Former North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson has added his voice to the backlash over Caitlin Clark’s absence from the WNBA’s 30th-anniversary poster. And he is not interested in nuance.
Watch What’s Trending Now!
“What’s missing? Look again, pause it if you need to. I looked at it three times and I’ll be dog gone if I didn’t see Caitlin Clark anywhere on it, did you?” said Robinson in a video that he posted on his X handle. “No, you didn’t see her either because she’s not on it.”
The poster features 30 players spanning the league’s history, several of whom entered the WNBA after Clark did. Her absence from the group has drawn criticism across the political and sports media spectrum. Robinson’s reaction was characteristically blunt about what be believes it signals.
“Incredible, you know, the absolute biggest female basketball player in the country right now, if not in the world, and she’s not included on this poster. You know, I’m convinced that the WNBA just hates this woman,” Robinson added.
“So many other professional athletes seem to want to carry these days. But whatever it is, it is ridiculous. Never in my life have I ever seen an institution literally turn up its nose and its own golden goose. And that is exactly what this sorry excuse for a league is doing.
“Squandering a golden opportunity. I think the entire front office of the WNBA should be fired, and they should be replaced with people who care more about marketing than Marxism. And the bottom line, more than political lines.”
This reactions lands in a season where the league is already facing scrutiny over how Clark is officiated. Mercury forward Alyssa Thomas recently received a one-game suspension and a $1,000 fine for a flagrant foul on Clark. Pundits, fans, and members of Congress have separately argued the league needs to do more to protect its most visible player.
There is, however, a more complicated explanation for the poster itself than outright animus. Darren Rovell highlighted on X how the omission traces back to image licensing rather than editorial intent. Clark reportedly licenses her name and likeness exclusively through Nike. This means the poster’s manufacturer WinCraft, a Fanatics company, could only use her name and jersey number, not her image.
That same restriction appears to explain why several Hall of Famers such as Sue Bird, Diana Taurasi, Candace Parker, Maya Moore, and Tamika Catchings, none of whom currently has a Fanatics likeness deal, are also absent. Whether that licensing explanation fully accounts for the decision or whether better planning could have avoided it is a separate question. However, it complicates the read that this was a deliberate snub.
What is not in dispute is Clark’s on-court case for inclusion. She holds WNBA single-season rookie records for points (769) and assists (337), and she became the fastest player in the league history to reach 1,000 points, 250 rebounds, and 250 assists combined. She was the first rookie since Candace Parker in 2008, and only the fifth rookie overall, to make the All-WNBA First Team.
That on-court resume is one half of the case. The other half is what Clark’s presence does to the league’s bottom line. And those numbers make the poster decision even harder to read as a simple oversight
Caitlin Clark is ‘THE’ Commercial Icon For The WNBA
If ever there was any doubt regarding the Caitlin Clark (CC) effect on the commercial statistics since Clark joined the WNBA, it’s best to take a glance once again.
The Fever’s June 7 matchup against the Liberty drew an average of 2.6 million viewers on CBS, peaking above 3 million. This figure ranks among the most-watched regular-season WNBA broadcasts in 25 years. Indiana’s game against the Toronto Tempo separately drew over a million viewers, reportedly the most-watched cable or streaming WNBA broadcast of 2026 to that point. According to FIBA, Clark’s No.22 jersey trails only Stephen Curry’s in U.S. sales across all basketball, men’s or women’s.
Whatever explains the poster’s final lineup, the underlying numbers leave little room to argue Clark isn’t central to where the league’s growth is coming from right now.
