Every time any promising rookie comes to the WNBA, she is told to ‘embrace the contact.’ All experts or longtime WNBA fans rant about how physical the league is and boast about how the women’s game is more physical than the NBA. It has become the differentiating factor that the league prides itself on, but it has had more cons than pros in recent times. Ever since Caitlin Clark has entered the WNBA, she has brought in more fans than any player in the history of the league.
According to a report, Clark accounted for a staggering 26.5% of all WNBA economic activity last season, including revenue from merchandise, ticket sales, and television. However, her meteoric rise in popularity inadvertently overshadowed some of the league’s longtime veterans, leading to tension. As a result, when Clark became the target of repeated hard and flagrant fouls, the response was often dismissive—she was simply told to get up and shake it off.
That continued this season and as a result of that, the rough defense on her has caused a long-term injury, which could have been avoided. This national analyst has called out the WNBA for their approach to this problem. Rachel A. DeMita said on her YouTube channel, “I don’t think that the WNBA should continue to lean on the fact that they’re a physical league and make that the selling point of the league.”
Every new basketball fan wants to watch the best players in the league play at their best. They don’t want to see a stoppage every now and then because of a hard foul or excessively physical play. It prevents the game from being free-flowing and continuous. We have multiple players going out in a game. Some come back and play through the pain, while some suffer worse injuries. The culture around the league is that the players must just accept how it is going to be and the referees or the league are not going to prevent that from happening and that is somehow the thing people are going to flood the stadiums to watch.
Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark (22) reacts after being injured during the first half of a WNBA basketball game against the Connecticut Sun, Monday, May 20, 2024, at Gainbridge Fieldhouse.
The fans actually filled the stadiums when they saw the likes of Caitlin Clark bring in her exciting style of basketball. Fans love how fluid Kelsey Plum’s game is. Sabrina was the Caitlin Clark before Caitlin Clark, putting down those long-range shots with ease. That’s the kind of basketball people want to see and not a scuffle among players every now and then. De Mita further doubled down on her criticism and pointed out their refereeing contradiction.
She said, “The thing with the WNBA is, it is physical to a fault and they even say here their ability to be physical legally is very different. I don’t get that cuz yes they are bigger stronger longer; they have more of the ability to be physical, clearly, but you’re not going to call it the same as college because just because they’re bigger we’re going to let them be more physical.”
The officiating in college basketball is much more strict than in the WNBA, which is why it is a challenge for rookies to adapt to this league. In any other sport, the kind of officiating on all levels of the games remains the same; if a foul would be given in a League 2 football game in England, it would also be given in the Premier League. This makes the transition there easier. There is absolutely no reason why the standards should change in different levels of basketball.
De Mita also woke the league up to the fact that if they don’t do anything to change this, the recent growth might just be a temporary spike and they would descend down to the early 2010s days. She said, “If you want to keep these new fans around, you need to make sure that there’s a good product on the floor.”
Before, the glaring issue used to be the marketing of the league, which was not drawing enough people. Now that that is somewhat solved, the league should not sleep on the quality of the league. The NBA had this same problem once and they solved it with some important rule changes. Even DeMita implored WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert and the management to take a page out of the NBA’s book.
What can the WNBA take from the NBA to solve this physicality problem?
There are two groups of people with regard to this situation currently; one is heavily calling for more NBA-like changes to the WNBA, while the other considers the physicality of the game a nostalgic throwback. De Mita cracked down on the latter group with some harsh words.
She said, “A lot of people are saying things like, “Oh, I love it; it’s back to the 90s style of basketball when there were so many fights and this and that.” No, it’s actually not good basketball. it’s not fun basketball to watch and I call BS when they say that they’re working to make sure that the offense can play offense. That’s not true because we’ve seen what the NBA has done and they have actually made sure that the offense can run smoothly.”
Even the NBA audience once had a similar situation in the 90s when some of the flagrant 2 fouls right now would be ignored routinely by the referees. The standards have changed along with the times. As soon as the hand-check rule was removed in the NBA, the average scoring jumped by four, from 93 to 97 points per game. Such impact in the WNBA will certainly bring more crowds and not focus on any player but the overall play in the league.
The defensive three-second violation, which was introduced into the NBA in the early 2000s, is another thing they can look at, which is that the defender can’t stay in the paint unless actively guarding an opponent for more than 3 seconds, which promotes the attackers to make more interesting and dynamic plays. We often see the tall defenders posted under the basket in the WNBA, which results in stagnant plays.
The flagrant foul rules are in general more lenient but while implementing they become more confusing. They are implemented according to the interpretation of the referee. The freedom of movement could also be enforced like the NBA did in 2018.
But every rule change should not be copy-pasted and should be tailored to women. So the opinions of players, fans and referees should be taken into consideration while making any change. There hasn’t been any indication from the league so far about making changes, but fans remain hopeful that they’ll eventually see the light.
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