Star players usually get all the calls, but that doesn’t seem to be the case with Caitlin Clark.
On Saturday afternoon, Clark and the Fever were locked in a tight contest with the defending champion New York Liberty. With the Fever down by two, New York’s Natasha Cloud put a very aggressive block on Clark, who could not get a shot off before time expired. The referees did not call a foul on Cloud and the Fever, along with their more than 18,000 fans, were outraged.
Cloud locks up Clark on the final play pic.twitter.com/0b6Wqdjxfp
— Oh No He Didn't (@ohnohedidnt24) May 24, 2025
The Fever lost the game, 90-88.
After the game, Fever head coach Stephanie White blasted the refs.
“I thought she got fouled,” White told reporters. “I think it’s pretty egregious what’s been happening to us the last few games: A minus-31 free-throw discrepancy. And I might be able to understand it if we were just chucking 3s. But we’re not. We’re attacking the rim.”
Clark, who was incensed at the no-call, could only say “I don’t know” when asked about the referee’s decision not to blow the whistle and said she had not yet watched the tape.
Her head coach was much more verbose.
“The disrespect right now for our team has been pretty unbelievable,” White said. ‘It’s disappointing that it doesn’t go both ways — or it hasn’t gone both ways.”
Clark scored 18 points but did not dominate from the field, hitting on only six of 18 shots. The free-throw disparity White mentioned factored into this game as well. The Liberty shot 32 times from the charity stripe while the Fever shot only 15, less than half as many.
In the end, White lamented the lack of consistency in WNBA officiating.
“There’s a system to making sure that we can send stuff in and communicate our grievances, so to speak,” White said. “I don’t know that I ever feel like the system works. We’re not looking for a change. We’re just looking for consistency.”
