{"id":14,"date":"2026-05-26T16:11:23","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T16:11:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/longdistancemoversusas.com\/?p=14"},"modified":"2026-05-26T16:11:23","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T16:11:23","slug":"caitlin-clark-is-too-experienced-to-make-this-rookie-mistake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/longdistancemoversusas.com\/?p=14","title":{"rendered":"Caitlin Clark is too experienced to make this rookie mistake"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The internet unleashed its fury on Indiana Fever shooting guard Caitlin Clark over the weekend after she walked on stage Saturday night with country music star Morgan Wallen as he greeted a packed arena in Clark\u2019s backyard: Indiana.<\/p>\n

Read more Jason Collins died without seeing another NBA player come out<\/a><\/p>\n

At issue for Clark are Wallen\u2019s personal history and his choices. In 2020, Wallen ran afoul of Covid lockdown restrictions. The same year, he got kicked out of Kid Rock\u2019s Big Ass Honky Tonk Rock N\u2019 Roll Steakhouse in Nashville and was arrested for public intoxication and disorderly conduct. In 2024, he was arrested again \u2014 this time for throwing a chair off the balcony of another Nashville honky-tonk, a six-story bar. The piece of furniture crashed to the street below, narrowly missing two police officers. He entered a \u201cconditional plea\u201d and was sentenced to seven days at a DUI education center.<\/p>\n

This behavior alone probably should have been enough to make Clark \u2014 the WNBA\u2019s most marketable star \u2014 think twice about appearing with Wallen. But the biggest reason Clark should have stayed home Saturday night is a 2021 video posted by TMZ in which Wallen can be heard shouting the N-word and other obscenities. As journalist Sarah Spain wrote on social media over the weekend about Clark, \u201cIf Morgan Wallen using the N word wasn\u2019t enough for you to stop supporting him \u2014 (forget all the other terrible s*** he\u2019s done!) \u2014 I don\u2019t know what to tell ya.\u201d<\/p>\n

A week after TMZ published its video, and after his record label suspended him indefinitely, Wallen called his use of that racial epithet \u00a0\u201cunacceptable and inappropriate.\u201d He blamed it on his drinking \u2014 \u201ca bender\u201d \u2014 and promised to do better. <\/p>\n

Since the weekend, Clark\u2019s fans have pointed out that other celebrities and prominent athletes \u2014including Drake, Peyton Manning, Myles Garrett, Patrick Mahomes and Taylor Swift\u2019s fiance Travis Kelce \u2014 have walked on stage with Wallen in recent months without controversy. If Hall of Famer Manning can stand next to Wallen in his throwback University of Tennessee football uniform, and NFL champions Mahomes and Kelce can bro it out with Wallen and be cheered, then why can\u2019t Clark do the same? Isn\u2019t that a double standard?<\/p>\n

Absolutely, it is. But Clark\u2019s fans are missing an important point here: None of the above stars has been dubbed a great white hope, a mantle that Clark has been shouldering since 2024. That\u2019s the year she became the all-time leading scorer in women\u2019s college basketball, the Indiana Fever\u2019s No. 1 draft pick, the face of the WNBA, the player most fans wanted to see and Time magazine\u2019s athlete of the year, spawning what one WNBA official called the \u201cCaitlin Clark Effect.\u201d<\/p>\n

That level of fame, complicated by racial politics, comes at a cost. It means that everything Clark does gets scrutinized to determine what it might say about her, about us and about race in America. Clark should know that most of all. She\u2019s been living in the unforgiving glare of the spotlight since before she played a minute in the WNBA. Even the NCAA tournament runs during her last two college seasons were seen by some as racial dramas, as she and her mostly white Iowa Hawkeyes teammates tipped off against mostly Black teams including South Carolina and LSU.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a sports narrative that we have seen at least once before. In the late 1970s, Larry Bird, a back-to-back All-American at Indiana State, was labeled a great white hope, too. In 1979, Walter Cronkite, \u201cthe most trusted man in America,\u201d teed up a story on CBS\u2019 \u201c<\/em>Evening News\u201d not about Bird\u2019s greatness, but about his whiteness<\/em>. In that CBS report, white fans complained there weren\u2019t enough white players to root for in professional basketball. \u201cI don\u2019t enjoy going to the basketball,\u201d one white man told CBS, \u201cand seeing all Black players.\u201d The CBS feature argued that Bird was about to change that after he joined the league that June. Many others agreed \u2014 including, most importantly, league officials \u2014 and Bird did his best to answer questions about this sensitive topic, just like Clark today.<\/p>\n

Read more The NAACP\u2019s goal is righteous. But its call for a sports boycott has problems.<\/a><\/p>\n

But that\u2019s where the similarities end between the two white stars. Bird\u2019s status as the great white hope cloaked him in invincibility. He could blow off the mostly white press, refuse to talk for months and swear at reporters \u2014 and get away with it. He could throw punches at opposing fans \u2014 as he did twice in college \u2014 and get away with that, too.<\/p>\n

Clark seems to have no invincibility. She\u2019s a lightning rod for criticism, fair and unfair. Clark has tried to honor the Black stars who came before her, including her favorite player, Maya Moore. But these efforts haven\u2019t won over her critics. Meanwhile, Clark has managed to infuriate white fans and conservative pundits like Megyn Kelly by admitting that white privilege exists.<\/p>\n

Even her being declared the most transformative player in her sport rubbed some people the wrong way. When she was named Time magazine\u2019s athlete of the year at the end of the 2024 season, Sheila Johnson, a Black owner of the Washington Mystics, said Time had gotten it wrong. \u201cI feel really bad,\u201d Johnson said, \u201cbecause I\u2019ve seen so many players of color that are equally as talented, and they never get the recognition that they should have.\u201d Johnson suggested the entire league should have made the cover. \u201cBecause when you just keep singling out one player, it creates hard feelings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Personally, I\u2019m OK with hard feelings in a multibillion-dollar business. By 2024, Clark had become bigger than the game. People who didn\u2019t care about sports cared about her<\/em>. The numbers proved it, and criticism or not, she was absolutely worthy of being on the cover of Time. But if you\u2019re grateful for the opportunity of being a transcendent star in the polarized 2020s \u2014 as Clark says she is \u2014 then you need to make smarter choices.<\/p>\n

As Clark and Wallen moved toward the stage Saturday night, Wallen\u2019s social media team clicked into action. They chronicled Clark laughing and smiling with him. At one point, in a video Wallen\u2019s team later posted to Instagram, Clark hugged him. Then he scampered off, high-fiving his fans and skipping with joy in front of his crowd. The show hadn\u2019t even started, and Wallen had already won. He was bathed in the light of the great white hope. \u00a0<\/p>\n

But Clark shouldn\u2019t have been anywhere near that stage. The Fever had played its season opener that day and lost. She should have stayed home. She should have nursed the aching back she reported was already bothering her. She should have never put herself in a situation where people could talk again about her whiteness, instead of her talent. Most of all, she shouldn\u2019t have let Wallen turn her transcendent greatness into an advertisement for him.<\/p>\n

Read more Victor Wembanyama is unlike anything the NBA has seen before<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are many reasons Caitlin Clark should have thought twice before making an appearance with country music star Morgan Wallen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"yoast_head":"\nCaitlin Clark is too experienced to make this rookie mistake - Long Distance Movers USA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/longdistancemoversusas.com\/?p=14\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Caitlin Clark is too experienced to make this rookie mistake - Long Distance Movers USA\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There are many reasons Caitlin Clark should have thought twice before making an appearance with country music star Morgan Wallen.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/longdistancemoversusas.com\/?p=14\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Long Distance Movers USA\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-05-26T16:11:23+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/longdistancemoversusas.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/b4816cf9cfee51a4a033909b7b387b15.webp\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"630\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/webp\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/longdistancemoversusas.com\\\/?p=14#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/longdistancemoversusas.com\\\/?p=14\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/longdistancemoversusas.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/0206dfa2bde56a4792f75b5b97027e43\"},\"headline\":\"Caitlin Clark is too experienced to make this rookie mistake\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-05-26T16:11:23+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/longdistancemoversusas.com\\\/?p=14\"},\"wordCount\":1203,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/longdistancemoversusas.com\\\/?p=14#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/longdistancemoversusas.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/05\\\/b4816cf9cfee51a4a033909b7b387b15.webp\",\"articleSection\":[\"Sports\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/longdistancemoversusas.com\\\/?p=14#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/longdistancemoversusas.com\\\/?p=14\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/longdistancemoversusas.com\\\/?p=14\",\"name\":\"Caitlin Clark is too experienced to make this rookie mistake - 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