Caitlin Clark has weighed in on the media frenzy that erupted after she was fouled in a game last week by fellow WNBA player Chennedy Carter.
On Friday, Clark, an Indiana Fever rookie, was asked whether she thinks Carter, who plays for the Chicago Sky, owes her a pubic apology for the foul.
“Basketball’s competitive, I get it,” Clark said, in comments she gave ahead of a Washington Mystics game Friday night. “Sometimes your emotions get the best of you. Happened to me multiple times throughout the course of my career. People are competitive, it is what it is.”
“She’s having a tremendous season,” Clark said of Carter. “She’s played great basketball/”
Clark added that she’s focused on her own team and how she can improve as a player — not the incident with Carter.
“It’s just basketball at the end of the day,” she said. “There’s no grudges. … It’s a sport, it’s competitive, it’s not going to be nice all the time, that’s not what basketball is. I think people that play that at the highest level understand that.”
Last weekend, Carter hip-checked Clark, knocking her to the ground, before an inbounds pass in the Fever vs. Sky game on June 1. The WNBA later upgraded the common foul to a flagrant-1 violation, defined as “unnecessary contact committed by a player against an opponent.”
The foul has sparked wide outrage. Many people have criticized Carter for the foul, charging that the incident suggests she and other WNBA players have been more physical with Clark.
Others have argued that Carter’s foul against Clark — who is white — was not unusual for the physicality displayed in the WNBA, and that much of the criticism directed at Carter, who is Black, is rife with racial undertones.
Carter initially declined to respond to questions about her foul against Clark after the game. On Monday, she urged the public to not “form an opinion off of one little clip,” according to ESPN.
