were flipping out about it. But I think it got great viewership, the whole series did. But that one especially, it kind of generated a little bit of heat that that Trump was there, the red man in the blue zone. It gave the NBA a little something. So that's just one detail. I think the NBA is an interesting case because majority of their fans, if they do vote, vote Democrat. When I was at ESPN, 40% of the Avid fans were black. Those were our demographics and our secret focus groups. But you have a lot of conservative fans, theoretically. You've got teams in Salt Lake City, Oklahoma City. Of those who vote, maybe one in three were conservative before whatever the psychotic break of 2020 was. And yeah, that's not a majority, but one out of three is a lot. If you're a baseball player who gets a hit one out of three times, you're an excellent baseball player. So I think they lost something. They've been sort of gaining Something. And the WNBA now is more the locus of the culture war and the conversational heat. And the great thing about the WNBA is they weren't popular before. So. So this isn't killing them or undermining them. It's actually highlighting them. And it's now part of the value proposition. So I'm not trying to get to the eventual conversation. This is your podcast, but I'm just free associated.
[11:18]
A
Good segue. Good segue. Okay, so, yes, we're going to talk about women's sports today. Let's talk about Caitlin Clark and Sophie Cunningham and the very messy culture war battle that unfolded earlier this week in Seattle when the Storm played the Indiana Fever, where Clark and Cunningham both play. But let's start with Caitlin Clark. So just more broadly, what is going on with her?
[11:44]
B
So it dates back to when she burst onto the scene at Iowa, just kind of out of the pandemic, post pandemic star personality where her playing style was exciting and nobody had ever seen anything like it. It looked a little bit more like Steph Curry in the NBA, but in the a women's basketball setting.
[12:06]
A
And her threes. Right. Like what? Like what? Like when I watched. I've watched a few games when she was in a few of the college games in the finals, and I thought, as I always think when I watch women's basketball, that who. It seemed like she was dominating around the perimeter. But to me, and she also seemed like she was doing that thing where she, like messy, where she walks a lot. Like, I didn't see a lot of running. To me, I was like, as a, as a non basketball fan, I didn't come in and say, this is incredible. I came in and thought, okay, she's putting up a lot of points, but this is like, not a fantastic viewing experience. So explain what is so good about her.
[12:52]
B
I like that you were a casual fan in. You were a contrarian casual fan of Caitlin Clark. I think that's glorious. Yeah, she shot a lot.
[13:04]
A
I think she sucks on D. I'm just gonna say it. She sucks on D. She does.
[13:08]
B
You're right. That is. That's a jack. That's true. You're not wrong about that. But people don't care about that. They like threes shot from very far away. And she also had a flare. She's an amazing passer. And her team wasn't very good because Iowa isn't this big program. And then they would go up against LSU and. And it became this racially coded, almost like a boxing match where everybody's excited because you've got the white boxer and the black boxer and LSU is a very black team, although they're coached by a MAGA coded white lady who has a tremendous amount of personality and I think is a lot of fun. But so they had that going and then they had Caitlin Clark and Clark was the underdog. And it really.
[13:56]
A
It's always good when whitey underdog.
[13:59]
B
Yeah, it gives a lot of. It just gives the whole situation a little something.
[14:03]
A
Yeah.
[14:04]
B
And then Angel Reese was one of the best players on LSU and clearly palpably seemed to despise Caitlin Clark. And when LSU beat Iowa in the championship in the waning moments as the clock ticked down and the game was over, for all intents and purposes, we was mocking her, yelling at her, doing her celebration back to her, and it just seemed rather unhinged. And I think a reasonable person would assess it as this is not great sportsmanship and it's kind of going past even like the fun. Kobe Bryant stepping over Alan stepping over Tyron Lou. No. Is Allen Iverson stepping over Tyron Lou? Sorry, I'm getting my wires crossed there. But something that happens like showing somebody up. This is really. But the media at that point had this kind of front lash protectiveness. So you would have these more independent voices who are pro Clark and didn't have a tremendous white guilt about it, like Dave Portnoy of Barstool saying that Angel Reese, what she's doing is disgusting. But then you had gatekeeping media people telling you that what you're doing might be an expression of some sort of deep seated bigotry as opposed to just a merely reasonable. Yeah, Angel Reese is going a little far here and letting the resentments out in the open a little too much. So that set the stage for the whole NBA thing that would follow later.
[15:29]
A
I mean, did they both go into the NBA at the same time?
[15:34]
B
The wnba? Yes, they did. Yes. And Reese is not as good as Caitlin Clark is. And that's been an awkward part.
[15:42]
A
Who does she play for?
[15:45]
B
She used to play for the Chicago sky, now she plays for Atlanta. So she's already on her second team. She's more of kind of a. A rugged rebounder. A clip of her just went viral from the WNBA All Star Game where she's dribbling, frankly, like a six year old. So she's a player with some utility. But you have to wonder, is she in this All Star Game because of this weird racialized rivalry? Because she's not that good. But some would disagree with me that's just my take on the matter in the.
[16:17]
A
What was the. Okay, so Iowa. Did they, Iowa never actually won the national championship. Right. Under Caitlin Clark.
[16:23]
B
They came, they came close. They did not, they did not win it. I'm trying to remember if they got to the final twice. But they, yeah, they, they came close, but ultimately they didn't get it done.
[16:35]
A
Okay. All right. So Caitlin Clark goes to the NBA. How good is. Sorry, wnba. How good is.
[16:43]
B
I'm just trying to make sure that I didn't hallucinate that Angel Reese was in the WNBA All Star Game. Yes. It appears she was selected as a reserve for the game. I didn't make that up. So how good. That's been a matter of some controversy and some debate. She entered into the league. There are all these warnings about how she wouldn't handle the physicality of it well all time. She's six foot one, which for an NBA player is very small, but for a WNBA player is a reasonable height. It might, maybe it's analogous to like being 6, 5 in the NBA. I'd have to look that up. I'd have to do a Steve Saylor deep dive on.
[17:21]
A
I want to see an analysis on palm size, too.
[17:24]
B
Yeah, we need to go, we need, we need to go through it all. So she entered into the scene. It was kind of up and down and I think that she was really good and was arguably top 15 player as a rookie. But then the next season got hurt so much and the numbers were bad and now we're in our third season here and I, I wrote about this. I thought that there would be. Let me tell you a little something about writing every day as I do, and how you just get feedback on what people really want. Yeah, I thought this was an excellent piece of research by myself, if I do say so myself. And I thought it would just. Oh, I would just rake in subscriptions about how Adam Silver, who runs the NBA and the WNBA is a subsidiary, is frustrated with the shit show the WNBA is and has subtly, sneakily adjust the refereeing to make it less physical. And now Caitlin Clark is getting all kinds of calls and she's throwing thriving. And her free throws per 100 possessions have gone up 63%. And now she's having an excellent season. Very quiet, not a lot of reaction.
[18:35]
A
Sports.
[18:36]
B
Well, let's, let's, let's hold up. Not quite. Not quite.
[18:39]
A
Okay.
[18:40]
B
The next day I write about this trans sports gunfight at the OK Corral going on in Seattle. Talk about these crazy woke WNBA people. Boom. Engagement Subscriptions. So I think it's a testament to how the primary product of the WNBA right now is not the actual product. It's this. It's this drama. It creates the drama. They are the content. Queens, baseball. More people watch baseball. That's true. More people watch the World Series baseball, sports talk. So much less. So right now, so much less represented than WNBA national talk. WNBA is. And the crazy thing, Katie, is they did it all accidentally.
[19:28]
A
Yeah, it's. It's.
[19:30]
B
Nobody wanted this and they hate it.
[19:31]
A
It's women. Women. You know, drama follows. Are there ever controversies in baseball?
[19:40]
B
What kinds? Well, yeah, there are controversies in baseball, Shohei.
[19:43]
A
Okay. Interesting ones.
[19:45]
B
The biggest star was accused of gambling. Some gambling scandal. He said it was his translator. People argue about it. So no stuff happens in other sports, but nothing like what happens in the WNBA happens in other sports. The wnba. Well, I'll just make one quick point about has the women in drama component, but also it has the component of. It was never supposed to be a real business. It was supposed to be an ngo. It was not supposed to make money. And all of a sudden, after Caitlin Clark emerges, millions of people are watching. So crazy things just happen because the people involved were never actually supposed to be running a real thing, in my opinion.
[20:28]
A
Right, okay. So it's supposed to. They're supposed to be doing it for the love of the game, and now there's actually people watching. Okay. So, yeah. Caitlin Clark, again, I don't watch basketball. Caitlin Clark, it seems from what I see online, from what I. The ambient noise, it seems as though she's getting her ass beat on a regular basis or was last season. Is that, Is that accurate?
[20:51]
B
That is accurate. It's accurate. That's the meme. I do think that there is a bit of a MAGA or MAGA associated intense focus on that. And it can. It can become a bit of selection bias where if there's a lot of engagement heat whenever Caitlin Clark gets knocked over and there's no call that goes viral, and then people get an impression that this is what happens. Whereas I watch a lot of Fever games and I'll go like, man, Caitlyn's getting some calls. I'll often. And I want her to do well. I, I root for her. I. I enjoy it, but I think she's actually been getting a lot of referee deference. But the common trope. And even some Republican senators were making inquiries about it. I'm trying to remember the specifics of that, like, let's protect Caitlin Clark, which. Okay, now I'M just. I'm sorry I talk so much sometimes, but you're helping me download a lot of thoughts I don't get to express elsewhere because you ask different questions. And I do think that on the right they've got a little bit of Ralph Wiggum disease. Do you. Did you remember Ralph Wiggum from the Simpsons? Yeah. Where Lisa Simpson gives him a valentine kind of in a perfunctory, sympathetic way. And then he can. He's convinced that she's in love with me and pursues it and hangs tight. I think that on the right, they. They've got so few celebrity adherents.
[22:20]
A
Right.
[22:21]
B
And all the more so in athletics that if there's anybody who just isn't kicking them in the face, it becomes protect them at all costs.
[22:30]
A
The Sydney thing, although with her she
[22:34]
B
might be a little bit, you know, she might be sending the valentine back.
[22:38]
A
Well, she hasn't. She's never said anything political at all. I don't think she just. She looked. She's got big titties, she's blonde and she comes from a family that is from Texas or whatever.
[22:49]
B
Yeah, I. I don't know. But there is that dynamic where we are going to draft you into being our champion. And I think that's happened with Clark, who if anything, has signaled more politics in the other direction. And I think she liked the Taylor Swift post on voting for Kamala. But just by not overtly becoming a big old lib, I think that they still. And it's also just, well, the people we hate. If the woke people have some issue with her, if the black lesbians, for lack of a better term are hitting her, then she's our girl. I think that's part of the dynamic.
[23:25]
A
How much do you think this is about race?
[23:30]
B
Depends on what the this is because
[23:32]
A
I'm talking about the. The conservative embrace of Caitlin Clark. Despite the fact that she appears to have made no overt towards like she has. She has. She has parroted some. I. I can't even remember the specific.
[23:46]
B
I have white privilege.
[23:47]
A
Yeah.
[23:48]
B
She's bent the knee. She's bent the knee in these ways.
[23:50]
A
Yes.
[23:51]
B
I think it's partially.
[23:52]
A
She'd be wearing the BLM jersey if they were doing BLM jerseys.
[23:55]
B
I. I would assume so. But then her counterpoint, Paige Beckers is a player who's arguably as good or better white blonde. I love when people say conventionally attractive. Like whatever that's supposed to mean. Conventionally attractive. But Paige Beckers is obviously a lesbian. And I'll just say it. I don't have a better way to say it. And I grew up in the 90s and a wigger. Katie, I gotta look.
[24:22]
A
This lesbian Paige Beckers, you know, she's not. I expected you. I expected her to have tiny braids, little cornrows, and I'm not seeing it. I'm gonna have to listen.
[24:35]
B
It's how she talks.
[24:36]
A
I appreciate you using the w slur on this show though. This is a free speech podcast.
[24:41]
B
I, I miss when it was more part of our culture.
[24:43]
A
I do too. Bring back the wigger. Can we, can we bring it back? I think you should be bringing it back.
[24:50]
B
I tried. I talked about this odd, paradoxical dynamic that I called the MAGA wigger, where the more an athlete, a white athlete seemed like a wigger, a male athlete, the more likely they were to be a Trump supporter. And that was very curious. And it throws people culture, man.
[25:11]
A
It's weird. We get Jesse, Jesse on this. What would be, what would a Jewish wig? A jigger.
[25:19]
B
I mean, many of them exist. A Beastie Boy. I mean, they, they're out there. They were out there. No, but we had a cultural moment of, of the wigger. We did. Can't hardly wait. The 90s, for instance. We, and that killed it in a way. Like once we knew it was an object of fun and we got all neurotic about it, then we got away from it. So. But anyway, Paige Becker, she grew up somewhere in the Midwest someplace with.
[25:44]
A
Wait, sorry.
[25:45]
B
Surrounded by.
[25:46]
A
Stuck on this. Is the wigger racist or anti racist?
[26:00]
B
I think a lot of demands are put on them. They, they've got more of an anti racism responsibility given. Yeah, what they're, given what they're doing, given what they're channeling. But yeah, I, I, there's a lot there. I wrote about it. I wrote a whole article on Jackson Dart, the quarterback of the New York Giants, doing a MAGA rally and people flipping out because he's a white guy who talks kind of black. And I found that to be a rich and intriguing subject. But. Yeah, but in the wnba, they don't vote maga. They talk that way, generally speaking. And so she codes as very blue. And the right has no interest in Paige Beckers, doesn't like her, doesn't. They don't care. And they love Caitlin Clark. And it is what it is.
[26:44]
A
Oh, got it. Okay. All right. So this brings us to her co worker colleague, Sophie Cunningham, who I had never heard of until two weeks ago. Tell us. And I learned about her thanks to your newsletter. Tell us about Sophie Cunningham.
[27:06]
B
Wow. Sophie Cunningham. Talk about conventionally attractive Sophie Cunningham. Sophie Cunningham is an NBA role player, WNBA role player. I keep doing that. WNBA role player, veteran. I think she's seven seasons in the league and I was actually hearing about her before she got famous because these teams, they play under the umbrella of the NBA team. So I know people who are the Phoenix Suns, they were talking in the gross way dudes talk, going, dude, there's this player on the, on the Phoenix Mercury, bro, she's such a smoke show, dude, Like Sophie Cunningham, bro. That sort of things. That's when I first heard about her. And she comes to the Fever. And one day, one game, Caitlin Clark got smacked up and Cunningham ran down and just effectively physically assaulted the player who did it, who happened to be white. But it was a moment that changed everything. There's an excellent ESPN profile on Cunningham from a week or two ago that actually identified this as this is what changed everything. And it was a little bit like Game of Thrones where one of the characters says, I will be your champion. I will fight for you. And then the audience gets a charge out of that. It felt like to Caitlin Clark supporters, she's getting beat up, this league hates her, they resent her palpably, and finally somebody steps up to defend her. And lo and behold, this, this hockey goon enforcer happens to be a blonde, lanky, model looking woman. Boom, instant celebrity. Yeah, she's got more Instagram followers now than the aforementioned Paige Beckers, despite coming off the bench. And she's actually quite a good player. She's just not a star player. She's one of the best shooters in the league. I'm not going to bore the people listening by talking about her true shooting percentage. But she's not, she's not a star. But I think, as ESPN put it, she's not a star, but she's a lead. She's a leading woman and people can't get enough. And she's become MAGA coded. And what took it to a whole new level, Katie, as you might know about, there was a similar kind of game, similar interaction. Caitlin Clark got her throat grabbed, it wasn't called later became like a flagrant foul, but, or upgraded to a flagrant foul. And in the game, in some interaction, Sophie Cunningham points at a black lady. I forget which player she pointed at. I, I, I try to remember, there was two involved. I should, I should know that. But she pointed, she was told not to point in the retelling. Or don't you point that finger at me because there are arguing. She pointed finger, and then she just kind of did this and let it dangle and then gave it a little bit of, like, a flick flourish.
[29:59]
A
Oh, wow.