Caitlin Clark Negativity Tied to WNBA’s ‘Petty Jealousness,’ Says Charles Barkley

Charles Barkley has weighed in on the state of the WNBA and its rookie phenom Caitlin Clark, and the outspoken TNT basketball analyst did not hold back in sharing his thoughts on the discourse surrounding the Indiana Fever superstar.

While discussing a number of topics in an episode of Bill Simmons' podcast that dropped Wednesday, Barkley was riffing about tired narratives in sports when he began to rant about how negative Clark's introduction to the WNBA has been despite the record attendance and unprecedented attention she has brought to the league.

"These ladies — and I am a WNBA fan — they could not have f---ed this Caitlin Clark thing up any worse if they tried," Barkley said. "If you got people in a room, if you got a bunch of dudes in a room, and says, 'Let's f--- up the WNBA,' we couldn't have come up with a master plan (that topped) what these women have done.

"This girl is incredible. What she did in college for women's college basketball, what she's doing in the WNBA ... the number of attention, eyeballs she's brought to college and the pros. And for these women to have this petty jealousness, you say to yourself, 'Man, what is going on here?'"

"The stuff toward her is petty and jealous," Barkley added. "And the thing I love about her: She never says a word."

Clark emerged as a transcendent figure in college while starring for Iowa, lifting women's college basketball to new heights with record TV ratings. Her impact on the WNBA as the No. 1 overall pick was much-anticipated for a league seeking its big breakthrough in the American sports landscape.

However, before she even played a second of WNBA basketball, Clark faced doubts about how quickly she could turn around a struggling Fever franchise. League legend Diana Taurasi even said "the reality is coming" for Clark due to the difficult transition to the pros from playing "against grown women."

Clark did struggle early on as Indiana lost eight of its first nine games. However since then, the Fever have turned around their season with Clark leading the way, going 16-8 over the past three months to move up to sixth in the WNBA standings and clinch the franchise's first playoff berth since 2016.

Clark has elevated her play since the Olympic break, averaging 24.6 points, 5.0 rebounds and 9.0 assists and shooting 38.6% on 3-pointers as the Fever have gone 6-1. Despite that hot stretch, Clark's record-setting season continues to be marginalized by bad Rookie of the Year takes.

"She's playing much faster, much faster," Barkley said of Clark. "She was playing too slow the first half of the season. ... I think she's learning to play much faster because I think she's learning to trust those girls more. Because when you saw her in college, she wasn't passing to a bunch of great players. Now, you can see when she plays, she's playing a lot without the ball. She's reminding me a lot of Jason Kidd."

"She's starting to see now (the benefits) of playing faster and getting (the ball) to them sooner," he added.