On Tuesday, the Indiana Fever traveled to New England to face the Connecticut Sun for Caitlin Clark’s WNBA debut.
Unfortunately, Clark and the Fever lost by 21 points, with a final score of 92-71. Clark had a rough start, going scoreless in the first quarter and picking up two quick fouls, which forced her to the bench.
Dave Portnoy, owner and founder of Barstool Sports, was not pleased with the WNBA and its referees for giving Clark those early fouls.
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He expressed his frustration on social media with a blunt message directed at the WNBA.
Dear @WNBA nobody is watching if Caitlin Clark is on the bench so maybe tell your idiotic refs not to call two ticky tac fouls on her 5 seconds into the game. How dumb are you people?
Portnoy was probably not too pleased due to the $25,000 bet he placed on the Fever spread +8 points.
Don’t feel too bad for Portnoy’s loss as he has plenty of money to fall back on.
Clark finished the game with 20 points, but set a WNBA record with ten turnovers which is the most ever by a player in her first WNBA game.
Clark spoke to the media following the disappointing performance.
“I thought it was physical,” Clark said. “I don’t know, obviously it wasn’t the best start in the first half for myself – getting into foul trouble and then you have to sit on the bench before coming back into the game to get into a little bit of a flow.”
“Obviously too many turnovers, that’s not going to get the job done. I think a lot of things we’ll just learn from. I don’t think we played well, but we cut it to six in the third quarter so I think that’s a positive. We really did not play a good game, but we were right there in moments and then it kind of got away from us at the end of the third and fourth quarter. Didn’t have the greatest start so I think just a lot to learn from.”
Clark and the Fever next face off against the New York Liberty on Thursday night at 7:00 p.m. ET.
