Several WNBA players and WNBPA executive director Terri Jackson criticized WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert on Tuesday for Engelbert’s comments earlier this week about toxicity created by the perceived rivalry between Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese.
The backlash came after Engelbert was asked explicitly during an appearance on CNBC’s “Power Lunch” on Monday how the WNBA tries to “stay ahead of” or act when sentiments about Clark and Reese involve some “very uncharitable things about the other,” and specifically about comments online that “have taken a darker turn, a more menacing turn, where race has been introduced into the conversation, where sexuality is sometimes introduced into the conversation.”
“The one thing that’s great about the league right now, we do sit at this intersection of culture and sports and fashion and music,” Engelbert replied. “Like, the WNBA players are really looked at now as kind of cultural icons. And when you have that, you have a lot of attention on you. … It is a little bit of that Bird-Magic moment if you recall, from 1979. When those two rookies came in from a big college rivalry, one White, one Black. And so we have that moment with these two.
“But the one thing I know about sports, you need rivalry. That’s what…
