That's the main reason I said the one game was BS. This is her rep and everyone knows it, yet the league does nothing. The NBA would have curtailed this crap long ago. Do you think Draymond Green doesn't get his antics looked at differently then most players? Of course he does, because he has a history, just like Thomas does.
***CC22 and the Fever mega thread***
- Thread starter LetsGoHawks83
- Start date
Why did you put a period in the middle of a sentence? LOL
You are an idiot. At least you are consistent and we all know what to expect.
The Clemson off topic board misses you. You should waddle back over there.
Thanks for letting us all know how we should think. So in your mind a player who has a long history of these same issues should not be looked at differently, and face stiffer penalties? Do you think that's how real leagues like the NBA, MLB, NFL and NHL handle these same issues. You'd be wrong....
I'm starting to think this was based off the 2025 season, which makes more sense. Those were prob the top 4 players, outside of maybe Stewie, at the end of the year.
That's the irony. Alyssa Thomas is making $1.2 million this year BECAUSE of Caitlin Clark and the impact she's had on WNBA viewership, ticket sales, merch sales, revenues, media deal, etc.
And there she is intentionally trying to injure Caitlin Clark by driving her knee into the groin that kept CC out most of last season and putting a closed fist into her throat.
That just shows what a dumb, jealous thug AT is.
Your words, not mine.
I don’t have the answer in that but they should start suspending refs who don’t enforce rules which are there for safety reasons. Otherwise the inmates will keep running the prison.
C
…….and while Coach White was carefully staging fake outrage at the press conference, Fever executives were busy lobbying the Commissioner to limit any suspension and/or fines against Thomas. They clearly hate Clark. JFC stop this nonsense.
Well the way some people are reacting around here it seems like they've never seen a basketball game where there was an altercation before.
Hell Sophie tackled Sheldon on a fast break last year and caused a fight that nearly spilled into the front row and she wasn't suspended.
If you think a shot like that gets someone a multigame suspension in the NBA then you'd be wrong.
Draymond has a longer history of dirty play than Thomas does and he only got suspended one game for stomping on Sabonis's chest.
F*ck it. Give her two more games for all the pearl clutching and fake social media outrage I've had to see because of this.
I agree with you.
In case you missed it, this is the board idiot's response:
I think 3 would have been the max that would have made sense to me, but it’s clear some people are super charged about it. I still think 1 is fine.
I will go with the expert on how many games are warranted.
A 10 game suspension and at least a $10,000 fine is what Christine Brennan (who has been covering sports for the last 45 years) suggests is warranted.
Brennan was the first woman sports writer at The Miami Herald in 1981 and the first woman to cover Washington’s NFL team as a staff writer at The Washington Post in 1985.
She has covered every Olympic Games (22 of them), summer and winter, since the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
Her column from last night:
Caitlin Clark made the WNBA bigger. It’s still playing small | Opinion
The league’s paltry one-game suspension of Alyssa Thomas after her fist to Caitlin Clark's throat barely begins to address the problem.
www.usatoday.com
10 fucan games lmaoI will go with the expert on how many games are warranted.
A 10 game suspension and at least a $10,000 fine is what Christine Brennan (who has been covering sports for the last 45 years) suggests is warranted.
Brennan was the first woman sports writer at The Miami Herald in 1981 and the first woman to cover Washington’s NFL team as a staff writer at The Washington Post in 1985.
She has covered every Olympic Games (22 of them), summer and winter, since the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
Her column from last night:
Caitlin Clark made the WNBA bigger. It’s still playing small | Opinion
The league’s paltry one-game suspension of Alyssa Thomas after her fist to Caitlin Clark's throat barely begins to address the problem.www.usatoday.com
There is an official who's responsibility it was to watch that scrum and they didn't do it. Why aren't they accountable as you say.
Oh look! Another moron to put on ignore!Oh good a Christine Brennan article pouring gas on this fire is exactly what we needed
A 10 game suspension and at least a $10,000 fine is what Christine Brennan (who has been covering sports for the last 45 years) suggests is warranted.
Brennan was the first woman sports writer at The Miami Herald in 1981 and the first woman to cover Washington’s NFL team as a staff writer at The Washington Post in 1985.
She has covered every Olympic Games (22 of them), summer and winter, since the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
Her column from last night:
Caitlin Clark made the WNBA bigger. It’s still playing small | Opinion
Christine Brennan
USA TODAY
Updated June 25, 2026, 7:21 p.m. ET
A fist to the throat. That’s the picture that has immediately become part of WNBA lore. In it, Caitlin Clark, the most famous, marketable and important women’s professional team sport athlete in history, is being punched by Alyssa Thomas, whose earnings, fame and way of life have all been greatly enhanced over the past couple of years by the woman she is hitting.
For three seasons now, in ways big and small, the WNBA and its players have continued to show their unabashed jealousy, disdain and outright hatred for the greatest thing to happen to them. The league’s paltry one-game suspension of Thomas, with a tiny $1,000 fine (she makes a base salary of $1.2 million a year) and no mention of punishment for the officials overseeing the incident, barely begins to address the problem. Ten games and a fine well into five figures would have sent a significant message. One game does not.
Clark is getting pummeled on a regular basis and WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert — who was given the greatest gift, in Clark, any women’s sports commissioner has ever received — has done precious little about it, until today, kind of, just a little. What an opportunity she had to throw the book at Thomas, who has a history of dirty play, including severely injuring Minnesota Lynx star Napheesa Collier’s ankle last year. Thomas also happened to knee Clark in her left groin, which was injured last season, moments before her fist ended up on Clark’s neck.
The hit parade against Clark started way before this: A brutal hip check from Chennedy Carter in Clark’s rookie year, an eye poke from Jacy Sheldon and a freight train of a shove from Marina Mabrey last year. Cheap shots all. No one was ever suspended. Other fouls were not called. Clark argues with the refs, of course, and throws up her hands, something she has done since high school and AAU ball and definitely overdoes at times, although rarely is she wrong in her complaint.
Sadly, Engelbert’s history in the WNBA’s Clark era has been to disappear when she should rise. She has avoided when she should engage. In interviews about Clark, she “and Angels” or “and Paiges” when she should say what is undeniably true: it’s Caitlin Clark. She’s the one. No need to add other names. If we’re talking TV viewership, moving to bigger arenas, sponsorships, bringing in waves of new young fans who want her autograph and will be around for the next 50-60 years, shoes, apparel, trading cards, you name it — no one else belongs in the same sentence.
What is especially aggravating about Engelbert’s inability to give Clark her due and keep her safe when the league desperately needs her presence for its financial future is all the possibilities the WNBA is squandering by refusing to fully embrace Clark’s superstardom. Many women who grew up playing sports at the beginning of Title IX, women like Engelbert and me, dreamed of a time when a women’s team sport athlete would take over the nation the way Clark has. Team sports were always strictly the domain of men. Women excelled in the Olympics, tennis and golf, but team sports? They were not ours.
And then, and then … along comes a young woman in Iowa who is chucking shots from the parking lot and confidently celebrating as they go in. As social media clips spread and State Farm commercials launched, fans lined up for hours across the Big Ten during the winter for Iowa games — as if Taylor Swift or Beyoncé was the one on stage that night. Fans came in the tens of thousands to do something I still cannot believe I am writing: Watch a woman play basketball.
Thirty years earlier, I would appear on sports radio talk shows while covering a Women’s Final Four, or before a 1990s WNBA game, and would get laughed at by men who thought it ridiculous we were even talking about women’s hoops. Now those guys, or their sons or grandsons, proudly wear their No. 22 jerseys not only to WNBA games but to the grocery store and the gas station.
This is the point in the Clark conversation when those in the league and WNBA media who have been actively minimizing Clark’s extraordinary impact for three seasons will say she’s just another very good player, that A’ja Wilson and Paige Bueckers are better (Wilson certainly is, and Bueckers might be, although her statistics are not as good as Clark’s).
And this is where I will say back: That’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about attendance and TV viewership and all the things Clark brings to the league to generate bigger revenue, bigger contracts, bigger arenas and bigger opportunities for all.
Just last week, Wilson and Bueckers played in a prime time Las Vegas-Dallas game on USA Network. It drew 457,000 viewers. The next day, Clark and the Indiana Fever played the lowly, expansion Toronto Tempo, also in prime time on USA Network. One million people watched.
This was not a one-off. When Clark was first injured last season and disappeared for two weeks, more than half the TV audience for the league disappeared too, according to Nielsen. Playoff numbers without her dropped similarly. Perhaps the most stunning sports TV viewership statistic of all is how Clark drew 18.9 million viewers to her last college game, the NCAA women’s final — four million more than watched the men’s national championship game the next night. Again, a feat that seemed unimaginable until Clark made it happen.
Just a month later, Clark’s fame and the accompanying security risks forced the WNBA to initiate charter flights immediately upon her arrival after decades of making players endure commercial flights, middle seats and missed connections. Thomas was among dozens of veteran players who benefitted.
In her rookie WNBA season, Clark and the Fever drew an average of 17,036 at their home games, more than the average home attendance of five NBA teams that year. In her rookie season last year, Bueckers couldn’t consistently sell out a 6,251-seat arena. In 20 home games held there, seven sold out.
These facts make some longtime WNBA players, reporters and fans (especially those from UConn) mad, even sad. I understand they wish a player like Maya Moore, Clark’s favorite growing up, would have been so famous that everyone -- sports fan or not -- knew her name, as they do with Clark. I wish it happened too. But it didn’t. Do they want the small thing to stay small forever?
Of course race and sexual orientation play a massive role in this conversation. The WNBA is a league that is 74% Black or mixed-race, with a sizable gay population, according to my book, "On Her Game: C
So White knew about this at halftime, (her words) and talked to the refs, and nothing was done, and that's okay? My apologies for thinking her coach should be doing more to protect her. If you guys think what Thomas did was an accident, or that that type of play should be acceptable, we'll just agree to disagree, profusely...
Dan Patrick (and the guests he has) is awesome.
He asks great questions.
"How did we get here?" was his first question.
Everyone should watch.