I really don’t like basketball. In fact, I hate it. A game is too long, and all that matters is the last 2 minutes which, since each team gets a thousand timeouts, takes a long as the rest of the game. There are only so many ways to get a ball through a hoop, and they’ve all been done. Event he slam dunk contest is boring, as pretty much everything there that can be done has been as well. No-look passes? I’ve seen the highlight videos of Larry Bird. Buzzer-beaters to win the game? Michael Jordan exists, and we have the video to prove it. Half-court shots as time runs out? Seen hundreds of them. Even if I didn’t hate the game, the only thing new in it in decades is the people doing all the things that have been done a million times. Boring.
That hasn’t stopped the media and marketing people in basketball from trying to get people hyped about the game with each new person doing the same old thing, or someone making a move that hasn’t been done in a while. But sorry, that doesn’t do it for me either.
This year, however, those people are trying a different tactic: gender.
I’m sure Caitlin Clark is a great player. She could easily beat me in a game of one-on-one. But that’s not an accomplishment, I not only hate the game, I rarely ever played it as a kid, so she would win. But I like my chances of striking her out or beating her in a best of 7 shootout.
That’s neither here nor there, she’s the all-time NCAA college basketball scoring champion. That’s not nothing, but is it really fair to compare her points total toPete Maravich, the former record holder?
Of course, it’s not. Clark played against women, and Maravich played against men. While the level of competition relative to other players of the same gender is comparable, against each other it’s not even close.
What kind of a sexist things to say is that? It’s not sexist in the way saying “A woman’s place is in the kitchen,” because I don’t believe that. In fact, it’s not sexist at all – it’s just reality. Reality isn’t sexist or feminist or woke, it just is.
Yes, you can easily find women or girls who could absolutely wipe the court with most men, there’s no question about that. But the best women will lose to the best men in a real competition setting nearly every single time (have to use the qualifier because exceptions will happen, the Washington Generals win on occasion, if only by accident).
There’s a simple way to test this theory. Clark could enter the NBA draft. She is the greatest female basketball player around right now, where do you think she’d go in the NBA draft?
Would she even get picked? Probably, actually, if only for the media relations coup.
In the early 1990s, a woman named Manon Rhéaume was on the receiving end of a lot of buzz in the NHL. A great goalie in women’s hockey, Manon was three chances to play with three different NHL franchises – the Tampa Bay Lightning, St. Louis Blues and Boston Bruins. The hype around her each time was huge, and none of them amounted to anything. She was still a great female goalie, but that didn’t matter because she wasn’t good enough to compete with the men. If she would have even been close, one of those teams (failing at the time) would have taken a chance on her for the simple reason of putting butts in the seats. But the closest she came was a couple of periods in pre-season games. Only two periods, actually, in two different pre-season games with two different teams. She got more of a chance than most goalies playing in college or in juniors could ever dream of, and everyone passed.
The reason you’re hearing about Caitlin Clark so much – and, honestly, the tone of the coverage is annoying, as it portrays her as team of one, steamrolling everything and over-hyped to the point of obnoxiousness – is because the equity brigade is out in full force making it seem as though the public at large care.
When Jon Stewart hosted the Daily Show the first time, you would have thought it was the top-rated show on television. It wasn’t, not even close. Remember the show “30 Rock”? I loved it, it’s hilarious. But it was on more magazine covers than it had viewers. Neither of those shows cracked the top 100, and were beaten by reruns of Family Guy on the Cartoon Network. But they were liberal shows made by liberal stars, and the left-wing industrial complex mobilized to prop them up because of it.
There’s not much difference between that and Clark.
I don’t revel in saying it, I’m content to ignore basketball in all its forms, but it’s nearly impossible to ignore what’s being shoved in your face every time you turn around.
Clark’s team will either win or they won’t. She will go on to the WNBA and the hype will follow, at least for a while. There will “think pieces” about how little she’s being paid compared to her male counterparts, none of which will focus on attendance, ratings or the fact that she could have tried her hand at the NBA but knew that wouldn’t work out well for her.
And once the machine hyping her now is done with her, it will seek out someone or something else. All the biological truths and practical lessons will be ignored or forgotten because the liberal propaganda machine isn’t about to let reality stand in its way.