The WNBA is coming off its most successful campaign in the league’s 28-season history, setting highs in viewership, attendance and merchandise sales. Undoubtedly, Fever guard Caitlin Clark was the primary reason for the spurt in popularity.

Few modern-day athletes are more responsible for their respective sport’s sudden growth than Clark. Only Tiger Woods (golf) and Ronda Rousey (women’s MMA) come to mind.

Yet, instead of appreciating Clark for leading the WNBA out of the abyss and into the mainstream conversation, mean girls and race clowns met her with resistance. They depicted her popularity as negative, as a sign of great white hope-ism or even racism. The response suggested they’d rather the league crumble than thrive on the back of a straight white girl from Iowa.

ESPN commentator Monica McNutt was among those who tried to make a race war out of Clark’s success. McNutt rode the racial animus she stirred to an appearance on “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart in June. Not bad for someone who was hardly known outside of her occasional work for the MSG Network.

With the new season fast approaching, look for the same Clark decorators and deniers to ramp up the mentions of race. They have no other cards to play. In fact, McNutt wasted no time in doing so over the weekend.

“Why her?” BBC reporter Katty Kay asked McNutt about Clark’s popularity.

“Caitlin represented, and again, some of this to me probably is not fair to her, because it was not anything that she said or was truly based on her personality, but she was a white girl from the middle of America. And so she represented a whole lot to a lot of people, whether that is truly what she prescribed to or not,” McNutt responded.

In other words, according to Monica McNutt, little girls only like Caitlin Clark because she is white.

OutKick asked McNutt on Sunday about her comments. While she did not respond as of publication, we aren’t expecting to hear from her later.

In June, we called her for comment, and she immediately hung up the phone when I identified myself as “Bobby Burack.” Though she has followed me on social media for years–and still does–it doesn’t appear she wants to have a conversation about her coverage of Clark.

So, we are left to speculate about her intent. Is she an idiot (like Kendrick Perkins)? Does she actually believe the manufactured racial hysteria (like Ryan Clark)? Or is she just gifting, knowing the upside of race-grifting as a black woman at ESPN (like Elle Duncan)? Hard to say.

Still, in any scenario, McNutt has made herself look like a fool.

She accuses little girls of supporting Caitlin Clark because she is white. That argument would hold far more weight if Clark were the first of her kind. She is not.

Clark is not the first white woman to show she belongs on the basketball court. If little girls were so desperate to find a white woman to root for, they would have taken a similar liking to, say, Kelsey Plum, Sabrina Ionescu or Cameron Brink. They didn’t.

McNutt speaks of Clark as if she broke some color barrier in women’s basketball.

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK – MAY 04: Monica McNutt speaks at ESPNW Women + Sports Summit at 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge on May 04, 2022 in Brooklyn, New York. (Photo by Steven Ferdman/Getty Images)

In actuality, Clark’s popularity isn’t hard to compute. She’s a mainstream attraction for the same reason Patrick Mahomes, LeBron James, Steph Curry, Travis Kelce, Serena Williams and Simone Biles are. She is great, but also interesting.

Fans are drawn to not just talent but to aura, charisma, style and history. Clark’s Curry-like handle, Mamba mentality, and chase for the NCAA Division I all-time scoring title helped her demonstrate those traits.

As hard as it is for McNutt and her cohorts to fathom, most fans don’t root for and against athletes on the basis of race – especially little kids.

Finally, McNutt perfectly fits the bill of the type of journalist and commentator Michael Wilbon lamented in an interview with OutKick last week. He spoke about the lack of accountability in media today.

“I had to be accountable to bosses and editors,” said Wilbon. “I had to be accountable to the athletes I covered, who’d come up to me in a locker room. There is no accountability in this new world.”

None.

And there is a severe shortage of bosses and editors with the confidence to challenge and correct black women on the topic of race, no matter how illogical her argument is.

Granted, McNutt’s mission is not to be honest or informed. Her mission is to appease Black Twitter and the WNBA players who are jealous of Caitlin Clark. By trying to diminish Clark as a product of great white hope-ism, she has achieved.

Still, imagine turning on the television and seeing some overpaid wannabe Jemele Hill disparaging your daughters for liking an athlete. Parents of little girls who support Clark ought to be irate.