Caitlin Clark has quickly become a major figure in women’s basketball, but she has also been involved in a fair share of controversial moments, though not by her own fault. A recent dust-up with the Las Vegas Aces guard Chelsea Gray took a much more serious turn after Gray received racist messages following the incident.
T.J. Ward Condemns Racism Abuse Directed at Chelsea Gray After Caitlin Clark’s Incident
Gray shared on her Instagram Stories one of the messages received in response to the dust-up with Clark, and the comment included the n-word. “This was a message I received after our game vs Indy yesterday. People act like we just make this [expletive] up. And the audacity to tell us, as athletes, to ‘shut up and dribble,'” she wrote, along with the screenshot.
The message had consequences. Multiple outlets revealed that the Hilton Grand Vacations fired the employee who allegedly sent Gray the message, which included a racial slur. However, abuse directed at players has unfortunately become a recurrent issue, with Alyssa Thomas receiving death threats after another on-court incident with Clark.
Speaking about the issue on the most recent edition of “Speakeasy,” Emmanuel Acho, LeSean McCoy, and T.J. Ward discussed the racial tone of the messages sent to the players after the on-court incidents. Ward noted how people use sports to direct their racist views on players, even if they refrain from using these words in other issues:
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“It’s not cool at all, but that’s the world we live in”, Ward said. “You take certain teams and their fan bases, the city, the demographic, and they’re racist with or without sports. So now you bring something into it that they’re passionate about, that they got something to look forward to all week cause their lives ain’t [expletive].”
Ward, who had a successful NFL career that included a Super Bowl ring, continued in his opinion and stated that, for him, the world is racist:
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“So now they come into it, and they’re ready to release all that rage on anything. And a lot of it would be racist rage that they will not do in their day-to-day life, or they do, or whatever the case may be, the Twitter fingers, but it’s a racist world, man. And you give racists the opportunity to show their racism, that’s what they’re going to do.”
Acho has spoken prominently about racial issues during the show, and McCoy also remembered situations when he was called the same word. Ward played for the Cleveland Browns, the Denver Broncos, and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in his career, which also included a practice squad stint with the Arizona Cardinals.
