The “face of the WNBA” debate won’t go away, and this week it pulled in one of the most decorated players in basketball history.
The argument started with a letter. Eleven Republican lawmakers, led by Congressman August Pfluger, sent WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert a letter describing Caitlin Clark as “the face of the league” while raising concerns over repeated physical play against her. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar read that letter and pushed back hard on Substack, and Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy pushed back just as hard on him.
Abdul-Jabbar didn’t hold back on his first reaction. He said he checked the calendar to make sure it wasn’t April Fools’ Day. His actual argument was more measured.
“Don’t get me wrong: Clark is a very good, possibly even a great, player,” he wrote. “But calling any one player the face of the league, absent the sort of on-court and cross-platform dominance of a Michael Jordan or a LeBron James, is an insult to an awful lot of great players.”
Portnoy saw it differently, and he laid out his case in one long post on X.
“Lets keep in mind Caitlin didn’t ask for this. She’s never said she was the face of the league. She’s always showed respect for those who came before her. She could squash this league like a bug if she started her own league,” he wrote. He kept going. “When she was asked to do NBA 3pt contest she said she wanted to do WNBA one 1st. She has fought for players salaries. But she is by far the most popular player in the league by every metric possible.”
Portnoy closed with a comparison that’s become a common talking point in this debate.
“Was it disrespectful to past tennis players when Serena and Venus instantly became faces of women’s tennis or Tiger with golf? The market dictates who the face of the league is and it’s clearly Caitlin. This argument makes zero sense and is just steeped in jealousy and stupidity.”
Caitlin Clark and the Fever are still dealing with fallout from the Alyssa Thomas incident last month, when Thomas made contact with Clark’s throat during a loose-ball battle and drew a one-game suspension after review. That controversy is what pulled Congress into the conversation in the first place, and it’s what put Caitlin Clark’s name in front of Abdul-Jabbar this week.
Caitlin Clark Has Stayed Out Of The Argument Herself
What’s notable through all of this is how little Caitlin Clark has actually said. She has never claimed the “face of the league” title for herself, and she’s gone out of her way in past interviews to credit the players who built the WNBA before she arrived.
“I’m somebody who grew up a huge fan of this league. I know where this league comes from, a lot of Black women that grew up making this league what it is. That’s kind of the shoulders that we stand on,” Clark said last season. “They deserve all the credit, and the more we can give credit to them, the better.”
That’s part of what makes Portnoy’s defense land the way it does. He’s not really arguing Caitlin Clark deserves a crown. He’s arguing she never asked for one, and that the label got attached to her by TV ratings, attendance numbers and merchandise sales instead of anything she said herself.
The Fever have tried to stay out of the political side of this too. After the congressional letter started circulating, the team released a statement making clear neither the organization nor Clark had any contact with the lawmakers behind it. The statement kept its focus on player safety rather than the broader debate Portnoy and Abdul-Jabbar are now having in public.
None of that is likely to settle anything. Caitlin Clark keeps putting up numbers, currently averaging 20.1 points and 7.8 assists a game for a Fever team fighting for playoff positioning, and every time she does, the argument over what to call her keeps finding its way back into the headlines. Abdul-Jabbar and Portnoy just gave it its latest round.
