WNBA, media slammed over handling of Caitlin Clark firestorm
OutKick host Dan Dakich criticizes the WNBA and media for mishandling star Caitlin Clark, arguing the league, after 30 years, fails to capitalize on her popularity. He cites ‘petty jealousies, racism, and sexism’ as reasons for negative narratives and limited support for the 24-year-old athlete. Dakich suggests this impacts both Clark and the sport’s potential growth.
ESPN released roughly two-and-a-half hours of a glossy documentary about the WNBA’s rise over the past few years. It’s called “Life in the W,” and it premiered Friday night, as part of an All-Star weekend rollout.
By Monday, someone could search the internet and find the trailer, ESPN press releases, streaming guides, episode listings and articles announcing the series. And that was pretty much it.
OutKick could not locate a single independent review of “Life in the W,” a substantive interview with either of its key producers or even a traditional episode recap after the six-part series premiered.
ESPN’s “Life in the W” follows A’ja Wilson, Napheesa Collier and DeWanna Bonner through the 2025 WNBA season but filmmakers never explain Caitlin Clark’s absence. (Getty Images)
That seemed quite unusual for an ESPN Original produced by UNINTERRUPTED in association with Cookie Jar & A Dream Studios, DICK’S Sporting Goods’ in-house content and production studio. None of those organizations is in the business of creating products and not marketing them extensively.
ESPN marketed the series as an intimate look at three of the WNBA’s “most accomplished and influential players” during a “groundbreaking year” for the league.
The lack of coverage is even more puzzling because the show’s publicity team actively pitched interviews with executive producer and show runner Trishtan Williams and ESPN Originals executive producer Lindsay Rovegno.
OutKick was offered an interview that never happened.
OutKick asked about interviewing the filmmakers on July 14. The following day, a publicist offered both Williams and Rovegno. OutKick immediately accepted, requested available interview windows and asked to screen the series beforehand.
Then, for more than a week, we heard nothing.
The publicist finally provided screener access on the eve of the premiere and apologized, explaining that the filmmakers’ schedules had become difficult because of WNBA All-Star events. Neither filmmaker was ever made available for the interview that had been offered.
Perhaps the rollout was simply disorganized.
But an interview with OutKick would have required the filmmakers to address the most obvious question hanging over the entire series.
Where is Caitlin Clark?
“Life in the W” follows A’ja Wilson, Napheesa Collier and DeWanna Bonner through the 2025 WNBA season. The cameras document their careers, families, relationships, injuries, playoff runs and participation in the negotiations over a new collective bargaining agreement.
A’ja Wilson is one of three players prominently featured in a new ESPN documentary about the WNBA. (Getty Images)
Clark isn’t completely absent. She appears in game and All-Star footage, and commentators mention her by name several times.
But she is not interviewed. She is not given a personal storyline. Her effect on the WNBA’s popularity is never meaningfully examined.
Instead, Clark exists mostly as background noise to a transformation the series repeatedly celebrates.
CAITLIN CLARK KEEPS DELIVERING RECORD WNBA VIEWERSHIP AS FEVER TOP 1 MILLION VIEWERS YET AGAIN
The opening montage touts the WNBA’s “recent surge in popularity,” record attendance, increased viewership, new fans and a media-rights agreement worth billions of dollars.
Later, during a segment about Bonner’s brief and unhappy tenure with the Indiana Fever, the documentary describes a “new era in Indy” and an “influx of fans, viewership, marketing, money, all with the Indiana Fever.”
The obvious catalyst for that influx goes largely unexamined.
It’s difficult to make a serious documentary about the WNBA’s unprecedented rise without directly confronting Clark’s role in it.
It also may have been nearly impossible to include her.
That left the filmmakers with a clear Caitlin Clark problem.
“Life in the W” is missing its most important character
There are many potential reasons why Clark isn’t one of the three players featured.
She may have been asked and declined. Given the level of scrutiny around her and how carefully her camp manages access, that wouldn’t be surprising. Allowing cameras to follow her through an entire WNBA season would create considerable risk while offering her little she doesn’t already have.
But the filmmakers would not say whether they asked Clark to participate at all.
There is also a practical storytelling problem.
The moment Clark becomes one of the central subjects, “Life in the W” becomes the Caitlin Clark documentary.
Caitlin Clark was not prominently featured in a new ESPN documentary about the WNBA. (Getty Images)
It wouldn’t matter how evenly the filmmakers divided the screen time. Clark’s quotes would produce the headlines and her scenes would drive the conversation. Every moment takes on larger meaning when Clark is involved.
Wilson is one of the greatest players in league history. Collier is an MVP-caliber star and an important union leader. Bonner is a two-time champion and one of the longest-tenured players in the sport.
Put Clark next to them, and all three become minor supporting characters.
That might not be fair, but it is reality.
There’s also the racial composition of the series.
Clark is the most conspicuous omission, but not the only one. Breanna Stewart, one of the most decorated active players in the sport and a WNBPA vice president, is not featured either. That makes the selection of Wilson, Collier and Bonner look less like a simple ranking of the league’s three biggest stars and more like a deliberate editorial construction.
Wilson, Collier and Bonner are all Black. Clark and Stewart are White. Paige Bueckers, the White guard selected No. 1 in the 2025 WNBA Draft, likely would have made a very interesting documentary subject, but she is also not featured.
That doesn’t prove race was the reason for the selections, or even one of the reasons. But documentaries do not accidentally arrive at their central subjects. The filmmakers deliberately built the entire series around three Black women during an era in which nearly every conversation about Clark’s popularity, media attention and relationship with the rest of the league eventually becomes entangled with race.
Napheesa Collier is one of three players prominently featured in a new ESPN documentary about the WNBA. (NBAE via Getty Images)
The broader public debate surrounding Clark and the WNBA has repeatedly expanded beyond basketball into disputes about race, gender, sexuality, media coverage and who should receive credit for the league’s growth.
Adding the enormously popular White player would not have been a neutral casting decision; it would have changed the cultural meaning of the project.
The filmmakers could have faced backlash for making Clark the central explanation for a league that existed for nearly three decades before she arrived. Clark is the single biggest catalyst behind the WNBA’s recent surge in popularity, yet much of the league’s media ecosystem still appears reluctant to say that part out loud.
There’s also the simple practical reason they may have chosen the players that they did: access. Being a central figure in a yearlong documentary process isn’t for everyone. It requires allowing cameras and microphones to capture practically every moment in the subjects’ lives.
It would have been perfectly defensible for the filmmakers to say they chose three women who were willing to grant extensive access to their lives.
They never gave us the opportunity to ask.
After the promised interview failed to materialize, OutKick submitted the central questions in writing: Was Clark approached? Did she decline? If she was not approached, why not? And what criteria were used to choose Wilson, Collier and Bonner?
Neither filmmaker responded.
Their lack of availability is especially strange in light of how little media attention the series generated.
The online coverage OutKick found consisted largely of announcement rewrites, ESPN’s own viewing guide, television listings and a favorable recap of a private promotional event hosted by Williams and attended by Bonner. None amounted to a substantive review or filmmaker interview about the series itself.
Even outlets that regularly champion women’s sports don’t appear to have published a piece telling readers they watched the series and explaining why it mattered. Given the project’s focus on representation, motherhood, labor activism, LGBTQ relationships and three Black female athletes, one might have expected friendly coverage from progressive sports and culture outlets.
Instead, there was almost nothing.
“Life in the W” tries to tell the story of a booming league through three accomplished women who had rich personal and professional journeys.
But Caitlin Clark still looms over the entire production.
Caitlin Clark is notably absent from ESPN’s ‘Life in the W’ WNBA documentary. (Getty Images)
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She is the unspoken explanation behind the “new era” in Indiana. She is the missing figure whenever the series celebrates the arrival of new fans, television viewers and money. Her absence also creates the documentary’s most interesting tension.
Clark is too popular to include without taking over.
She is too important to exclude without leaving a hole.
ESPN found a way to make nearly two-and-a-half hours of television with Clark mostly kept on the sideline. It never explained why.
And perhaps most remarkably, OutKick appears to be the only outlet that bothered to ask.
