Bitter Sheryl Swoopes Can't Handle Accountability For Lies About Caitlin Clark

Iowa star Caitlin Clark is now just 39 points away from breaking the all-time scoring record in NCAA women's basketball history. Her success and popularity have elicited jealousy from former players.

Like Sheryl Swoopes.

Last week, Swoopes tried to undermine Clark's legacy with a series of inaccuracies and lies. She claimed we must take Clark’s record-breaking career with a grain of salt because she played five years of collegiate basketball, is not a true senior, shoots 40 times a game, and is 25 years old playing against teenagers.

None of that is true.

Clark has played only four seasons of college basketball. She is a true senior. She shoots around 20 times per game. And just turned 22 years old.

Swoopes went 0 for 4.

Her rant reeked of racial hostility, uttering her dismissals while wearing a "Female, Fearless, and Black" T-shirt on Gilbert Arenas’ podcast, where inflammatory rhetoric toward white basketball players is commonplace. Arenas recently complained that white Euro players were coming for "our league," as in the black people's league.

The resistance toward today's star white players like Clark, Nikola Jokic, and Luka Doncic is profound. And that movement was met with pushback this week from OutKick, Jason Whitlock, former ESPN writer Steve Kim, and Dan Dakich.

Here's Dakich:

Swoopes did not expect to be held accountable for her purposely disparaging coverage of Clark. 

Thus, she doubled down on her inaccuracies throughout the week. She responded to critics with demeaning memes of white women. She called those questioning her "them" and "ignorant."  She sarcastically dismissed references to statistical proof as "piling on."

Here are some of her posts:

Her failure to admit and correct her errors provoked fans of Clark's – and there are many; see the television ratings – to wear "Don’t be a Sheryl" during Iowa's game against Penn State on Thursday.

Order yours now:

And that's when Swoopes caved. 

After more than a week of the tough lady act on social media, Swoopes resorted to amplifying posts in her defense. She then set her X account to private.

Her defenders inserted the race card. 

Specifically, female sports influencer Arielle Chambers garnered a strong response for a thread in which she argues that correcting Swoopes' false statements is a "direct reflection of how black women aren't afforded the freedom to deliver their opinions."

So predictable.

The essence of Chambers' thread is that Sherly Swoopes is a black woman and thus shall not be questioned. Ever. Got that?

Secondly, no one of note criticized Swoopes for her "opinion." She was criticized for not having her facts straight.

Swoopes said Clark shoots 20 times more a game than she does. That is not an opinion. That is a factually incorrect statement. As was Swoopes saying Clark is three years older than she is. And that she played more years of college basketball than she did.

Black women are entitled to their own opinions. All race and gender combinations are. Black women are not entitled to their own facts. No race and gender combination should be.

Sheryl Swoopes is not the victim. She unpromptedly and bitterly chastised the best women's basketball player in the nation. She did so with lies – lies that she defended for over a week.

Swoopes deserved the response she received. She should have acknowledged that she put misinformation out to the public. She is 52 years old; not a child.

All in all, don't try to diminish someone because that person is a white girl dominating a primarily black league. That's gross.

Don't be a Sheryl.