Caitlin Clark faces racist accusations from Atlanta Dream co-owner’s cousin as WNBA fans remonstrate

Dawn Montgomery, took to her Twitter fingers to make a startling, yet baseless allegation about Caitlin Clark

Caitlin Clark faces racist accusations from Atlanta Dream co-owner’s cousin as WNBA fans remonstrate

Caitlin Clark

The rise of Caitlin Clark, and women’s basketball in conjunction with her, has been a welcome sight for fans of women’s sports. She has built up a following unlike anything we’ve seen in sports this century. And the Indiana Fever’s franchise superstar has done it by keeping everything strictly hoops. Clark has done her best to be a role model on and off the court, without setting a foot wrong.

However, her meteoric rise and what she’s done for the general public’s interest in the WNBA doesn’t seem to have gone down well universally. There are a lot of voices in women’s sports who believe that the adulation, praise and attention she receives is misplaced. One of them, Dawn Montgomery, took to her Twitter fingers to make a startling, yet baseless allegation about the team’s popularity.

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Montgomery, who advertises herself as a Black Lives Matter activist and as a mental health advocate, wrote these words

This makes absolutely no sense and I swear they’re putting all this money into that girl who ain’t done shit but be white. I’m sick of this and Cathy. I don’t care if I don’t ever get invited to WNBA related events nor games anymore. Enough is a damn enough.

Dawn Montgomery tweeted

This kind of opinion from someone who professes to be a professional WNBA reporter is completely unacceptable. What Caitlin Clark means to women’s basketball, and more generally women’s sports, can be easily quantified. The WNBA saw a 100%+ increase in interest, viewership and various other metrics in 2024, with Clark’s presence being the predominant reason.

Montgomery’s post from March 24th is hardly isolated. She posted another tweet downplaying Clark’s impact on women’s college basketball on 23rd March.

It seems that Montgomery has serious problems with the rise of Caitlin Clark, and that she’d rather see the WNBA pass up on advertising revenue and other streams of revenue generated due to her advent than see Clark get her due – monetarily or in terms of attention. However, there’s precious little that Dawn can do – Clark shall remain the face of basketball for the foreseeable future.

WNBA fans pile on Dawn Montgomery after latest Caitlin Clark slander

What makes the optics worse on her takes is that Dawn’s cousin sister Renee Montgomery is a co-owner of the Atlanta Dream. Renee invested in the team in 2021 after her WNBA retirement, after the team’s owner was pressured into selling her establishment. For a close relative of a WNBA dignitary to speak in such a way about the face of the WNBA is damning.

WNBA Twitter minced no words while taking Dawn Montgomery to the cleaners with their tweets. Many people called out Renee’s association to the journalist while lambasting her biased and ignorant view.

The concerning part about the WNBA media landscape is that people like Dawn Montgomery haven’t been held in check by other people in the business. Even the highly liked and respected Nate Duncan, employed directly by the WNBA, acts as an enabler based on his tweets.

The sections of WNBA media and fandom that haven’t fully embraced Caitlin Clark are in for hard times unless they adapt to the changing landscape of the league and stop letting their dislike of the face of the WNBA hinder their opinions, analysis and image.