Jason Whitlock has slammed WNBA legend Sue Bird, calling her an ‘attention whore’ following comments she made to partner Megan Rapinoe on their podcast.
During their conversation Bird insisted racism was impacting the WNBA ‘well before this year’ and that the basketball skills of players in her era were often overlooked, just as she claims they are now.
It was in the same episode that former USWNT soccer star Rapinoe blasted the ‘racist’ question at the heart of USA Today columnist Christine Brennan’s ongoing war with the WNBA players’ union.
In response to Bird, Whitlock insisted she and other former players don’t actually ‘want to talk about basketball’ and that her generation was overlooked because they weren’t very good.
He also accused them of only talking about racism and sexism during their careers to draw attention to themselves and that the WNBA used to be ‘a drag show’ with players ‘doing an impersonation of men’.
Jason Whitlock has slammed WNBA legend Sue Bird and called her an ‘attention whore’
Bird told her partner Megan Rapinoe racism was impacting the WNBA ‘well before this year’
Whitlock said: ‘They are not talking about basketball because you don’t want to talk about basketball.
‘You couldn’t get any traction based on your basketball and so you decided “hey, we’ve got to talk about racism and sexism to draw attention. We have to kneel in the national anthem to draw attention”. It’s bad strategy.
‘You just wanted attention. You were being an attention whore and so, because your basketball couldn’t do it, you went to other things.
‘It’s like a kid that can’t get attention from its parents. They start acting out. “I’ll start skipping school, I’ll start smoking marijuana, I’ll start talking back to my teacher. I’ll start doing things to get my parents’ attention because I’m not getting enough.”
‘That’s what you did. You chose bad behavior because your basketball wasn’t good enough. And instead of saying “oh, someone showed up here who plays good enough basketball to draw attention and now people actually are evaluating my basketball and having conversations about rookie of the year, MVP. Is it Caitlin Clark? Is it A’ja Wilson?”
‘People are talking about basketball. This whole thing of “racism stopped the WNBA”. No it didn’t. No it didn’t. Here are the facts. Here’s what has been the problem with the WNBA and I’m sorry, these are just true facts.
Rookie of the Year Caitlin Clark has led to an explosion in the WNBA’s popularity this season
‘You had too many women tatted up and looking like men that it was unattractive. People don’t want to see that. People don’t want to see women doing an impersonation of men. I know that everybody in San Francisco and everybody on the left loves a drag show but there are a lot of traditional sports fans who have no interest in going to a drag show.
‘I’m someone who used to go to Las Vegas a lot. Never went to a drag show. Never appealed to me and that’s not me saying I’m the most heterosexual person in the world. It just never drew my attention. Spearmint Rhino, yeah, drew my attention.
‘And that’s a lot of people. You would be shocked by how many people have no interest in ever seeing men dressed up as women or women dressed up as men. It’s not a good sales product so people weren’t interested.
‘Caitlin Clark shows up with her ponytail and no tattoos and plays a brand of basketball that is exciting and fun to watch and voila, a crowd shows up.’
Earlier this week, controversial retired soccer star Rapinoe thrust herself into the simmering racial tensions in the WNBA by calling out Brennan for her ‘racist’ question towards Connecticut Sun guard DiJonai Carrington.
Whitlock insisted Bird’s generation was overlooked because they weren’t very good
‘My visceral reaction was like: ”That’s not good. That doesn’t feel good. That feels racist, to be honest,”’ Rapinoe told Bird.
The controversial question was directed at Carrington, who angered Clark fans when she poked the Indiana Fever rookie’s eye in last month’s playoff opener.
Brennan asked Carrington last week if the eye poke was intentional, which the player denied.
Likewise, Carrington also denied laughing about the incident after cameras caught her giggling with teammates later in their Game 1 victory. (The Sun would go on to beat Clark’s Fever in the best-of-three series to advance to the semifinals)
But while Carrington answered Brennan’s questions without complaint, the WNBA players’ union responded with a scathing statement directed at the famed columnist.
‘To unprofessional members of the media like Christine Brennan: You are not fooling anyone,’ read the WNBPA statement.
Bird (far left) and Megan Rapinoe (near left) took aim at reporter Christine Brennan (right)
‘That so-called interview in the name of journalism was a blatant attempt to bait a professional athlete into participating into a narrative that is false and designed to fuel racist, homophobic, and misogynistic vitriol on social media. You cannot hide behind your tenure.
‘You have abused your privileges and do not deserve the credentials issued to you.’
Speaking with CNN’s Jake Tapper amid the ongoing controversy, Brennan insisted she would not hesitate to ask the question again.
Specifically, Brennan explained, she wanted to give Carrington a chance to hit back at critics who accused her f intentionally poking Clark’s eyeball during last week’s playoff opener.
‘The best thing I can do as a journalist is to try to give the athlete an opportunity, which I’ve done tens of thousands of times, to answer the question and tell us what she believes happened,’ Brennan told Tapper. ‘That was literally it.
‘And as you know, first of all I’d ask that question 100 times out of 100, I’d ask it today, the athlete has every opportunity to then take that question and go with it any way she wants,’ Brennan continued. ‘And obviously she did. So that’s the opportunity that I think any journalist gives an athlete when you’re covering a story, to give them the opportunity to give their side of it.’