When athletes pick up a ball or puck, they’re doing it out of the joy of the sport. Over the years, players like Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese have developed and refined those traits into certifiable skills. Eventually, they got to a point where the best league in the world, the WNBA, wanted them.
Unfortunately, in addition to simply playing basketball, players like Clark and Reese have also often been roped into what’s largely become a game of politics. Now, a pair of popular sports personalities are weighing in on the situation.
Are Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese Political Figures and Avatars?
It’s gotten to the point, where some would argue that stars like Clark, Reese, and even Sophie Cunningham are no longer being recognized only as basketball players. Some, like Dan Le Batard, are asking whether Clark has even become a political figure.
“Are WNBA players being forced into politics?” Le Batard asks.
Le Batard recently made the argument on his ‘The Dan Le Batard Show‘ podcast. Even though Clark likely has purely been focused on her basketball career, now she’s been placed under all this stress and pressure, to the point where it doesn’t even look enjoyable for the Indiana Fever star.
“Caitlin Clark is now a political figure,” Le Batard said. “Could not have thought of any of that in her dreams. Whatever her dreams were about being a basketball player. Could not have imagined them talking about my technical fouls all the time. The amount of pressure and stress we are putting on all people in sports. Not just, I don’t want to make Caitlin Clark sound like a victim. It just sucks to see her reach her dreams and have it not feel good. Like, have sports feel super [expletive], when we all want sports to be when we’re dreaming about it in the backyard.”
Meanwhile, Amin Elhassan took things a step further on Le Batard’s podcast.
He said, “I think the part that becomes unfair to Angel Reese,” Elhassan said. “To all of them is that they become Avatars in a proxy war between people who don’t give a [expletive] about their sport. That’s the big thing.”
Elhassan says that people talking about Clark, Reese, Cunningham, or the WNBA in general aren’t true fans of the game; they’re essentially just casuals who “don’t watch women’s basketball.”
“If it were heated, like people say ‘LeBron or MJ,’ when you talk about LeBron or MJ, even though it’s a dumb argument, like you know the people arguing here actually watch basketball, actually care to say that LeBron is greater than Jordan or vice versa, right?” Elhassan argued. “Like the majority of the combatants in this arena are people who don’t really watch. They just, they’re like ‘Oh, well, Caitlin Clark, I heard that she’s like da-da-da, like oh yeah she stands up for good American values and so now I’m going to say she’s my favorite.”
“Sophie Cunningham is my favorite player’, a player that averages less than 10 points a game who is a very nondescript role player in the WNBA becomes this kind of lightning rod for people who don’t watch women’s basketball,” he added.
Are WNBA players being forced into politics? pic.twitter.com/cU1O2Z5270
— The Dan Le Batard Show (@LeBatardShow) July 29, 2026
It’s a common criticism heard from those who do follow the WNBA closely. Even WNBA analysts Ros-Gold Onwude and Angel McCoughtry recently voiced their displeasure over a similar situation playing out on social media where “agenda-pushers” are “hijacking” the narrative.
Now, more people, like Le Batard and Elhassan, are speaking up. But that doesn’t mean casual observers won’t stop chiming in with their two cents every now and then.
