I’m so glad the dribblers haven’t shut up yet.
We actually learned something from the women dribblers this past Sunday — or we could have if we’d allow ourselves.
Every now and then when I hear athletes provide solid takes or give good perspectives that could actually help those who would dare to listen, I think about Laura Ingraham.
Ingraham, a talk show host, once infamously told NBA superstar LeBron James to “shut up and dribble” on one of her talk show segments. It was in response to James waxing political on current events. That was back in 2018.
Though stated directly to James, her statement felt like an indirect potshot at all athletes who would dare open their mouths to speak about life away from their sport.
Other pundits have uttered similar things — but only if the athletes said something contrary to their own views. If in agreement, they were encouraged to speak up.
Funny how that happens. Agree with me or you’re dead to me has seemingly turned into the American way of discourse.
To think that a person can’t speak on an issue of politics, current events, etc. that affects them as a human and an American citizen is ludicrous. And I don’t care what side of whatever fence you’re on.
Sometimes a person who lives a different life than you or has different views than yours can teach you something if you allow their humanity to speak.
I like the way legendary sportswriter Red Smith once put it: “Sports is not really a play world. I think it’s the real world. The people we’re writing about in professional sports, they’re suffering and living and dying and loving, and trying to make their way through life just as the bricklayers and politicians are.”
I agree with Red. And to try and snatch that right for them to speak up on what affects them — whether we agree or not — is, in a sense, an attempt to snatch humanity from them.
But I digress.
In the case of the women dribblers who played in this past Sunday’s Women’s Basketball NCAA Tournament National Championship game — and at the risk of sounding a smidge contradictory — it actually would’ve been apropos for them to tell some of us non-dribblers to shut up.
In case you missed it, coach Dawn Staley and the South Carolina Gamecocks became just the 10th team in women’s college hoops history to win a national title with a perfect record.
South Carolina finished the season with a 38-0 mark after knocking off an Iowa team that boasts arguably the most recognizable name in the women’s game today in Caitlin Clark.
All Clark has done, other than lifting Iowa from being a decent Big 10 program to a national championship contender in back-to-back seasons, is set the new record for most career points scored in NCAA Division I basketball history. Her 3,951 points is the new high-water mark for women’s and men’s basketball.
In that, she along with players such as LSU’s Angel Reese, have given the women’s game a much broader audience. That’s come with a heavy price tag, though — namely intense, and often unfair, fan scrutiny. Both Clark and Reese have sounded off recently on the difficulties and frustrations that have come with their stardom.
It all seemed to begin last year when Clark made her now-famous John Cena hand gesture during a game — a gesture that many interpreted to be a little bit of showmanship which, if you’ve watched sports for any amount of time, you’ll know that such showmanship is nothing new.
Fast forward a bit to when Reese and LSU met Clark and Iowa in the 2023 national championship game. LSU wins. Reese does a couple of similar gestures toward Clark’s Hawkeyes, and let the culture and “classy” war begin.
Except, here’s the thing — it was never a war for Clark or Reese.
Both have gone on record publicly and privately about how much they respect each other’s game while acknowledging how the other has contributed to the uplift of women’s basketball.
Both vociferously sought to downplay those aforementioned gestures of showmanship as just something that’s typical of a high-level competitor.
Both have come out and, in no uncertain terms, stated that they don’t dislike each other at all. But that isn’t good enough for many of us fans.
Leave it to us to turn something as innocent and innocuous as two young women playing at the top of their games on the sport’s biggest stages into something racial and hateful, and into a silly game of “who’s the classiest.”
To be honest, because this is just kind of what we do in America nowadays, it doesn’t really surprise me.
What’s irritating, though, is the fact that “we” continue to make it something that the athletes themselves have repeatedly insisted against.
Let me make it clearer: Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark never made anything about them on or off the court racial nor hate-filled.
Never.
Let’s keep it real, and y’all can throw stones if you choose. The only people who made this a Black vs. White thing were Black and White fans, some media and other casual onlookers who probably didn’t understand half of the sport they were watching in the first place.
You ever wonder why you can so easily find professionally taken pictures online of both Clark and Reese’s hand gestures, while the only easy-to-find pictures of Angel and Caitlin hugging as they did after this year’s LSU-Iowa Final Four game look like they were taken by a cell phone?
Hardly any professional media shots of the two embracing at all. And you also have to do some extra digging to find out what the two had to say to each other in that moment of sportsmanship embrace.
A New York Post article reveals the words the two stars exchanged in the moment.
“She just told me, ‘Continue to be a great player,’” Reese said. “And I told her, ‘Continue to be a great player as well, and keep elevating the game and go win it.’”
Why is it so hard to find examples of that camaraderie? How come we have to dig so hard to find two of the game’s biggest stars being the exact opposite of what the game’s loudest and most ignorant fans keep trying to purport?
That shows you what and who is truly driving the vitriol. And here’s a hint — it isn’t Angel nor Caitlin, so let’s leave them alone.
Both ladies are two college-aged, barely-adult young women who love a game they’ve been playing all their lives, and both had a major hand in changing the trajectory of the women’s game.
For those who have never competed or never really been close to major competition, trash talk, showmanship, etc. all of it, is part of the game.
Then, when the players finish, they’re dapping each other up, high-fiving and texting each other best wishes while the ones watching from the stands, on TV and, yes, even from the press box, are trying to find the “extra” in it that doesn’t exist.
I remember one time asking two high-profile rivals about the drama that seemed to exist between them, and both of them, in separate statements, said, “Aw, that’s just fan stuff. That’s for y’all.”
I assumed that most people understood this, especially since, in this case, both Clark and Reese have always been complimentary toward each other and never anything else.
But the way some grown folks hold what almost feels like personal vitriol and animosity against these two college students is somewhat bizarre and almost troubling.
Making up stories, buying into conspiracy theories about each player (on either side). I kinda get second-hand embarrassment watching it, to be honest.
We’re not feeding into anything these two players have said or shown about each other. We’re actually feeding into the racial foolishness that some of us will also say we don’t like or can’t stand. So it actually makes us part of the problem.
My son, who loves all things men’s sports, recently acknowledged to me how much more he loves basketball because of how the women play the game, and he mentions both Clark and Reese in the same breath along with others like LSU’s Hailey Van-Lith, UCONN’s Paige Bueckers or USC freshman phenom JuJu Watkins.
Just last week my son literally questioned why “everybody except Angel and Caitlin seem to want them to hate each other when they clearly don’t?”
A 12-year-old shouldn’t have more sense in such matters than us adults.
Sadly, some of the Black-White tension continued as Clark’s Hawkeyes clashed with South Carolina Sunday in a game that lived up to the national championship billing.
But once again, the dribblers showed us what it means to remain above the fray.
After quelling the initial emotions that came with Staley’s magnanimous accomplishment with the most unlikely bunch of Gamecocks — she won it all in a perfect season despite having to replace all five of last year’s starters — Staley spoke up loud and proud on behalf of Clark’s impact on the game.
“I want to personally thank Caitlin Clark for lifting up our sport,” Staley said after Sunday’s win. “She carried a heavy load for our sport, and it just isn’t gonna stop here on the collegiate tour, but when she’s the number one pick in the WNBA draft, she’s going to lift that league up as well.”
This same Dawn Staley is also held in high regard by Reese. The LSU star took to X, formerly known as Twitter, after Sunday’s win with loads of congratulations.
“I’m sooo happy for [Dawn Staley],” she wrote. “As a Black woman, I admire what you’ve done! You always checked on me & always loved me like your own!”
What’s the common denominator between Clark, Reese and Staley? Nothing but mutual love, mutual respect and appreciation for what each has brought and continues to bring to the game.
Not the overtones of racial hatred and the ridiculous social media-charged debates of who’s more “classy” than the other. That’s all on us.
And it’s sad, because the last two seasons of women’s college basketball have been amazing for the sport and have paved a greater way, through NIL and, hopefully, professionally for women to find the notoriety and financial lucrativeness their talents deserve.
Staley, Clark, Reese and the teams they play/coach for have together done that while showing us that women can and should be just as competitive and demonstrative at the highest level of sport as men.
That’s what we ought to be celebrating and making go viral. And if the dribblers would’ve shut up, as some want them to do, we wouldn’t have gotten this message.
Sadly, some still won’t get it because of the stubbornness of their hearts. The model of camaraderie that sports often gives could actually help us change our world for the better if we’d let it.
Hopefully, one day, we’ll let it.
Gabriel Stovall is sports editor for The Augusta Press. He can be reached at gabriel@theaugustapress.com. Follow him on X (Twitter), Instagram and Threads: @GabrielCStovall.
