Skip Bayless posted that Caitlin Clark is “becoming a problem” for the WNBA, and the annoying part is he’s not wrong, which pisses me off more than if he’d been dead wrong like usual.
Bayless didn’t discover that assessment. The box score wrote it before he ever opened his laptop. Over her last five games, Clark is averaging 29.4 points, 9.0 assists, 4.0 rebounds and 1.6 steals on 55.9% shooting from the field and 48.7% from three. No one in WNBA history had ever put together a five-game run averaging 29-plus points and 9-plus assists before her.
Caitlin Clark’s five-game stretch is becoming a problem for the WNBA in the most literal sense there is: opposing coaches have no answer, and neither, apparently, does anyone trying to game-plan around her on a given Tuesday.
It started July 17, when Clark dropped 45 points and 10 assists on Seattle in an Indiana Fever win that still looks absurd on paper. It was the first 40-point, 10-assist game in WNBA history, the same night that turned into the Fever-Storm spread that started this run.
The Fever haven’t lost since. Five straight wins, a 19-10 record, a jump to the No. 4 seed, and every single game in the streak has ended with Indiana over 100 points, a new WNBA record for consecutive 100-point wins. That’s the part making the Fever a legitimate contender instead of just a Clark highlight reel with a supporting cast.
Bayless caught up to all of that on X.
https://twitter.com/RealSkipBayless/status/2083389860585570542
Uh-oh is right, and for once I mean that the way he does. It’s rare that the loudest man in sports media undersells an actual MVP case.
Skip Bayless has said worse things about Caitlin Clark than this, and that’s the complication I can’t get past. Back in January 2025, he made an entire video telling her to stay away from Taylor Swift after a Chiefs playoff game, and then, with zero backup, floated that the game itself was somehow rigged to protect Swift’s influence on football ratings. That’s not analysis. That’s a man losing an argument with himself on camera.
So no, I don’t trust Bayless’s judgment on a normal day. I trust the box score, and this time they happen to agree with him.
Not everybody’s letting him have the win, either.
Podcasters Ros Gold-Onwude and Angel McCoughtry pushed back on the praise as excessive, pointing out that Marina Mabrey scored 53 points earlier this season and got none of this attention. Gold-Onwude’s exact line captures it: “When the response is so, like outlandish, it distracts from the moment that Caitlin earned just by being nice at ball.” She’s right. Bayless being loud about something true doesn’t make the loudness necessary.
The stat line never needed Bayless’s co-sign to be real. It was always going to be the story, whether or not the loudest guy in sports media showed up to agree with it. My sister texted me the tweet with three question marks, like Bayless being right was the actual news.
It isn’t. Caitlin Clark averaging a 29-9 over five games is the news, and Bayless just happened to be standing next to it when it finally showed up.
