caitlin clark is TIME’s 'athlete of the year' & the media is still being weird
the photos are stunning, though
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After a year in which she dominated headlines and has been credited with revolutionizing an entire pro sports league, Caitlin Clark was named TIME Magazine’s Athlete of the Year. I know I have been critical of the way the media hyperfocused on Clark to the exclusion of so many other WNBA players, but I think this selection makes total sense and I have no issues with it. I do, however, want to talk a bit about the story itself and the way it has been received online.
Let’s get into it.
The first thing I want to say is that I absolutely loved the photos, which were taken by Cass Bird (fiance of Jenna Lyons, currently a cast member on Real Housewives of New York (I highly recommend
’s recaps of the Real Housewives franchises, if you’re into that sort of thing)).It felt obvious to me that the photos were taken by a queer woman—Clark looks more at-ease than I’ve ever seen her in photographs, and she is styled in a way that appears much more comfortable for her than many of the high fashion, hyperfeminine looks she wore in the tunnel this past season (and more in line with her everyday aesthetic). Through Bird’s lens, Clark seems much more authentically herself in a way that I haven’t really seen captured yet.
Several of the items Clark wears in these photos are menswear—the pants from the cover image are from Emporio Armani’s Autumn/Winter 2024 Men’s collection and on Instagram, Bird revealed that they were borrowed from Lyons’s personal collection. Lyons actually wore the pants to the Emporio Armani show in October.
The oversized blazer Clark wears in one of the photos is from the Versace Resort 2025 Menswear collection.
What’s interesting to me about this—and makes me wonder how much say Bird (or someone from TIME) had in the styling of this shoot—is that Clark was styled by her usual team for these photos. AZSN Studio is credited as styling the shoot, and that is Adri Zgirdea’s company. Zgirdea has been styling Clark all season, beginning with her Prada look for the WNBA Draft. Zgirdea and AZSN Studio specialize in “styling menswear for celebrity athletes,” according to their website, though that isn’t the look they have gone with for Clark throughout the season. Anyway, all of that is to say that Clark looked comfortable and stylish in a way I hope she can continue to access, if that’s what she wants.
Now, onto the cover story itself. The 6,500-word profile was written by TIME senior sports correspondent Sean Gregory. Beginning in March of this year, Gregory wrote 10 stories about women’s basketball; 7 of those stories were about Clark (including the Athlete of the Year profile). Of the three stories that were not about Clark, two were about the Olympics and one was about the Liberty winning their first WNBA Championship. Seems a bit like we are looking at the male version of Christine Brennan here, to be honest.
As for the Athlete of the Year story, I found it to be incredibly disappointing. Gregory very obviously was given a great deal of access to Clark, but he didn’t do anything interesting with that access. From a narrative standpoint, the storytelling was boring. From a “teach us something new about the most visible athlete in sports” standpoint, it was mostly a failure. Yes, Gregory got Clark on the record addressing most of the controversies and narratives that surrounded her this season (more on that in a second), but those were a few quotes scattered throughout the piece.
Otherwise, it was simply a summary of her season and then Clark commenting on each thing. Anyone who has been following Clark at all will know most of this already. It doesn’t even really give us any new glimpses into her personality—we know she’s uber-competitive and sometimes has a hard time reigning in her frustration (she’s an Aries Mars, after all). We even got a (false) assertion that Clark is the first player in the history of women’s basketball to shoot long-range three-pointers!
A good profile can dig deep, even if your subject is media trained to the hilt and giving you nothing (Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s profile of Bradley Cooper is a masterclass in this). I understand why Gregory was assigned this story, as TIME’s senior sports writer on staff. I just would have loved to see what a different writer could have done with this kind of access to Clark.
As for those quotes in which Clark finally addresses many of the controversies that surrounded her all season? Clark did exactly what people (including me) have been saying she needed to do: acknowledged her white privilege, came out against the harassment of Black players, shut down talk of any hatred or hostility between her and Angel Reese, and explicitly said that Black women need to be uplifted. That’s all great, and I mean that.
But I’m fairly uncomfortable with the way those quotes have been aggregated on social media. It feels like now that Clark has said these things, she’s being given cookies for essentially doing the bare minimum. The result is that this white woman is being re-centered in discussions about racism.
I do think this is a no-win situation and I don’t put any of this on Clark, necessarily. She did what she’s been asked to do all year and said what she needed to say. I realize that I criticized her for staying silent and now am criticizing for the way the media is uplifting her statements now that she has spoken up. It really feels like a damned if she does, damned if she doesn’t type of thing.
“I think to [criticize] it requires some litigation on how we treat white 'allies' in the women's basketball space,”
said on Bluesky. “It's interesting to see Caitlin being given the cookie treatment while a lot of folks spent the year boosting Paige [Bueckers] and Cam[eron Brink] for...kinda the same thing?”I do wonder if some of this framing could have been avoided if she’d spoken out during the season but honestly, who knows. I also wonder if a story that had given us more things to chew on would have helped pull focus from just those quotes—because the reality is, the only real “new” information about Clark in this profile is her addressing the narratives that surrounded her this year. A deeper character study or more interestingly written narrative might have given these news aggregators more options in terms of pull-worthy quotes, but maybe I’m being too optimistic.
I’m curious to hear how other people are receiving it, both the story itself and the way it’s been circulated online. Please comment and let me know!
Header image by A. Andrews.
I’m with Andrew - while I think it’s fair to say that Caitlin is being given cookies for doing the bare minimum and she’s being centered in racism, I think that exact same thing is true of the statements Paige and Cam made that they are continually lauded for. If we’re going to say it’s the bare minimum for Caitlin, we also have to acknowledge it’s the bare minimum for them, not say “Caitlin just needs to follow Paige and Cam’s lead!” as many were saying all season. (This is true of the timing portion as well - Paige and Cam benefitted from white privilege long before they called it out, just as you/others are pointing out with Clark.)
I also agree that Caitlin, a white person, is being centered in racism which is - I’m sure there’s a better word but I keep thinking of this one - cringe. However, she was already centered when everyone was putting the onus on her to stop the racism. This is why I pushed back on everyone’s assertion that she needed to speak out and that would solve everything - not only because I think the racism in the WNBA is an issue that’s existed long before her, but also because I saw how the response to things like Paige’s ESPY speech was to applaud her for being such a good ally while essentially ignoring everything she actually said. I personally think it’s more effective for white allies to use their power behind the scenes (which we have already seen Clark do, with things such as expanding the coverage of Full Court Press, and advocating for spot bonuses for players), and amplify the voices of the people who have actually experienced racism, but that was not the sentiment shared by folks this past season. Everyone said she needed to push back. Now she has, and I think people are realizing that it really was more complicated than they realized all along.
I personally am still glad she said what she did, as it shows a solidarity with other players that might not know her personally, and I think will deter bad faith actors from latching on to her. The ends justifying the means and all that.
As for the article itself, I can’t speak to whether it was new information for people, but I wouldn’t expect it to be as these profiles rarely are. But I don’t think Caitlin was at all framed as the savior of women’s basketball or the first player to shoot three pointers, but as someone who has brought a lot of new fans, one of the reasons being the consistency of those long range three pointers. (Also, side note: the insights we got into her personality were so funny, the passive aggressive digs at her coach really got me - who wasn’t been there with a boss before!)
It is really cool to see photos of Clark where she looks so comfortable – even as someone whose main point of exposure for all things WNBA is your newsletter and Instagram, these feel significantly different to any other shots I've seen of her. (Though would I have noticed this if you hadn't pointed it out? I'm not sure.) I'm definitely curious to see what happens with her style next season and, as you say, I hope she gets to keep looking like this if she wants to.