Sports · WNBA · July 1, 2026

Nine Flagrant Fouls in 72 Games. A Fist to the Throat. The WNBA Still Can’t Agree on Why.

On June 24, 2026, in a scramble for a loose ball, Phoenix Mercury forward Alyssa Thomas made a closed fist to Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark’s throat. No foul was called on the play. The next day, the WNBA reviewed the contact, upgraded it to a Flagrant 2, and suspended Thomas one game for what the league called “a non-basketball act.” Clark left the game with a back injury.

It was the most severe entry in a pattern that has run through Clark’s entire WNBA career: a shoulder check from Chennedy Carter in her second week as a pro, a forearm from Angel Reese two weeks after that, an eye poke from DiJonai Carrington in her first playoff game, an elbow from Jackie Young that officials declined to even review. By one count, Clark has drawn nine flagrant fouls in 72 games — more than any other player in the league over that span.

What that pattern means is where the agreement ends. Clark’s own teammates call it targeting and blame the officiating. A cluster of national commentators calls it racism. An overlapping cluster of current and former players calls that racism framing itself the problem — and, after Thomas was suspended, it was Thomas, not Clark, who said she was receiving racial slurs and death threats. Nobody in this story agrees on what is actually happening, and the disagreement is the story.

9 flagrant fouls — drawn by Clark in 72 games through June 2026 — more than any other player over that span, per CBS Sports' count (not an official league statistic) · Source: CBS Sports
1-game suspension — for Alyssa Thomas over the June 24, 2026 fist-to-throat contact, upgraded to Flagrant 2 on review · Source: ESPN, CBS News
2.7M viewers — for a Fever game in 2025 vs. as low as 330,000 for a WNBA game Clark didn't play, per Front Office Sports · Source: Front Office Sports
273% — one-year jump in the Indiana Fever's valuation (~$90M to $335M) between June 2024 and June 2025, per Sportico's team-values study · Source: Sportico
0 — formal legal complaints or WNBPA position statements on the officiating pattern — the union declined comment when asked directly · Source: Yahoo Sports

§ 01 / The Fist to the Throat

The June 24 game, a 111–109 Mercury win in Indianapolis, turned on a second-quarter scramble for a loose ball. Thomas’s fist connected with Clark’s throat area. Officials let play continue. It wasn’t until the league’s standard postgame review — the same process that had upgraded or declined to upgrade every prior incident on this list — that the contact was reclassified.

The WNBA’s official statement was unusually direct: Thomas “received a Flagrant Foul 2 penalty and a one-game suspension for recklessly making contact with her fist to the throat area of Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark,” the league said, calling it a non-basketball act. Thomas served the suspension June 27 against Toronto. Clark, who left the June 24 game with a back injury, missed Indiana’s next contest.

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§ 02 / The Pattern Before It

The Thomas incident didn’t happen in isolation. It capped two years of hard contact, split roughly evenly between plays the league upgraded to flagrant and plays it didn’t. Chennedy Carter’s shoulder check in Clark’s second week as a pro was called a common foul live, then upgraded the next day. Angel Reese’s forearm two weeks later drew the same upgrade — and both players called it basketball, not personal, afterward. An elbow from Jackie Young that September was reviewed and left as a common foul; a fingernail from DiJonai Carrington that drew blood near Clark’s eye in her first playoff game was never called a foul at all.

In June 2025, a Commissioner’s Cup semifinal against Connecticut produced a three-player skirmish: Jacy Sheldon’s contact with Clark’s face drew a Flagrant 1, Marina Mabrey’s technical was upgraded to a Flagrant 2 on review, and Fever teammate Sophie Cunningham was ejected with her own Flagrant 2 for pulling Sheldon to the floor. The league confirmed fines all around and no suspensions. Eleven months later, Clark herself drew a flagrant — for a hard screen on Golden State’s Veronica Burton, who shrugged it off postgame: “Basketball is a physical sport.”

A tally board reading FLAGRANT FOULS: 9 beside a player silhouette in jersey number 22, with two commentators arguing across a split podium — one pointing to a RACE sign, the other to a JEALOUSY sign — The pattern is not disputed — nine flagrant fouls in 72 games, more than any other player over that span. What's driving it is where the agreement stops.

“I don't think people realize it's not personal. Me and Caitlin Clark don't hate each other.”
Angel Reese, on her own contact with Clark — ESPN, March 2024

§ 03 / What Her Own Teammates Say

The two people closest to Clark and most vocal about the pattern — teammate Sophie Cunningham and head coach Stephanie White — describe it almost entirely as an officiating failure, not a racial one. “They’re definitely targeting her, and the league and the refs do nothing to protect her,” Cunningham said on her podcast in late June 2026, adding: “You see the videos of literally kneeing and cheap-shotting her in the throat.” White, after the Thomas incident, put it in officiating terms: “We have a generational talent and a WNBA superstar who had two cheap shots there that weren’t called... The fist in the throat is crazy. It’s dangerous.”

Neither has been found on the record invoking race in these specific complaints — their language is consistently about inconsistent whistle-calling and a league they say hasn’t protected its highest-profile player. Cunningham has previously drawn a $1,500 league fine for podcast comments calling the officiating “so inconsistent” on no-calls involving Clark.

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CaitlinFor3

@CaitlinForThree · June 2026

Sophie Cunningham on Caitlin Clark being assaulted on the basketball court: 'None of us saw that happen in real time, but if we did we would have had her back. They're definitely targeting her and the league and the refs do nothing to protect her.'

Collin Rugg

@CollinRugg · June 2026

WNBA player Sophie Cunningham calls out WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert by name, rips the league for not protecting her teammate, Caitlin Clark. 'This type of sh*t happens every single game to her, and the league and the refs do absolutely nothing about it.'

§ 04 / The Race Question

Outside the locker room, the debate is louder and less settled. Some commentators call the pattern straightforwardly racial. Historian Victor Davis Hanson wrote in The Daily Signal that “it’s racism, pretty clear it’s racism,” adding “they’re going to try to kill her.” Fox Sports personality Dan Dakich was criticized for describing a no-call as “street justice ghetto style.” USA Today’s Christine Brennan has repeatedly framed the pattern as “unabashed jealousy, disdain and outright hatred” from players and the league, tying it to officiating failure rather than asserting race directly.

Other commentators — and several of the players involved — reject that framing outright, or point it in the opposite direction. ESPN’s Louis Riddick called the racial read “stupid.” Charles Barkley attributed the friction to “petty jealousness” over Clark’s attention, not race. WNBA champion Natasha Cloud has separately argued the fouls themselves aren’t targeting — “What it is is racism,” she said on The Pivot Podcast in March 2025, arguing Clark is simply “being played” the way any other top player has been played, with the backlash running toward Black players, not toward Clark. Commentator Jemele Hill made a similar point after Thomas was suspended: “So much of this Caitlin Clark discourse is absolutely rooted in hatred or dislike of Black women,” she wrote on Threads in June 2026. After Thomas was suspended, it was Thomas who said publicly that she and her family were receiving death threats and racial slurs — the opposite direction the “is it racism” debate usually runs in this story.

A television ratings graph shoots upward off the chart labeled VIEWERSHIP beside an arena filling instantly with fans, while a small referee figure shrugs at a NO CALL whistle in the corner — WNBA games with Clark have drawn as much as eight times the audience of games without her — a gap several commentators, though no business-press analysis found, have tied to on-court resentment.

'Gutfeld!': One small point for Sophie Cunningham, one 'giant meme' for mankind — Fox News

Caitlin Clark, Sophie Cunningham, and Stephanie White walk out of a press conference over false reports — The Adrienne Ross Show

Who Is Actually Saying What

Named speakers who say race is a factor in Clark’s treatment or the discourse around her: Victor Davis Hanson, Dan Dakich (in language widely criticized as racially coded), and — regarding backlash against Black players specifically, not Clark — the WNBPA (in a September 2024 statement about a different incident, the Carrington eye-poke aftermath), Natasha Cloud, and Jemele Hill.

Named speakers who explicitly reject that framing: Angel Reese, Caitlin Clark herself, Louis Riddick, Charles Barkley, and Commissioner Cathy Engelbert.

The load-bearing fact: Sophie Cunningham and Stephanie White — the two people closest to Clark, and the most vocal about a real pattern — have not been found on record invoking race at all. Their complaint is entirely about inconsistent officiating. The racial framing in this story comes disproportionately from outside commentators, not from the players or coaches living it.

§ 05 / The Money Behind It

Whatever is driving the fouls, Clark’s effect on the league’s business is not in dispute. Her 2024 rookie debut drew 2.1 million viewers, the most-watched WNBA game since 2001; that year’s draft drew 2.45 million, nearly five times 2023’s record. Front Office Sports found games with Clark drawing 2.2–2.7 million viewers in the same stretch that games without her drew as few as 330,000–357,000 — roughly an eight-to-one gap. The Fever set the league’s single-season attendance record in 2024, and league-wide attendance hit an all-time high of 2.5 million fans in 2025.

The franchise-value numbers moved just as fast: Sportico put the Fever at $335 million in June 2025, up 273 percent from roughly $90 million a year earlier — the largest single-year gain of any team in the league. Forbes had it at $370 million by December. The WNBA’s new media-rights portfolio, with NBC, Disney, Amazon, USA Network, CBS, and Ion all now carrying games, is reported at more than $3 billion over eleven years. No sports-business outlet in this reporting directly attributed the on-court physicality toward Clark to resentment over that money — that causal claim exists only in general commentary, not business-press analysis, and it is worth being precise about the difference.

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§ 06 / Where the League — and Washington — Stand

The WNBPA has taken no formal position on the officiating pattern. Asked directly by USA Today’s Christine Brennan whether the Thomas contact was punishable, the union “respectfully declined comment.” Commissioner Engelbert has separately denied a September 2025 allegation from Minnesota’s Napheesa Collier that she privately told players they should be “on their knees” grateful for Clark’s platform — “I did not make those comments,” Engelbert said — and on July 1, 2026, condemned the threats against Thomas as something the league “vehemently condemns.”

Two Republican members of Congress have weighed in publicly. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) posted after the Thomas incident that Clark “gets consistently treated unfairly on the court… So refs start treating Caitlin like u do every other player. What happened last night shldnt happen again.” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) separately posted that the “thug treatment” of Clark by the league was “pathetic.” No Democratic official was found on record commenting on the officiating pattern specifically; Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-PA) has criticized the league on a separate, unrelated point — omitting Clark from a WNBA anniversary poster.

Skip Bayless

@RealSkipBayless · May 2025

NATASHA CLOUD FOULED CAITLIN CLARK ON THE WRIST AS SHE DRIBBLED AND ARM AS SHE WENT INTO HER SHOOTING MOTION. NOT BLATANTLY BUT FOULS NONETHLESS. HOW DOES CAITLIN CLARK NOT GET THAT CALL AT HOME???

Caitlin Clark's Rise and the WNBA's Diverse Talent #gutfeld — Breaking View USA

§ 07 / The Bottom Line

The documented facts are not in dispute: nine flagrant fouls in 72 games, a suspension for a fist to the throat, and a business impact — ratings, attendance, franchise value — with no real precedent in the league’s history. What those facts mean is where the certainty stops. The people who spend the most time with Clark describe an officiating failure with no racial component they’ve stated on the record. A layer of national commentators, mostly outside the league, describe it as racism. Another layer, including players who’ve absorbed real abuse in this debate, say the racism runs the other way — against the Black players drawing public fury for hard fouls in a physical sport.

No formal complaint has been filed. No league investigation into racial motive has been opened. The WNBPA has declined to take a position. What’s left is a nine-foul pattern the league itself now formally acknowledges was severe enough to earn a suspension — and a public argument about why, that neither the players, the coaches, nor the league office have resolved.

“This type of sh*t happens every single game to her, and the league and the refs do absolutely nothing about it.”
Sophie Cunningham, Indiana Fever guard — via Collin Rugg on X, June 2026