Net Effects
Athletics & Cultural Confusion
by Anthony Esolen
The editors of Time magazine recently got tangled up in their own politics when they chose Caitlin Clark, a rookie guard in the WNBA, as the 2024 Athlete of the Year. Earlier in the year, Clark had been the overwhelming choice for best basketball player among college women when she led the nation in points per game and took her team, Iowa, to the national championship, which, however, they lost by twelve points to the undefeated South Carolina . . . Gamecocks? Yes, apparently.
The sticking point was not that Clark is a woman, but that she is white, and she has drawn a lot of attention to the WNBA, a league that has needed it. The league began in 1997, but it still has only 13 teams and plays a short regular season of 40 games. Eight teams make the playoffs, playing best of three in the first round, and best of five for the semifinals and the final. Scoring, despite the lighter and slightly smaller basketball and a three-point line that is over a foot and a half closer to the basket at the top of the key, is noticeably lower than in the men’s game. This difference is partly due to the shorter game, as the women play only 40 minutes to the men’s 48. But the men also take more shots from the field and make more of them than the women do. The men make these baskets against pillars of strength and stature, long-striding legs and whirling arms and muscles that seem to shift in their action as quickly as the light of an electric switch.
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Anthony Esolen is Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Thales College and the author of over 30 books, including Real Music: A Guide to the Timeless Hymns of the Church (Tan, with a CD), Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture (Regnery), and The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord (Ignatius). He has also translated Dante’s Divine Comedy (Random House) and, with his wife Debra, publishes the web magazine Word and Song (anthonyesolen.substack.com). He is a senior editor of Touchstone.
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