This week, Stephanie White – coach of the Indiana Fever – made comments prior to a question-and-answer session in regards to the social media vitriol that Phoenix Mercury veteran star Alyssa Thomas has dealt with for roughly the past week.
The background of this stems from a moment during a recent game at Gainbridge Fieldhouse where Thomas’ fist contacted Caitlin Clark’s neck. Phoenix defeated Indiana by a final score of 111-109 The responses to this incident have ranged from criticism of the WNBA for a supposed “lack of protection” for its “cash cow” to insinuating that Clark should leave the W and either take her talents overseas or even use her money to launch her own league.
White has bemoaned how she feels her team have not received the benefit of the doubt from the referees all season, but she also understands that there is a difference between criticism within the realms of basketball and when it has consequences away from the court.
White’s comments were strong, direct and sorely needed considering the WNBA has been dealing with this nonsense ever since 2024 when Clark was drafted first overall by the Fever.
Clark herself also recently spoke.
It was revealed recently that Thomas was the target of death threats because of the play involving her and Clark. DeWanna Bonner – who also was involved recently in an incident involving Clark that led to multiple technical fouls – was also the target of social media vitriol from keyboard provocateurs. The Athletic obtained screenshots of messages that were sent in her direction that included death threats and racial epithets.
For White, this is not only about basketball – this is personal. We must remember that both Thomas and Bonner were under White’s tutelage in 2024 when she was head coach of the Connecticut Sun.
This is also personal for White because she understands being on both sides of this increasingly pressing matter. During that 2024 season, the Sun played the Fever in the first round of the playoffs. There was an incident involving DiJonai Carrington where her fingernail accidentally poked Clark in the eye of Game 1 in that series.
Carrington was the target of racist hatred – in the Sun’s own building.
White said what needed to be said. This is significant because even though Clark herself is not the cause of all of this unwarranted toxicity regarding the W nowadays, these provocateurs believe they are doing this on Clark’s behalf.
White calling out these unwell racists and unhealed keyboard warriors is the next best thing to Clark doing it herself. She is in her second year as head coach of the Fever and is now seeing what former coach Christie Sides saw all throughout 2024.
We vividly remember how in 2024 teams like the Sun and Chicago Sky also had to deal with the same stuff the Mercury are having to endure currently. Remember when Angel Reese and Chennedy Carter were the targets of social media vitriol? In addition, the WNBA issued a statement regarding all of this – when the Fever were eliminated from the playoffs by Connecticut that year.
This goes to a criticism many within the WNBA sphere have had of commissioner Cathy Engelbert. There is a current she-said-she-said regarding who reached out to who first regarding this matter.
A prevailing issue surrounding Engelbert is her perceived lack of ability to connect with her player base on more than merely a business level. We must remember, after all, that Engelbert does come from the corporate world given she is a former CEO of a Big Four accounting firm in Deloitte.
Many a WNBA fan perceives Engelbert as the sort of individual who one can count on to close a massive media or sponsorship deal but not the sort of individual one can grab drinks with on a Friday night in midtown Manhattan. The latter appeared to be a strength of the woman who held the job prior to Engelbert in Lisa Borders.
Borders leaned more into the political and activism side of the WNBA during her tenure when the W’s chief executive was a “league president” as opposed to the commissioner’s title that Engelbert has. The W’s status as the progressive league was emphasized heavily during the Borders era and many a player likely felt seen on a human level even if there were things to work out on the business side of the ledger.
Her being a Black woman who was instrumental in the WNBA’s expansion to Atlanta in 2008 likely helped as well.
There are advantages to the Borders approach as well as the Engelbert approach in attempting to grow a, still, relatively young league like the W. But time and place is important here and understanding human sense is every bit as important as understanding dollars and cents.
White’s comments were sorely needed because of her willingness to use phrases like “fake fans” to describe these unhealed keyboard provocateurs. Real fans do not need to believe they need to tear down a Thomas or a Bonner to uplift another great player like Clark because those real fans understand it makes it more difficult to celebrate the achievements of someone like Clark.
Those real fans also understand that physical play is part of the game at this level. It is a fair debate as to if Thomas deserved a flagrant 2 foul for the incident with Clark or if she deserved to be suspended for the game with the Toronto Tempo (one that the Mercury won 89-80).
But death threats and leaking of sensitive personal information are entirely unwarranted. That is how one can tell this has nothing to do with real Clark support and everything to do with racists, homophobes, transphobes, misogynists and xenophobes wanting to use the W as a platform to spread their bile and dim the lights of its mostly Black and LGBTQIA+ player base.
White gets this – and Clark likely gets this too. After all, one detail about Clark that these losers have forgot is that she was influenced to pick up a basketball because of a Black woman who wore Minnesota Lynx threads – Maya Moore.
At this point, it is on the true Fever fanbase and the Fever organization to take the lead in getting these losers out of the paint. The time that these keyboard provocateurs are spending watching Fever games would be better spent on BetterHelp.
Indiana’s fanbase – the ones that do not engage in this mess and likely represent the majority of the fanbase – should take the lead in snuffing out the fake fans and provocateurs who have no problems with this garbage. The Fever organization should as well because what if a nightmare scenario happens where players do not feel mentally safe to play on the road at Gainbridge Fieldhouse where they request contests in Indiana are played in front of no fans ala the COVID season of 2021?
Such a scenario would put the onus on Fever fans to ensure such a scenario does not happen because our guess is if many Fever fans would have to choose between watching on television or being at Gainbridge, they would much rather be there in person. After all, autographs and postgame meet and greets cannot be done through a television or a cell phone.
Also, it would put the onus on the Fever organization for the obvious – money lost. Indiana may still have made money off of season tickets, but that would be a lot of team store and concession money lost if it got to a point where a few Fever games had to be played in an empty gym.
And if this gets to that nightmare scenario where merely one or two Fever games must be played in front of zero fans, then many in the media have themselves to blame as well. In a lot of ways, they are the ones who are fanning the flames of this ongoing false narrative that the rest of the WNBA has been out to “get” Clark since the nanosecond she was drafted.
They even attempted to say the WNBA was disrespecting Clark by not having her likeness on the recently released 30th Anniversary poster. Yet Sophie Cunningham was on that poster. That was more than likely a licensing issue because if anyone from Fever history should have been on that poster, it should not have been Clark or Cunningham.
It should have been Tamika Catchings, but one would have to know that WNBA history existed prior to April 15, 2024 to understand that concept.
Back to Thomas and Bonner – many of the same mainstream media personalities who bemoaned the idea of AT and DB receiving death threats are the same ones who had their pitchforks and Tiki torches out immediately after the fact.
This is why we at Beyond The W wrote at the outset of the 2025 season to put the “Clark vs. WNBA” mess to bed because it never existed. And this is why we are saying in 2026 that if these personalities still want to prod this façade that perhaps they need to “stick to (male) sports” since there is an obvious deficiency they have on the topic of covering the W as they would any male sport.
Because when these individuals chat about the W, it is almost always through the lens of Clark-induced eyeballs and television ratings. Did they mention Marina Mabrey recently tying A’ja Wilson and Liz Cambage’s single-game scoring record with a 53-point performance to power the Tempo over the Los Angeles Sparks? Did they mention the four-overtime classic at CareFirst Arena between the Washington Mystics and Portland Fire? Did they mention the New York Liberty’s recent triumph in the Commissioner’s Cup over the Las Vegas Aces?
As we have written before, the W may not have been on the television screens of many of these well-paid personalities, but the league had an increasing number of eyeballs on it even before Clark arrived on the scene two years ago.
Hopefully, White’s comments are the beginning of the Fever taking more active steps to cleanse the obvious problems within its fanbase. Because the fanbase has been hijacked by provocateurs who are not even real supporters of Clark. It is time to get the WNBA discourse back to a place where it was prior to 2024 – with Clark in it but also with a renewed emphasis on diversity, inclusion, respect and love (which we sorely need as much as we can get in 2026).
Oh…and have these online provocateurs remember when Clark said this to Time Magazine in 2024?
I want to say I’ve earned every single thing, but as a white person, there is privilege.
–Caitlin Clark, Indiana Fever (Time Magazine)
A lot of those players in the league that have been really good have been Black players. This league has been built on then. The more we can appreciate that, highlight that, talk about that and then continue to have brands and companies invest in those players that have made this league in credible, I think it’s very important. I have to continue to try to change that. The more we can elevate Black women, that’s going to be a beautiful thing.
–Caitlin Clark, Indiana Fever (Time Magazine)
